Question: What’s the role of patience in the face of social injustice like what we are seeing against immigrant communities?
Answer: Okay, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. See, with all of these teachings in the bodhisattva path, the teachings of karma are absolutely implicit. The assumption here is you understand karma, and live according to it, and know that’s the reason for all of this happening. If you read these teachings in the bodhisattva path in isolation you can’t hear about karma.
When you understand karma – which is that every second everybody is experiencing the fruits of their own past actions and creating the causes for their future experiences – when that’s really deep inside us, first for ourself, we understand ourself and then can work with it. And that informs our ability to have compassion for people.
Then when we see people who are being harmed, we know in our mind – we just know – they caused it. But that doesn’t bring bitterness and resentment like it does if we don’t have the view of karma. You have compassion for them, incredible compassion for people who are being harmed, whatever level it is – for the world, for the millions of people being harmed, who are experiencing “social injustice,” as you call it.
If you have the view of karma and you’re really practicing living according to it, it completely informs your compassion for them and for the harmers. You realize that both of them are in the same boat: there’s this karmic connection between these two groups, and the victims of it are experiencing their karma, and the ones who are doing it are creating negative karma and will suffer unbearably in the future. And you have even more compassion for the harmers, more than for the harmed.
That’s what’s informing your ability to then get out there and practice compassion like the Tibetans do to save their own country. They understand karma: they know the reason this is happening is because of karma.
One of my friends got arrested in Lhasa 40 years ago – there were some demonstrations in ’87, a big uprising – and he was telling me about it. He was demonstrating. He was demonstrating! All the monks and nuns were the demonstrators, you know? His father got murdered, his brother got murdered, and he thought he better escape, so he came to Nepal, and he was telling me about it.
And I said to him casually, “Oh Jigdrol, did you get angry?” And he laughed and he said, “Angry? What for? It’s our own fault!” In other words, whatever we experience, whether it’s suffering or happiness, is just naturally the result of our own past actions.
The trouble is we misunderstand totally and then think, “Oh well, keep harming me, please, it’s all my fault, it’s karma!” No! You know why it’s happening so you have compassion for the victims and you have compassion also for the harmers. It’s not sentimental compassion, which is what we have now. Then you do what you can to help. Then you won’t get burnout because you know why it’s happening.
Burnout comes because of anger and attachment. And because we keep asking, “Why is this happening? Why is this happening? Why is this happening?” You don’t ask that question when you have the view of karma. This takes time. Do you see what I’m saying? And you keep trying, you keep doing it.
I remember Martin Luther King – he always blew my mind because he never stopped working for others. He didn’t have this view of karma – he had God and all that – but he had patience, incredible patience – and he had action.
He said, “It’s good to find fault, it’s good to see injustice and racism, but then you say, ‘What can I do to help?’” That’s compassion. That’s great compassion! Are you seeing what I’m saying? You do what you can.
Remember: patience is not just passive aggression or denial. It’s the courage to look the problem in the eye and find ways to deal with it. Patience is a very amazing, brave state of mind.
I remember one time, a conference in DC I went to when I was working for the prison project, put on by this group that was fed up with the way the kind of fundamentalist right-wing Christians were running this Christian show. It was a half-day conference, and it was all these little different religious groups all doing little things – a few doing a little bit here, a few Muslims, a few Christians.
There were all these little groups doing what they could – this little group here, this little group there, each one doing what they can – and that’s the thing. We can’t make the world change overnight.
So, we do what we can – what else? See the suffering, understand the causes, and just keep helping make the world become a better place. Help where you can: help your mother, your drunken child, help one fly, one dog – and you get encouragement from that and never give up.
As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, “Bodhisattvas think in terms of eons.”