Continuing to explore ksanti paramita -- "ksanti" can be translated many ways -- tolerance, endurance, composure, forbearance, patience. That last one, patience, is defined as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. In other words, it's not letting circumstances or other people "push your buttons."
A lot of the commentaries on ksanti paramita focus on dealing with anger. If you step back just a bit, you might also see how ksanti paramita fits into equanimity. Theravadin monk and scholar Bhikkhu Bodhi said that equanimity (upekkha) is "freedom from all points of self-reference; it is indifference only to the demands of the ego-self with its craving for pleasure and position, not to the well-being of one's fellow human beings."
From a Mahayana perspective, equanimity takes us to prajna paramita, or the perfection of wisdom, which shows us the illusory nature of our self-references. And once again, I am struck by the way the teachings all connect to and support each other.
A few weeks ago I came across a painfully hyper-intellectual blog dedicated to criticism of Buddhism, in which the blogger said "How would your reception of Buddhism be affected if you saw it as a hodge-podge of often disconnected ideas and theories about human being (which it is)?" It's stunning to me that anyone would say that, but it occurs to me that the teachings would appear to be exactly that if you removed prajna.
Prajna (wisdom) refers to the realization -- not merely the intellectual understanding of, but realization -- of anatta (Theravada) or sunyata (Mahayana). All Buddhist teachings have anatta/sunyata� at their core, and if you remove that, Buddhism is like a car without an engine -- just an assemblage of parts that doesn't actually go anywhere.
Winding backward again to ksanti --� as we still drag around our illusion of self and perceive in terms of self-reference, it's useful to reflect on attachment. We get jerked around by this and that because of attachment. We're like puppets on strings, and the strings are pulled by out desires and aversions (which are also attachment).
But we only attach to things because we see ourselves as separate from them. Where there is no separation, there cannot be attachment -- no one to attach, nothing to attach to.
Most of the time, when we feel angry or resentful it's because someone pushed up against our ego-shell. I once heard a Zen teacher say that whenever something or someone "makes you angry," there place your bowing mat. A "bowing mat" is a square of cloth Zen monks place on the floor where they are bowing.
Even if you can't do it physically, when someone "makes you angry," it's useful to visualize bowing to them. I recommend this for developing ksanti paramita. Acknowledge that you feel anger, and acknowledge the anger is coming from your own delusion. Remind yourself that other people can't "make you angry"; you make yourself angry. And bow.
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