Patience

For most of us, patience refers to tolerance or endurance. In Buddhism, it has a specific meaning. It actually refers to a mind that can remain undisturbed when we are harmed by others, when we are suffering or when we face obstacles in the course of Dharma pursuits.

How could we develop such a virtuous mind in the face of people who are harming us? Is it possible to do so without being angry and striking back? If we are willing to change our perspective about harmful people and strongly acquaint ourselves with the desired state of mind, it is definitely possible to cultivate patience towards these people.

Towards harmful people, we can think of them as follows:
i) They are the only ones who can give us the opportunity to practise patience.
ii) They are worthy of our compassion (rather than our anger) because they are creating far more suffering for themselves in the future than for us, due to the negative karma accumulated from harming us.
iii) They are helping us to finish our negative karma forever as the real cause of the harm is our own past negative karma. And since they are only the external condition for the ripening of our negative karma, they are not to be blamed for harming us.
iv) They are also victims, like us. It is their delusion and karma that is driving them to harm us. The real source of harm is not them, but their delusions that afflict them.
v) They are merely ordinary beings and it is the nature of ordinary beings to be deluded, just as it is the nature of fire to burn.
vi) Their harmful actions arise due to causes and conditions that are beyond their control. The real source of both the act of harming and the suffering inflicted are the conditions of karma and their delusions.
vii) They do not exist inherently, just as the we do not exist inherently and our act of being patient also does not exist inherently.

Apart from the above, if we know the sufferings that anger can cause us to experience when we retailiate, and how patience can benefit us, we will certainly be able to have a calm mind even when there is harm inflicted upon us.

Source: "Path to Enlightenment in Tibetan Buddhism" by Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden