Chapter 9: Perfection of Patience

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on patience (tolerance) as the third perfection necessary for purifying negative emotions and karmic obscurations, presenting three types of patience and emphasizing how bodhisattvas must cultivate an unperturbed mind even when facing extreme suffering or harm. Through extensive scriptural citations, Śāntideva demonstrates that with proper practice and the armor of patience, a bodhisattva can transform even the most severe physical torture into opportunities to perfect all six perfections simultaneously while maintaining an unwavering commitment to achieving buddhahood for all sentient beings.

Citation

Phuntsho, Karma. "Chapter 9: Perfection of Patience." Śikṣāsamuccaya in-depth chapter overviews. Bodhicitta: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative, September 2, 2025.

In order to eschew immorality, which causes continuous suffering, and to dispel karmic obscurations, one must cleanse negative emotions. To do so, one must practice patience. Without patience or tolerance, which is, in essence, the ability to bear discontent and weariness, one cannot succeed in study, contemplation, or practice. Thus, one must first pursue study without weariness and then endeavor in meditation, which will help cleanse the afflictive emotions.

What are the types of patience or tolerance, then? Śāntideva cites The Compendium of Dharma Sūtra (Dharmasaṃgītisūtra) to present the three types of patience: the patience of undertaking suffering, the patience of undertaking Dharma, and the patience of being unirked by harm-doers. The patience of undertaking suffering counteracts unhappiness and anger resulting from encountering unpleasant experiences that are not desirable or obstructing pleasant things that are desirable. The Moon Lamp Sūtra (Candrapradīpasūtra aka Samādhirājasūtra) succinctly describes patience as not being attached to happiness and not being tired of suffering. Similarly, The Questions of Ugraḥ Sūtra (Gṛhapatyugraparipṛcchāsūtra) recommends that a bodhisattva householder engage in the world with equanimity free from attachment and aversion to deal with the eight worldly concerns of gain, loss, praise, criticism, fame, infamy, pleasure, and pain. Seeing things as illusory, one must not have pride in getting what one likes or displeasure and timidity in not getting what one likes. The sūtra also advises that one must not have an overly fickle and sensitive mind, lest it lead to sadness. Patience, in most Mahāyāna literature, is defined as an unperturbed mind.

Śāntideva also quotes his own words from The Way of the Bodhisattva to say that there is no need to get upset if something can be fixed and no use getting upset if something cannot be fixed. Moreover, Śāntideva argues in both his works that everything, including tolerating harm and pain, can become easy with practice. Ordinary people such as farmers, fishermen, and soldiers tolerate great hardship and pain for basic livelihood or worldly gains because they are used to facing hardship. What need is there, then, to speak of bodhisattvas who work for the much greater cause of dispelling the misery of the entire world and eliminating the negative emotions, which have caused so much harm throughout lifetimes?

With practice and training, a bodhisattva can achieve the meditative state of being imbued with bliss even when he is afflicted with the suffering of hell or the pain of bodily parts being chopped off. Śāntideva cites The Sūtra on the Meeting of Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra), which lists the many kinds of torture and hardship a bodhisattva may be subjected to and which also states that a bodhisattva would only experience bliss and pleasure in all circumstances due to his persistent prayers and practice of sympathetic joy. He then cites The Teachings of Akṣayamati Sūtra (Akṣayamatinirdeśasūtra), which describes the great joy of bodhisattvas and lists the many ways in which to feel and express joy.

The Questions of Sāgaramati Sūtra (Sāgaramatiparipṛcchāsūtra) also presents the practice of patience, pointing out how a bodhisattva should not be disturbed and his principles and practices should not be shaken by harm-doers, evil forces, distractions, abuses, and so forth. Even if one's body is cut into small pieces the size of Indian juniper needles while one is upholding the thought of giving, discipline, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom, a bodhisattva should not give rise to disturbance in his mind or give up the thought of reaching buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Should the body of a bodhisattva with skill-in-means be cut into pieces, he can perfect the practice of the six perfections in such an instance. To give up the body is the perfection of giving, to spread loving-kindness to all beings and not give in to sensation is the perfection of discipline, to tolerate pain and not be mentally wounded when the body is harmed is the perfection of patience, not to give up the pursuit of buddhahood and engagement in the world to promote virtue is the perfection of effort, to think calmly of buddhahood and not forget bodhicitta even when the body is being destroyed is the perfection of meditation, and to see the body as impermanent and illusory even as it is being cut is the perfection of wisdom. Thus, a bodhisattva must put on the armor of patience or tolerance. They must not react or retaliate but have forbearance and remain undisturbed even if their life were at stake.

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Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Śikṣāsamuccaya [शिक्षासमुच्चय]. bslab pa kun las btus pa [བསླབ་པ་ཀུན་ལས་བཏུས་པ།]. [The Compendium of Training]. Tengyur, RKTST 3281 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3281&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

Śikṣāsamuccaya (T. Bslab pa kun las btus pa; C. Dasheng ji pusa xue lun; J. Daijōjū bosatsugakuron; K. Taesǔng chip posal hak non 大乘集菩薩學論). In Sanskrit, "Compendium of Training," a work by the eighth-century Indian Mahāyāna master Śāntideva. It consists of twenty-seven stanzas on the motivation and practice of the bodhisattva, including bodhicitta, the six perfections (pāramitā), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and the peace derived from the knowledge of emptiness (śūnyatā). The topic of each of the stanzas receives elaboration in the form of a prose commentary by the author as well as in illustrative passages, often quite extensive, drawn from a wide variety of Mahāyāna sūtras. Some ninety-seven texts are cited in all, many of which have been lost in their original Sanskrit, making the Śikṣāsamuccaya an especially important source for the textual history of Indian Buddhism. These citations also offer a window into which sūtras were known to a Mahāyāna author in eighth-century India. The digest of passages that Śāntideva provides was repeatedly drawn upon by Tibetan authors in their citations of sūtras. Although Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra and Śikṣāsamuccaya both deal with similar topics, the precise relation between the two texts is unclear. Several of the author's verses appear in both texts and some of the sūtra passages from the Śikṣāsamuccaya also appear in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. One passage in the Bodhicaryāvatāra also refers readers to the Śikṣāsamuccaya, but this line does not occur in the Dunhuang manuscript of the text and may be a later interpolation. (Source: "Śikṣāsamuccaya." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 821. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)

Chapter 9: Perfection of Patience

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