Moore was 10 years old in 1972 and living in Northern Ireland. A British soldier shot him with
rubber bullets, resulting in Richard becoming totally blind. The tragedy could have turned the boy
into an angry and resentful man. But Richard never bore ill will. Instead he devoted his life to
helping and protecting other vulnerable children around the world. He was intent on finding the
man who caused his blindness. When they finally met some time later, Richard told the British
soldier that he forgave him. The two men are now friends. This marvelous example of the power of
forgiveness is so moving, it often makes us cry.
Barry Kerzin
"Tong Len Meditation"
2:58 min
Patience and Overcoming Anger
Patience is fundamentally the exercise of restraint based on mental discipline. Mostly it restrains
our anger. Essentially, patience is the antidote or counterforce to anger. Through reducing and
eliminating our anger thereby, compassion naturally flourishes. The Tibetan term is
soe pa
, which
is usually translated as patience. But it includes the virtues of tolerance, forbearance and
forgiveness. Its deeper meaning is the ability to endure suffering. It implies not giving in to our
instinctive urge to reflexively respond in harmful ways due to our pain. But
soe pa
has nothing to
do with being passive or impotent. It does not mean lacking the strength or ability to fight back. Nor
is it gritting our teeth and enduring injustice grudgingly. Instead, genuine patience requires strength
and courage. Strength and mental courage are required to discipline the mind. Mental discipline
helps us to restrain harmful ways of living, particularly anger.
Patience interrupts our automatic, knee-jerk reaction of revenge and anger. Mental discipline
requires that we adopt a wider, more holistic view. Adopting a wider, panoramic perspective gives
us an understanding of the complete situation. This allows us the emotional space to distance our
self from the feelings of anger. Having emotional space, we are no longer boxed into an emotional
corner. We learn how to not identify with the anger. We can just let the feeling of anger go without
clutching onto it as mine. We simply imagine the anger floating away like a cloud drifting naturally
across the sky. By not tightly identifying with the anger, we are able to let it go. With this
visualization comes a distance and space between our self and our anger. Thus, with this space it
becomes easier to separate from it. Therefore, we have more room to relax. We have let go of
identifying the anger as “me” or “mine.” Here it is helpful to make a distinction between the person
and the action. It allows us to have tolerance and forgiveness towards the person, yet still be
opposed to the action. Very harmful actions may need appropriate punishment according to the
law. Of course, it is the person who committed those actions that is punished. Yet still we maintain
our respect and compassion for the person that caused the harm. We are all human and make
mistakes. At the same time, we all have this amazing potential to become better human beings.
In order to overturn anger, it is important to reflect on its disadvantages. This helps us to
strengthen our resolve to practice patience. Intense moments of anger create tremendous
difficulties for us later on. It deletes our history of wholesome actions. Thus, the beneficial, happy
results from doing good are no longer available to us. Anger also has insidious, corrosive effects
on our mood and on our present state of happiness. Gradually and steadily repeated anger
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