"This we must perceive and curb our wrath"

Bodhicharyavatara:6.65.4*

I am making my way through the patience chapter (6) of Bodhicharyavatara, and though work makes it impossible for me to attend the lectures live (and I'm making my way through the recordings, for now, rather slowly), I thought there might be some benefit in discussing what I've gone through so far.

I'll start by saying that even though various commentaries will segment parts of the text into more comprehensible parts and under an intelligent framework, trying to make these distinctions on my own has been quite hard, for part seems to blend into part, and sometimes it's easy to forget where the text is going, or where it has come from. At times, I have even wondered, "wait--what is this chapter about?" forgetting the very obvious, when confronting a smaller detail in the verse.

Yet sometimes a line will stand out and speak for itself:

24.1-2"Irritation, likewise, comes
Though never plans to be experienced!"

9.1-4"So come what may, I'll not upset
My cheerful happiness of mind.
Dejection never brings me what I want.
My virtue will be warped and marred by it."

14.1-2"There is nothing that does not grow light
Through habit and familiarity."

I think there is obvious benefit to studying this text and Shantideva's arguments. Sometimes an argument's relevancy is hit or miss (for me!), yet most of the arguments are precise in detail and intuitively graspable (for example when he argues, within the first ten stanzas, that we should avoid anger at all costs if only because of the reason that it destroys all of our happiness.) For no matter how many times we get angry, we never think about the things that Shantideva asks us to think about. Part of the problem is the instinctive "right" that anger brings with it.

Shantideva spends time talking about not being angry at your enemies--but what is surprising to me is how often I feel the spectrum from discontent to anger toward the people I love! And even with powerful, clear arguments that I support, and even when I recognize it at the moment that that anger arises, sometimes the "right" of anger feels more important than applying the dharma. So I think, if we really think about his arguments every day, and see how and when we get angry, we will really see the level of insanity that we are perfectly happy (so-to-say) living with. It makes me think how samsara doesn't stop once we become "buddhists," nor once we begin chanting some new syllables, nor if we even change our schedule a little to accommodate a practice. Samsara still rushes onward. I've enjoyed Shantideva because he brings you, if you let him lead you, to that edge where the insanity of samsara is undeniable. That at least is revulsion and effective in itself.

*For a while I was happily misreading this line as "Thus we must perceive and curb our wrath." With this in mind, I chose it for the title of this blog, for it fittingly, succinctly describes a theme I wanted to touch on: we must recognize wrath, and we must curb it. The actual line is slightly less powerful as a succinct title, for "this" is now the ambiguous place-holder for what we need to "perceive," the information for which proceeds this line (go look it up if you're curious!)