Today I want to discuss the perfection of patience. I ask the monks of the Jogye Order: are you practicing it? We must first distinguish clearly what patience means.
Enduring the result of one’s wrongdoing is not this perfection
Suppose I strike someone and that person strikes me back. Bearing pain that returned because of my own wrongdoing cannot be called the perfection of patience. Accepting the consequences of one’s conduct differs from the patience demanded of a righteous person.
The practice begins when I have done no wrong—when I have acted correctly, compassionately, or toward awakening—yet abuse, hardship, and injury come to me. Ultimately one may understand that there is neither a separate bearer nor a separate object to bear, and that events arise naturally through conditions. An ordinary person, however, feels bitter when goodness receives abuse.
Imagine rescuing a drowning person only to be told to hand over the rescuer’s bundle as well. Resentment rises. Not responding with anger and bearing that unjust accusation is the perfection of patience.
Patience is the task given to the righteous
I would summarize this perfection as a task given to the righteous. A righteous person does what is right. When persecution follows precisely because the action was right, the person who accepts the cost without abandoning the action cultivates patience.
Yet is the Jogye Order practicing patience itself, or forcing everyone around it to practice? Attacking critics and making them bear injustice is not one’s own spiritual discipline.
Did the Order assign this practice to Jeong Cheong-rae?
Lawmaker Jeong Cheong-rae is a representative case. Speaking for public inconvenience, he criticized passage and fee practices around mountain temples. His wording could be debated, but his intervention sought to raise a problem experienced by citizens. The Order persecuted him rather than treating the criticism as a potentially righteous act.
He eventually came intending to apologize, yet the Order would not even accept that apology. He was told not to enter, his coming with other lawmakers was rejected, and those involved refused to meet a person offering contrition. This is a striking failure of communication.
The Order thereby made someone who raised a legitimate problem endure grievance. Was the purpose to make Jeong practice the perfection of patience, turn him into a saint, and lead him toward awakening? The Order seems to have transferred its own discipline to its critic.
Do not confuse journalism with a loudspeaker for power
The Jogye Order has branded media outlets that speak uncomfortable truths as “anti-Order media” and persecuted them. But we should ask which media actually harm the institution. Is an outlet journalism when it merely amplifies the Order’s statements to the world and never identifies a single mistake?
Those who serve as the loudspeaker of power while performing the role of journalists are not doing journalism. Conversely, people stigmatized and punished for probing institutional wrongdoing do not act because they are unaware that there is little money in it and that confronting power is difficult. They know the danger and still speak. Such people are righteous.
By stamping them with a hostile label and excluding them, the Order makes those journalists practice patience. I ask again: are you cultivating patience, or creating suffering so that everyone around you must cultivate it instead?
Following from fear of disadvantage is not patience
Thousands were said to have attended the national monks’ rally, though no clear official count was available. It is difficult to believe that every monk came because each thought the Order’s position right. If someone participated while believing it wrong, merely fearing disadvantage or institutional displeasure, that was not the patience of a righteous person. It was choosing the safer side despite recognizing harm.
The perfection of patience means doing the right thing while knowing that persecution and personal cost may follow. It means refusing to abandon compassion, ethical discipline, and the Buddha’s spirit because they are costly. This is central to Mahayana Buddhism and an unavoidable duty for anyone who retains the name of a Mahayana practitioner.
Walk the right path like a rhinoceros horn
What criticism and pain are you yourselves bearing? What righteous work are you doing? Even if I suffer harm and abuse, when I know an action is right I must walk alone like a rhinoceros horn without watching other people’s reactions. That is the Buddha’s teaching.
I ask the monks one final time. Are you walking the right path? Are you practicing? Are you doing righteous work, or standing on the side that persecutes the righteous? The perfection of patience is not a command telling powerless critics to endure. It is the practice of willingly paying the cost of one’s own commitment to what is right.
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