The second type of patience is to accept and endure our own suffering, something that Shantideva speaks a lot about. He says that if we’ve got a problem that can be solved, there’s no point in getting angry, upset or worried. Just do what’s needed to solve it. But, if there’s nothing that can be done about the situation, why get angry? It doesn’t help. It’s like if it’s cold and we have warm clothing. Why complain and get angry that it’s cold, when we could just put on some extra layers? If we don’t have any warm clothes, then getting angry or upset isn’t going to make us warm.

We can also look at the suffering we experience as burning off negative obstacles, becoming happy that negative karma is ripening now, rather than in the future when it could be even worse. In a sense, we’re getting off lightly. Let’s say we bang our foot against the table and it really hurts – well, that’s great, because we haven’t broken our leg! Thinking like this can help us not get angry. After all, jumping up and down and making a big scene when our foot hurts isn’t going to help in the slightest. Even if our mommy comes and kisses it for us, it’s not going to make it all better!

Another point applies to when we’re trying to do very positive and constructive work, like starting a long retreat, going on a journey to help others, or working with some Dharma project. If there are lots of obstacles and difficulties at the beginning, then it’s actually great. It’s like all of the obstacles burning off so that the rest of the undertaking can go well. We should be happy that it’s burning off now, rather than making a huge problem later on.

Shantideva said that suffering and problems have good qualities as well. It’s not that we should go out and actively look for problems to torture ourselves with, but when we are suffering, there are various good qualities that we can appreciate. Suffering lowers our arrogance and makes us humbler. It also allows us to develop compassion for others suffering similar types of problems. It’s like if we contract a certain disease, we have a natural appreciation of and compassion for our fellow sufferers. When we get old, we can finally really understand the pain of old age. We don’t usually have compassion for old people when we’re 16, because we can hardly fathom what it’s like to be 70. But when we do reach old age and experience all of it, then we have a great deal of compassion and understanding for old people.

Also, if we have some understanding of behavioral cause and effect – karma – then when we suffer, it reminds us to avoid acting destructively. Why? Simply because acting negatively is the cause for suffering. It will encourage us to engage more strongly in constructive actions, which are the cause of happiness.