The Highest Realm of Forbearance Is a World Without Insult

Zen Master Hakuin was the restorer of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen. He practiced all his life in purity, his character luminous and open, and was deeply revered by his followers. Yet he too once suffered a great insult.

Near where Hakuin lived there was a couple who ran a food shop. They had a daughter who became pregnant before she was fourteen. The couple were furious; they punished their daughter and demanded to know who the man was. Pressed beyond endurance, the daughter finally named Zen Master Hakuin as the father of the child in her belly.

The enraged shopkeepers confronted Hakuin, and of course heaped abuse and blows upon him. They left the newborn baby with Hakuin. Hakuin merely said calmly, "Is that so?" From then on his reputation was damaged, and many followers despised him. Through toil and hardship, begging alms everywhere, he raised the newborn infant.

Three years later, the couple's daughter finally had a change of heart. She confessed the truth to her parents: Zen Master Hakuin was not the father; she had wronged him. The couple were deeply ashamed, sought out Hakuin, apologized to him, restored his damaged reputation, and took back their grandchild. Hakuin still only said calmly, "Is that so?"

This is a true story of a great Buddhist master.

Forbearance of insult (ksanti) is one of the Six Perfections of Buddhism. Living in this world, we often suffer all kinds of insults: some discriminate against us, some slander us, some mock us, some frame us. All these are insults. In the Sutra of Forty-two Sections, the Buddha's disciples asked him what kind of person is the most powerful. The Buddha said: the person who forbears insult. Because one who forbears insult has no malicious intent in the heart, can bear what others cannot bear, and has a strong inner being.

For those of us living in the secular world, forbearance of insult is exceedingly difficult. Between relatives and friends, between colleagues, even among strangers on the road, conflicts constantly arise because people cannot forbear. The angry, resentful heart of human beings is the hardest to overcome. When a person overcomes his own anger, his heart becomes much more at peace, and conflicts with others become far fewer.

If we, from a place of understanding and compassion for human weakness, deeply recognize that human wisdom is limited, and that human beings—poor creatures that we are—rarely can overcome their own weaknesses; if we look at those who insult us from a standpoint of understanding and compassion, then there will be no insults in this world for us to forbear.

Thus the highest realm of forbearance is that of Zen Master Hakuin: to look upon all worldly matters with detachment, so much so that even one's own reputation is not taken to heart. In that way, there is no such thing as insult at all.