THERE ARE TIMES when we have to make a choice, either to change a situation—put up a boundary, build walls, create an exit, whatever it might take to no longer be in that hardship—or to endure it. Those times, when our agency is still so available and when we can change our circumstances, are for another day’s writing. This is about the other times, the times when we must endure the hardships, when we don’t have the choice or opportunity or freedom to change how things are. This is for when the only thing to do is work with our own minds. This is for when we cannot get out.
We should know that it happens like this in a life; things get hard, and then they get harder, and there is no end in sight. Sometimes an end comes only to reveal more obstacles, and there is no relief. It is like that sometimes. During the pandemic, there have been so many circumstances in which endurance is the only option: single mothers who have to care for their children and somehow also find time for work; those caring for sick, dying, or mentally ill family members; those in a lockdown, and there is no place to go. There are times when endurance, and how we endure, matters, when the main question is how mind can make it through without getting lost in darkness. You may already know that this is how it can be. If so, you are not alone.
At such times, it is worthwhile to reflect on the life of Yeshe Tsogyal, the female bodhisattva of Tibet. Her autobiography suggests that within hardship, one can find endurance by transforming one’s mind. Tsogyal was a ninth-century figure; her autobiography, told to her consort, was revealed in the seventeenth century, when it was discovered as a treasure text. So her story emerged in a time of incredible hardship, of international power struggles and violence. It was a story that needed to be told and was heard at a moment in history when
