Donald S. Lopez, Jr., in his book The Story of Buddhism, discusses the bodhisattva Shantideva's argument for patience. Lopez writes,
When someone strikes us with a stick, do we become angry at the stick or the person wielding the stick? Both are necessary for pain to be inflicted, but we feel anger only for the agent of our pain, not the instrument. But the person who moves the stick is himself moved by anger; he serves as its instrument. If we are directing our anger against the root cause of the pain, we should therefore direct our anger against anger.
Today, my patience was tested. I didn't fare so well – I felt a lot of anger. Mostly, at my vice principal, who seems to be a petty bureaucrat, an unkind person, and, most disturbingly, a venal, xenophobic buffoon. Yes, all of those things.
I didn't enjoy how his capricious commands ended up leading to my personal possessions and space (what little remains for me at my school – it has been reduced to a shelf in a cabinet, in essence, nothing more – no desk, no closet, no work area) being invaded, rearranged, and disregarded, while I was away teaching class. I had to go dig my bag of stickers (prizes for students) out of a heap of seeming trash, and my toothbrush and toothpaste was in another pile.
The vice principal isn't so much a 'stick' being wielded by anger so much as a 'stick' being wielded by incompetence, I would say. Combined with an utter disregard for human kindness. That stick, in turn, wielded the stick of my coworkers' disregard for my personal space, which struck me and led to anger. I felt anger.
The man is a caricature. If I was watching a Korean drama, and there was to be an annoying, incompetent-to-the-point-of-dangerous, petty bureaucrat, he could fill the role, without having to take acting lessons of any kind.
I need to just get over it. It's no big deal, right? Where's my patience? I really don't want to become one of those people who spend all his time in Korea complaining about Korea. That's just… a waste of my time. Right? I meet people like that, all the time, and they drive me nuts. But jeez… I've felt so much frustration, lately. With the language. With the bureaucratic incomptence of my school's administrative staff. With my commute. With just this and that.