If we do not make a special effort to practice patience when we find ourselves getting angry, we incur a secondary downfall.

Anger will never go away on its own.  If we don’t get rid of our anger, it will destroy us.  Our anger ruins everything that is good in our life.  We may love our children very much, but because we get angry at them and fail to apologize for it, they harbor resentment against us and eventually come to reject everything we have to say and rebel against everything we stand for.  Later, when they have kids, they don’t want us to be part of their life and we are denied the opportunity to see our grandkids.  They blame us for all that is wrong in their life and despite all we have done for them, they want nothing to do with us.  This is not uncommon at all, and it is incredibly painful.  If we want to avoid this being our own story, we must bring our anger under control. 

Every time we get angry we not only hurt those we love, we also create the causes to go to hell.  This is a karmic truth, no matter how much we wish it was otherwise.  Is it worth it?  Is it worth it to destroy our relationships with those we love only to wind up in hell later for it?  This is no game, this is a fact.  Sometimes when we are forced to confront this karmic truth, it makes us feel guilty and we start to beat ourselves up over it.  But guilt too is a form of anger – anger against ourselves.  Or we start to freak out about how we are getting angry and can’t stop ourselves, and we get all tight and neurotic.  This doesn’t help either.  So then we think it is better for us to ignore this karmic fact and not think about it.  But that is just burying our head in the sand, and when the end of this life comes there will be no sand left to hide in.  We must work through these things and channel the emotions the karmic truth of this creates in us to productive purposes.

The first thing we need to do is apologize as soon as we can.  The longer we wait to apologize, the more time the karma has to take root within our mind.  In particular, we should never go to sleep before we have apologized.  Venerable Tharchin explains that falling asleep functions to plant the negative karma deeper within our mind and so makes it harder to uproot.  But if we apologize before we go to bed, then we can hopefully clean up the negative karma before it takes root. 

Second, we need to stop anger in its early stages of development.  The earliest stage of anger is inappropriate attention – we focus on the bad and then we exaggerate it.  Instead, we need to choose to focus on the good and we need to become an expert at saying “it doesn’t matter” for the bad. 

Third, we need to surrender our lives to Dorje Shugden.  We get angry because we wish things were different than they are.  When we rely on Dorje Shugden, he arranges all the outer and inner conditions so that they are perfect for our practice.  Perfect here doesn’t mean perfect for our worldly concerns – in other words it doesn’t mean they will be what our delusions want – rather, perfect here means perfect for our spiritual training.  If what we want is to grow spiritually, then the fact that things are so bad from a worldly perspective will be experienced as being a good thing from a spiritual perspective.  We will be happy things are so bad because we see how beneficial that is for our spiritual growth.  If things are “perfect” there is no basis for us wishing things were different than they are, and so therefore there will be no basis for ever getting angry.  I literally overcome about 95% of my own anger in this way.

Fourth, we can channel these feelings into a wish to purify.  If we made a big mess in our house, obviously we need to clean it up.  We live there, after all.  In the same way, if we made a big karmic mess in our mind, then we need to clean it up.  We can never escape residing within our own mind.  We can think, “if I don’t purify, disaster awaits me.  If I want to avoid that, I need to purify now.”  One of the most common obstacles to generating a strong wish to purify is we struggle to think of what negative actions we have committed that are so bad.  But every time we see somebody else commit some negative action, we can view that person as a mirror reflecting back to us what we have done to others in the past.  We are, from a karmic perspective, actually looking at our own past deeds.  This is true regardless of whether the other person is committing the negative action against us.  If we dream of somebody harming somebody else, where did these appearances come from?  Our own karma.  It is the same with the waking world.

Not apologizing when we have the opportunity. 

If we have disturbed another person by acting unskillfully, and later the opportunity to apologize arises but, out of pride or laziness, we fail to do so we incur a secondary downfall.

Just as others harm us all the time, we too harm others all the time with our unskillful actions.  Normally we internally excuse our wrong behavior on the grounds of the other person provoking us in some way, “it’s their fault!”  But nobody has the power to provoke us, we allow ourselves to be provoked.  Ultimately, we need to be responsible for all our behavior, regardless of what others do.  This is not easy, but its not being easy doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. 

When we do harm others, such as saying something hurtful, then later, once we have calmed down, we need to make a point of apologizing.  I know a mother who has a bad habit of getting angry at her kid.  She is a very powerful and smart woman, and when she gets angry she can be downright nasty, controlling and hurtful.  But she also has an unshakable habit of always apologizing to her kid afterwards when she eventually calms down.  She tells her kid, “I’m sorry I got angry at you and treated you in that way.  Mommy’s anger just took over, and I am sorry.  When I get like that, I want you to know it is not your fault that I get so angry, it is my responsibility.  Just ignore me and know that it is my anger talking not me.”  Then she has a good laugh with her kid about how crazy she sometimes acts.  Because she has consistently done this, her son has learned how to take her mother’s anger in stride where it doesn’t affect him.  He knows she will later come apologize.  This doesn’t mean that he might not need to change his behavior if he has been doing something wrong, but it does prevent the anger from destroying the relationship and making things worse.  This mother’s habit of apologizing and having a good laugh not only disarms the harmful effects of her anger, it also teaches her kid how to relate to his own feelings of anger and what he should do when he himself gets upset. 

Until we are an advanced bodhisattva, getting angry is pretty much unavoidable.  But apologizing afterwards is completely within our control.

One last thing, sometimes we hold off on giving our apology because actually it was the other person who started it and clearly they are the one who committed the bigger harm, so we think surely they must apologize first.  This is a completely mistaken way of thinking.  First, if they don’t apologize then we start getting upset at them about not apologizing when we think they should.  Second, just because they did something wrong doesn’t in any way excuse or justify our own mistakes.  We need to own up to our mistakes and take responsibility for them.  Third, when we apologize it often creates the space for the other person to apologize as well.  And even if they don’t apologize in return (which of course will have the potential to really make us angry again), we can at least know we did the right thing by apologizing.  If the other person doesn’t apologize as well, that is their mistake.  But at least from our own side we have done the right thing.

Not accepting others’ apologies. 

If someone who has previously harmed us later apologies and, without a good reason but not out of resentment (which is a root downfall) we refuse to accept, we incur a secondary downfall.

Very often if we were in a fight with somebody and they later apologize but we haven’t yet overcome our own anger towards them, we will take advantage of their apology as a sign of weakness and then we attack them one last time.  When we do this, they then get angry back and the cycle can start over, or at a minimum they decide they better not apologize again in the future because when they do so they get their hand bit off.  This is obviously completely wrong.

When somebody apologizes, that is them admitting they were wrong and they are seeking to make things right again.  Why would we not want to cooperate with that?  As bodhisattvas, we want others to attain enlightenment.  If they generate regret for their negativity and try to do something nice to set things straight, we should be delighted and welcome fully their effort, even if they make a hash out of it.  From our own side, we should repay their apology with one of our own, and we should try have a good laugh with them about how sometimes we act silly.  Our accepting their apology is also a very powerful way of letting go of our own pent up resentment towards the other person.  Resentment is like a cancer within our mind.

The difference between a worldly person and a spiritual person is which life they are working for.  Worldly people work to enjoy good effects in this life.  Spiritual people use this life to create good causes for their future lives.  The road of our future lives is endless and it is guaranteed.  The road of this life is indefinite, and it could end at any time.  It doesn’t matter at all what happens in this life, any more than it matters what happened in last night’s dream. We are so obsessed with what we are “feeling.”  Who cares what we are feeling?  What difference does it really make?  It is only because we think we are important that we think what we feel is important.  But the self we think we are doesn’t even exist, so how could its happiness possibly be important?  And even if it was important, what is more important this one fleeting life or our countless future lives?  There comes a time in our normal life where we work hard now to have things easier in the future.  We voluntarily endure the sufferings of university so that we can get a good job and have a better life thereafter.  We happily work hard and save up our money to go on a special trip.  This involves sacrifice in the short run, which we gladly accept because we know the rewards are greater on the other side.  Such is the optic of the spiritual practitioner.

We cannot blame others for being so inconsiderate and harmful to us.  It is not their fault.  They don’t even exist, they are just karmic echoes of our own past harmful and selfish behavior.  We have nobody to blame but our past delusions which drove us to negativity.  If we did not have the karma on our mind to be harmed, nobody would even appear to harm us.  Our negative karma propels them to harm us.  When they do so, they create negative karma for themselves and they will suffer in the future.  From our side, if we accept the suffering, we purify our negative karma and so are better off; but from their side they accumulate negative karma and will have to experience similar suffering (or worse) in the future.  So who is better off and who is worse off?  It is we who should be saying sorry to them. 

This does not mean we should allow others to abuse us and take advantage of us.  There is a middle way between being a doormat and being a raging lunatic.  We do not help people by allowing them to abuse us, so we must break the cycle.  But we also don’t help them by retaliating, which just causes the cycle of mutual harm to continue.  Ghandi showed the middle way.  We accept the harm, but we refuse to cooperate with its wrong purpose.  We accept the harm as purification, but we don’t reward it by giving people what they want.  Blackmail only works when we give in.  If we refuse to give in, even if people throw everything they have at us, then we break the cycle.  We accept the harm in the short run to be free from it in the long run.  If people blackmail us and we don’t give in, they may try to blackmail us again in the future, but both they and we will know it won’t succeed.  We have stared them down once before, and we can do so again.  Eventually they give up trying.  This helps them and it helps us.

Of course, if we can avoid others harming us we should do so.  There are enough instances of people harming us where we cannot avoid it that we don’t need to needlessly expose ourselves to harm that is avoidable.  Sometimes not cooperating with others delusions means ending that particular relationship.  We do not stick around with others abusing us if we can leave.  But for the harm we cannot avoid, or for the harm that is too insignificant to warrant ending the relationship over, we accept it and refuse to cooperate with it.  We shouldn’t go to extremes with this.  In general, we should go along with others wishes as long as they are not harmful.  We don’t expect others to be perfect and always completely free from harm.  We need to accept others’ mistakes and give people the space to change.  But on important things, we need to fearlessly say no and not give in.

Downfalls that obstruct the perfection of patience

Retaliating to harm or abuse. 

If out of impatience we retaliate to harm or abuse we incur a secondary downfall.

We are harmed or abused by others all the time.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  We have spent countless aeons in the lower realms where we ourselves harmed and abused others as a way of life.  Even in this life, despite having received Dharma teachings, we continue to lash out at people when they have done basically nothing wrong.  So it is only natural that now we experience the karmic echoes of our past actions.

People criticize us all the time.  People put us down, directly or indirectly, all the time.  People snap at us all the time.  People blame us for whatever ails them all the time.  People get mad at us for no reason all the time.  When we make the slightest mistake, people respond disproportionately against us all the time.  Our bosses or coworkers blame us for things we are not responsible for, and they take credit for our accomplishments.  People cut us off on the road or cut in front of us in line.  People ask us to do their work for them, and then they get mad at us when we don’t do it as they wanted.  We can do everything we can to make others happy, but they still get upset at us, judge us and are never grateful for what we do.  We give to others, and they take.  When we ask for something in return they say no or make a problem.  People take advantage of our kindness and then forget us on our birthdays.  We make a point of investing in them, but they don’t really care what is happening in our life.  When something important happens in our life, they fail to notice or care.  Our political leaders play games and make the world’s problems even worse.  No matter how much work we do for others, they never give us a break.  They take, take take without end and give almost nothing in return.  When we become tired or frustrated they get mad at us for not being in a good mood.  Our business leaders drive the global economy into ruin for the sake of their own personal enrichment.  Companies pollute the earth, shortening lives, destroying the environment for future generations, all to make a little extra money for themselves.  People suffer from homelessness, hunger, and crime, but nobody lifts a finger and indeed they blame the victims for being lazy.  In short, we live in a world with countless causes for frustration.  It is a small wonder that we are not in a perpetual war of all against all.

If we allow these myriad causes of frustration to get to us, it is very easy to begin lashing out at those around us.  Sometimes we rationalize it thinking we need to get angry to deter people from taking advantage of or harming us, but usually it is just our frustration that boils over.  Because we are Dharma practitioners, we know we are not supposed to get angry, so outwardly we pretend to be calm, but internally we are just repressing our frustration until it eventually blows up in some dramatic fashion.  We develop deep resentment for those who put us down again and again and again, and sometimes we can no longer keep it in and we lash out.  This is the nature of samsaric life.  When we do lash out, it invariably makes things worse.  We then either “double down” on our anger and get mad again, or we start repressing again waiting for the next volcanic eruption to occur. 

How do we stop this hellish cycle?  We need to stop it at its root.  Once anger has started, it is very difficult to rein back in.  But we cannot repress our anger, because doing so just guarantees one day it will explode.  The root of anger is wishing things were different than they are.  We wish those around us weren’t so difficult.  We wish life wasn’t so difficult.  We wish we could just have a moment to take a rest.  But the tighter we grasp onto things needing to go well, the more painful it is when they do not.  Samsara is wave after wave of aggravating circumstances.  This is its very nature.  This will never change.

The root of the problem is we want the wrong things.  We want what our eight worldly concerns want (pleasant experiences, happiness, a good reputation, praise, etc.).  In short, we want to experience good effects.  This is the root of our problem.  Instead, we need to want to create good causes.  Bad effects now are the karmic echoes of our past bad causes.  Good causes now are the karmic seeds of future good effects.  We cannot take with us into our future lives the good effects we experience now, but we can take with us the good karmic causes we create for ourselves.  They are our real inner wealth.  The inner wealth of good causes is to bodhisattvas what money is to business people or power is to politicians. 

Not avoiding a bad reputation. 

If we unnecessarily engage in actions that cause us to receive criticism or a bad reputation we incur a secondary downfall.  However, if our actions benefit others, cause the Dharma to flourish, or are necessary to preserve our moral discipline, it does not matter if a few people criticize us.

I would say in modern times our biggest attachment that creates the most problems for us is attachment to what others think about us.  First our parents, then our friends, then society, then our kids, etc.  We need to break completely free from this and make our own decisions about what is the right thing to do, and if other people have a problem with it, then frankly it is their problem, not ours.  We shouldn’t let their misunderstanding of what is best for us prevent us from doing what is in fact best for us (and them) in the long-run.  Buddha showed this example when he left his father’s palace.  This was not his father’s first choice, but because Buddha’s motivation was pure and his father eventually came to see this, he agreed to let his son go even though he didn’t necessarily want to. 

But we also need to be careful to not go to the other extreme with this.  In general, we should go along with others’ wishes for us unless doing so is somehow harmful.  We should try be of service to whoever we meet and do whatever is the most beneficial for others.  We should not unnecessarily antagonize others with our actions nor should we abandon our conventional responsibilities.  Unless the situation is extreme and we have received very clear indications, we should not abandon our partner or our children thinking we need to do so to pursue our spiritual goals.  We also need to assume our full parental and professional responsibilities.  If we don’t do so in the name of supposedly following our spiritual path, we run a real risk of bringing the Dharma into disrepute and causing others to reject it.  Who does that help?  There is no contradiction whatsoever between living up to our normal modern responsibilities in the world and being a Kadampa.  If there were, it would be impossible to attain the union of the Kadam Dharma and modern life.  As explained by Geshe Chekewa, “remain natural while changing your aspiration.”  We live our external lives completely as normal, but inside we change everything.

Not helping others to avoid negativity. 

If we have the ability and the opportunity to help others avoid committing negative actions but, without a good reason, fail to do so we incur a secondary downfall.

As a general rule, we shouldn’t get into other people’s business or tell others what they need to do.  Our job is to make our own actions correct.  The more we try tell others what they need to do, the more they will rebel against us and the Dharma which they know is behind our proselytizing.  There is nothing wrong with sharing our own experience if people are open to hearing it, but we should leave it up to them to apply our experience to their own circumstance.  This is why quite often when you ask a Kadampa teacher some question about what you should do they won’t answer you directly but they will instead tell some story from their own experience (or that of their friends).  They leave it up to you to apply the story to your own life and situation as you see fit.

With that being said, situations do arise where we have some degree of influence over others and they are about to engage in some negative action and if we say something we could stop them (or at least get them to think twice).  When such situations arise, we should not just sit on the sidelines, we need to act.  Basically, if we can help somebody we need to do so.  Our ability to do so depends entirely on whether the other person trusts us that we have their own best interests at heart.  If they feel like we are just trying to manipulate them for our own purposes, or we are wanting them to stop due to our own attachment to them doing the right thing (attachment to others happiness is quite different than love and compassion), then they will just reject what we have to say.  But if they know we have no hidden agenda and only want what is best for them, and ultimately we don’t need them to make the choice we want them to make, then they will be open to listening to what we have to say.  We never know when somebody we know and love might start doing stupid, self-destructive things, so we need to cultivate trusting relationships with everyone in our life so that if the day does come where we need to intervene, they will listen to us. 

Our intervening doesn’t guarantee that the other person will stop, and we need to be prepared for them to engage in the negative action anyways.  But at the very least we will be able to say we did all that we could, but ultimately the other person’s actions are beyond our control.  When this happens, we can renew our bodhichitta saying may I one day become a Buddha so that I can always be there for this person and gradually lead them along correct paths.

Some people assert that we can attain enlightenment without abandoning samsara or delusions while working for the welfare of sentient beings.  If we hold this view and encourage others to think the same, we incur a secondary downfall.

It is quite a popular misconception in society to think that Bodhisattvas do not strive to escape from samsara, but they instead seek to remain within it so that they can help living beings get out.  The belief is quite similar to the idea of Shepherd-like Bodhichitta, which is the idea of a shepherd who tends to their flock and only once all their flock is safe do they themselves get to safety.  It is like the Captain of the Battalion who is the first man on and the last man off the field of battle.  Such an attitude is sublime, and there are some very profound Highest Yoga Tantra ways of practicing this type of view, but ultimately it is not the most compassionate mind possible and is in fact karmically impossible to accomplish.

It is not the most compassionate mind possible because what happens if the shepherd is killed before all his flock is safe?  For example, it is only once we are in the life boat ourselves that we are in a position to help others get up into the life boat.  If we drown, then all those who are not yet in the boat will drown with us.  The popular misconception is based on a false belief that once we attain liberation or enlightenment we are somehow incapable of coming back to save people.  This is completely wrong.  Once we become a Buddha, we can send countless emanations out into the world of beings to help people along.  From the safety of the pure land, we can help everyone for the rest of time.  But if we remain in samsara ourselves, we are always in danger of being swept away and all the beings who we otherwise would have helped if we had escaped will continue to suffer.  It is not karmically possible to be the last one out because our compassionate mind of cherishing others will swiftly bring us to enlightenment whether we want to attain it or not! 

Understanding that king-like bodhichitta (the wish to attain enlightenment first so that we can rescue all others) is the highest mind, there is a danger, however, that our self-cherishing can hijack this Dharma fact and use an internally insincere application of king-like bodhichitta as the rationalization for our self-cherishing of putting ourself first.  We should never underestimate the ability of our delusions to hijack our Dharma understandings for their own deluded purposes. 

So how do we protect ourselves against this danger?  The answer is simple.  We go about our life from the perspective of shepherd like bodhichitta, always putting others first, serving ourselves last, etc.  But when it comes to our formal practice we use king-like bodhichitta.  For example, when we engage in our formal practice or go on retreat, we are, from an external point of view, not helping other people.  We could be using that same time to help other people, and it can seem selfish to go off to meditate or to go on retreat.  This is particularly a problem for parents, especially when the partner in the relationship is not also a practitioner.  But if we spend all our time out “helping people” and we don’t create any time for our formal practice, then our ability to actually transform our mind will remain quite limited.  The reality is sometimes we can transform our mind at a deeper level when we are in meditation than when we are out engaging in activities.  The more deeply we meditate, the more deeply we reprogram our mind, which then filters up into all our other activities.  So even if it creates some tension with our family or partner, we should make a point of taking the time to engage in our daily practice and to engage in retreat, and we should ask our partner to respect that this is the only thing we ask for in our relationship and we would like their support for this.  They may be unhappy about this at first, but if they see that over time after you do your formal practice or after you go on retreat you come back more loving, more patient, more kind, and more serving, then eventually your daily practice and your going on retreat will become a priority for them.  Then, there are no problems and everything gets easier.

Acquiring wealth or fame through wrong livelihood. 

Geshe-la explains if with a selfish motivation we behave as follows we incur a secondary downfall:  (1) we resort to dishonest means to acquire wealth, praise, respect, etc., (2) we pretend to be outwardly good, but subtlety hint that we need others possessions for ourself, or (3) we give small presents in the hope of receiving larger presents in return.

It was explained earlier how there is nothing wrong with wealth, power, or fame.  In and of themselves, these things are neutral.  It is our motivation for using them that determines their value.  Backed by a good motivation, these things can in fact be quite positive.  It is possible that we could have the opportunity to acquire these things and our motivation for wanting to do so is pure and virtuous, but we would need to engage in some negative actions in order to acquire these things and we could find ourselves in a moral dilemma.  Basically, do our virtuous ends justify our non-virtuous means? This vow answers that moral dilemma.  The answer is no, they don’t.  Even if our motivation for acquiring these things is pure, if we have to use non-virtuous means we shouldn’t do it.  It is better to lack these resources but maintain our moral discipline than it is to have these resources but sacrifice our moral discipline in the process. 

The concrete examples of the different ways we can do this are too numerous to enumerate.  It suffices to look at Geshe-la’s explanation above of the three types of instance where we incur a downfall and test it against our own contemplated action to know if we are making this mistake.  One very simple test we can apply is we can ask ourselves, “If Geshe-la asked me how I got these resources, power, or reputation, could I explain it to him without feeling like I had done something wrong?”  If no, then we have our answer.

Indulging in frivolity. 

If, without a good reason but motivated only by excitement, attachment, or lack of conscientiousness, we indulge in frivolous activities we incur a secondary downfall.

Again, no activity is from its own side inherently frivolous.  An activity is frivolous only if we engage in it with a frivolous mind.  Any activity can be made meaningful if we engage in it with a meaningful mind.  But let’s be honest here:  we quite often have frivolous minds!  Just because in theory the activity can be engaged in with a meaningful mind doesn’t mean we ourselves are engaging in the activity with a meaningful mind. 

Generally speaking, we can divide our activities into two categories:  those things we have to do and those things that are optional.  Each of these categories can in turn be divided into two of those things we want to do and those things we don’t want to do.  This covers all possibilities.  Let’s explore each one in turn. 

For those things we have to do and we want to do them, there is no problem.  We just do them.  For those things we have to do but we don’t want to do, we can either grumble about the fact that we have to do it or we can change or our attitude.  One way or the other, we still need to do the action; but if we grumble we torture ourselves and if we change our attitude we don’t.  To change our attitude, it suffices to ask ourselves the question, “how does engaging in this action give me a chance to develop some skill or learn some truth of the Dharma?”  Once we have an answer to that question, we have a valid reason for engaging in the action, transforming our not wanting to do the action into wanting to do the action for good reasons.

For those things that are optional and we don’t want to do them, again, there is no problem.  Since we don’t want to do the actions and we don’t have to, we simply don’t do them.  For those things that are optional and we want to do them, there are two possibilities:  either we want to do them for virtuous reasons or we want to do them for deluded reasons.  If it is something we want to do and we have a virtuous reason for doing it, then again there is no problem – we just do the action. 

If however we want to engage in the action for deluded reasons, then there are two possibilities:  our engaging in the action is harmful to others or it is harmful to ourself.  If the action is harmful to others, then we should consider the karmic implications of the action and realize it is simply not worth it to accumulate negative karma which could potentially ripen in the form of a lower rebirth or other suffering, and we train in standard moral discipline of restraint. 

If, however, the action is only harmful to ourself then again there are two possibilities:  it harms us by somehow destroying our capacity to help others or it harms us by wasting our time.  There are all sorts of examples of actions that destroy our capacity to help others.  It is interesting all the different ways we are attracted to things that ultimately are harmful to us.  For these, we should consider how these actions are exactly opposite of our bodhichitta motivation.  Bodhichitta is the wish to increase our capacity to help others, whereas this action is decreasing our capacity to help others, so it runs exactly opposite of our bodhichitta wish.

If the action is simply a waste of time, then again there are two possibilities:  either we can relate to the action in a different way to make it not a waste of time or we can’t.  If we can relate to the action in a different way to make it not a waste of time, then we should apply the effort necessary to do so.  It is not enough to just know theoretically it is possible to relate to the action differently, we need to actually do so.  There are several things we can do to relate to the action differently.  First, we can ask ourselves what delusion this activity gives us a chance to overcome or what truth of Dharma does this activity teach us.  Second, we can offer the enjoyment of the activity to our guru at our heart.  Third, we can relate to the action as a metaphor for something that is meaningful, such as just as I walk down this road, may I always walk down the road to the city of enlightenment.  Fourth, we can recite mantras or special verses while we engage in the action.  And finally, we can just view our engaging in the action as the power of rest.  We are resting now so that we can return to our normal activities fresh and energized.  Without proper rest, we can become burned out and then do even less in the long-run. 

Finally, there is the case of the action is a waste of time and there is no way we can transform it.  Almost anything can be transformed, so this case should happen only very rarely, but if it does, there is still something we can do.  Quite simply, we should probably just abandon the action.  If we can’t at present, we should generate the intention to one day do so understanding we are wasting our precious human life.