Patience and Judgment ...
I was corresponding with someone earlier this week about how it feels to have people in our space who make statements with racist or sexist undertones. As she writes: "The irony is, suddenly I find myself judging people because they are judging others. I can feel the irritation in my body just thinking about it!" We wrote a little bit back and forth about how to use patience to overcome our reaction of judgment. Conversely, our feeling of judgment is also often the cause of us losing our patience.
As Gehse Kelsang Giatso writes:
“There is great power in patience because it cuts through arrogance and ingratitude. It is the path that lets us move from resistance to acceptance and spontaneous presence. Holding on to our judgments about others and ourselves is a major cause of impatience. Repeating softly to ourselves, “May I be happy just as I am” and “May I be peaceful with whatever is happening” helps us accept our vulnerabilities, imperfections, and losses: everything from chronic physical and emotional pain, to the death of loved ones, the end of a job or relationship—even nightmare traffic jams.
By accepting the agreeable and disagreeable aspects of life, we are no longer limited by our longing for life to be different than it is. We have all the time in the world, in the spaciousness of every moment.”
(Quotes from Guide to a Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Shantideva, © 2002 by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and New Kadampa Tradition)
“Patience is a virtue” or “grin and bear it”. I'm sure we've all heard that. When I hear that, it reminds me vaguely of my mother saying: "Eat your vegetables!” It carries the same sort of idea of 'gritting my teeth' while pushing a way through something that doesn't really spark much joy. But that is really not what is meant by practicing patience from the Buddhist perspective. Practicing patience is not seen as a struggle (although it can be tricky), or a self-sacrifice. It's less of an action or something to be done. It's more like a change in perspective. Patience comes about quite naturally when we can accept how things are.
"Any time we want life to be different than it is, we are caught in impatience. We lose our sense of humour. All impatience comes from resisting how things ARE." The practice of patience has a lot to do with letting go of the wrong view.
Patience from the Buddhist or meditation aspect has a few different elements to it:
1.) Gentle Forbearance.
That has a really stoic Victorian ring about it. It reminds me of the word "long-suffering”. But it means 'to pause'.
Even if we FEEL impatient, sometimes it means we have to take a few deep breaths and say nothing rather than say something hurtful or lashing out.
That requires some tolerance. Some restraint. If you practice holding your tongue, one of the first things you will notice is that the focus changes from what’s happening outside to what’s happening inside.
To hold our tongue can feel very contrived, because keeping quiet when we want to say something really doesn’t feel like “accepting things as they are.” It feels more like bottling up. But keeping quiet is an important part of practicing patience because it helps restrain us long enough to find the most skillfull action for that moment. Which is also an important part of our practice: being skill-full. Being full of skill. Its not always so easy to do that. (That’s why it’s called a skill.)
2.) Acceptance or Endurance.
Acceptance often sounds like the idea that we have to agree - which isn’t the case with acceptance. It just means recognising or acknowledging that this is how it is, how that person is, how this situation is. We may not like it, we may not agree with it. We don't have to agree, but we can accept the nature of it.
Accepting doesn’t mean doing nothing because patience isn’t passive.
It means we should FIRST try to sit with it. It’s a bit like watching the breath: We don’t jump on it and try to control it, we just observe it.
Geshele Kelsang Gyatso writes: “This acceptance of “things as they are” requires time to evolve. “We must therefore develop a long-enduring mind” (That’s where the word endurance comes in).
3.) The truth.
Lastly, we need to see the truth of the situation. The truth of any situation, including the feeling of impatience, is that our experience is continually changing, so we don’t need it to be different than it is. Because it won't stay long.
_/\_
