The Power of Patience - The Zen Art of Doing Nothing.
In our daily lives we are always reacting, often becoming impatient, feeling irritated by things that people do, how they are and behave, what they think and what disagreeable things external circumstances bring into our life.
Think traffic jams, mosquitoes buzzing at night, not loving lock down, maybe? :)
Being so familiar with that state of mind, we think it is normal and we often have to work at changing our perspective.
Luckily we have what we need to turn things around. We can live with disagreeable aspects of life just as well as agreeable aspects of life, if we have patience
Patience and acceptance can help us develop and keep our inner peace.
Maybe that doesn’t seem very obvious to you, or maybe it doesn’t even make any sense, because many people think of patience as a passive response, a weakness. It feels like not standing up for our rights or giving up.
Patience is not a weakness. You need to be strong to protect your inner peace, your composure.
Being patient or accepting something is not the same thing as being a doormat. I always feel I have to say that immediately, because acceptance and patience has such a bad rap and often the immediate response is: “How can I be accepting of what this person is doing to me or what is happening around me without becoming the world’s biggest doormat!? And anyway (you might be thinking) I’m not naturally blessed with patience. I am a passionate, intense person, I work in a fast-paced environment, so I couldn't afford to be too accepting, this idea wouldn’t work for me."
In the philosophy of mindfulness, patience is not something you have or you haven't. It's not genetic, innate, congenital. Patience is considered to be a valuable skill which gives us strength and composure to carry us through difficult times.
Think about it: if you feel quite patient and peaceful, if you have that inner peace / balance / equilibrium / composure – call it what you want – any external problems you need to deal with will not really affect you much. I'm not talking about apathy or a 'couldn't be bothered' attitude. I'm talking about your happiness, which is not constantly subject to external circumstances if you have inner peace and strength.
And if you have inner peace, how can there be stress?
Similarly, without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your material life is, circumstances may still cause you to feel unhappy, worried or angry.
Patience gives us the skill to create a pause, an inner space. So that even in the heat of a difficult situation, we can show restraint, strength of mind, giving us the skill to respond to a situation with compassion rather than reacting with anger or irritation because what's happening is not what we want.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (A Kadampa Buddhist monk and teacher) 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.
Holding onto 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.
By accepting the agreeable and the 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.”
On a practical level, we know when impatience comes up because we can FEEL it. You know the feeling. It's a control thing.
Personally, when I FEEL impatience coming up, if I take a deep breath, I will always notice that I am resisting how things ARE. I am fretting about how I want things to be, or how I want someone to behave, rather than sitting with how things are.
The truth of any situation is that our experiences and things around us are usually beyond our control because the nature of things is that everything is constantly changing. So if you think about it, we don’t NEED it to be different to what it is - because it probably won't stay like this for too long.
Try practicing patience and acceptance today and see how it changes things for you. If you FEEL yourself becoming impatient, take a deep breath, and tap into your heart and mind for a moment. Really tap in. And you will find somewhere there is this feeling of you wanting the situation or person to be or behave like something it isn't - and is unlikely to be.
If we set an intention not to become impatient today, and repeat that every morning, you will soon see how it changes you and everyone around you. I promise you. It works. And eventually you will feel much better yourself, not being impatient, and being able to just ride it all out with calm, balanced, equanimous mind. We have time. Just stop and breathe.
“We are what we think, having become what we thought.
Like the wheel that follows the cart-pulling ox,
sorrow follows an evil thought.
We are what we think, having become what we thought.
Like the shadow that never leaves one,
happiness follows a pure thought.”
In the meditation later, we will sit with the idea of patiently paying attention. The focus begins with our Self, because we are often more impatient with our Self than with others ....
Metta
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