Patience

 

All of us have experienced impatience.  We get impatient when we are stuck in traffic, we get impatient when someone doesn’t understand us and we have to repeat ourselves, we get impatient when summer doesn’t arrive when it’s supposed to…  When we are impatient, we often get angry, have a meltdown, snap at other people, or get tense and anxious.  Impatience is actually a form of suffering.  Impatience clouds our vision so we don’t see good solutions, and we often make impulsive decisions that turn out badly.  Most people that I have known have said that they wished they could be more patient.  In our society, lack of patience seems to be almost epidemic.

 So, what can we do it about it?  Can we teach or train ourselves to be more patient?  The Buddha said that he only taught two things: the nature of suffering, and freedom from suffering.  When we understand the true nature of our suffering—when we see how it comes into existence—we are freed from it.  He also said that our suffering in generated by our minds, not events in the external world.  With these two statements, we have roadmap for dealing with our impatience.

                When I look carefully at my own experience, as well as the experience of others around me, I notice that at the core of it all is the dynamic that “I’m not getting what I want when I want it.”  I want to be understood on my first attempt at communicating, and that’s not happening.  Or, I want to be with family for the holidays and they won’t do it.  It’s that simple.  But there is also more to it than that. 

                Sometimes I don’t get what I want when I want it, and impatience does not arise.  When I’m ok with not getting what I want, then there is no impatience, no frustration, and no suffering.  We’ve all experienced this.  Impatience only manifests when three things are present:  I want something, I’m not getting what I want when I want it, AND I’m not ok with my not getting it—I don’t accept that that’s the way things are right now.  I’m not at peace with it.  Since not getting what we want a good bit of the time is inevitable, we need to inquire into why it is that we are unable to accept that fact.

                In Buddhism, there is something called attachment to outcome.  Attachment to outcome is different from having a preference for something.  Being attached to a specific outcome occurs when not getting what I want is totally unacceptable.  Not getting what I want is nonnegotiable—I simply have to have it.  It extreme cases, attachment to outcome is like a heroin addict who is craving his drug of choice.  The addict will do almost anything to obtain the drug, and is in great distress until he does get it. 

Frequently, extreme attachment to outcome is aggravated by another factor, and that is the perception that we are morally entitled to have some specific desire of ours satisfied:  steady employment, a purchased product perform perfectly, a promotion at work…   But the universe never signed a contract agreeing to any of this.  This is just us trying to impose a bunch of ideas in our minds about how things should or must be onto the way the cosmos operates—and it’s also the cause of great suffering for us.

                The suffering of impatience is present when there is mental resistance to what is happening in the present moment—there is a lack of acceptance of the truth of this moment.  We rail against whatever it is that is thwarting our desire for something we insist on having.    Patience, on the other hand, is being present with our experience and accepting it as how things are right now. True patience is a state of relaxed openness and curiosity about what is happening here and now, and being at peace with the truth of this moment even if we would prefer things were otherwise. 

                Sometimes we confuse patience with silently putting up with whatever treatment we receive from people.  We think patience is allowing someone to do whatever they want to us and we will just silently go along with it. But patience does not mean you have to listen to a long boring story or litany of complaints forever. This is not true patience.  Patience takes inner strength, and involves both opening to mindfully to experiencing what is happening, and also the strength to skillfully end a conversation or activity when it has turned hopelessly unproductive, or toxic, or you are just too fatigued right now. 

Patience is also different from waiting, because typically when we are waiting our mind is in the future, hoping/expecting something to happen in some future moment, and not living in the present moment.  When I’m “waiting for the bus,” I am wanting the future moment of bus-arrival to be here: maybe looking at my watch, wondering where the bus could be…  Instead of that, being patient here might be more like sitting on the bus bench and being in touch with the bird songs around me, viewing with curiosity and interest the people passing by, breathing in and breathing out… I am simply being present with what is arising in each moment during the interval before the bus arrives.  This is a state of true patience.

Patience is a way of engaging life moment to moment.  Ideas and definitions of patience are not patience. Being able to explain patience is not patience.  It is something that we DO, and the way that we become more patient is also by DOING. And we can cultivate patience through the use of specific practices. Here are three practices that I have found to be particularly useful to me in becoming more patient.

The first practice is mindfulness meditation, and it is the central practice here.  Just sitting in a relaxed and alert state, breathing in and breathing out, and being aware of what is right here right now: body sensations, sounds arising, thoughts passing through.   During mindfulness sitting meditation (and during intervals of micro-meditation throughout the day) we can practice leaning into, relaxing with, and allowing what we are experiencing to just be there and for us to be there right along with it. We are there with what is arising in a state of acceptance, getting curious about it: pains, itches, difficult emotions (sadness, grief, emotional hurt, anxiety, fear, anger, and frustration), desires, cravings, hunger, flu symptoms, muscle cramps and twitches, annoying sounds, heat, cold, tiredness, sleepiness…  

So, for example, next time you have an itching sensation in your forearm, instead of immediately scratching it to make it go away, just leave it alone and practice simply observing it and allowing it to be there.   In doing this during sitting meditation, or during odd moments throughout the day, we are training ourselves in the peaceful acceptance of what exists in this moment, and learning to receive life with more calmness and patience. 

This practice does not mean that we might not have a preference for something different, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t care.  It also does not mean we shouldn’t (or can’t) try to change things for the better if it is something important.  But it does mean that we totally accept the reality of what exists in this moment.  We say “Yes” to the reality of the present moment.  

                Here is a second practice.  In addition to the outcome or intended destination that we want, there is also always the process or journey of getting there.  What we call the journey is your life—it’s all any of us really has; it’s the only thing that is real.  “Destination” is just a bunch of thoughts in your mind about a presently nonexistent future.  We can make it a regular practice to catch ourselves living in the not-here-yet future and bring our attention back to the present moment.  When we do this, we find that our impatience, frustration, and fury at the obstacles along the way subside—our suffering is greatly relieved.  Eckhart Tolle once succinctly characterized stress as:  “Being here, when I desperately want to be there.”

A third kind of practice is Gratitude Meditation, both on the meditation cushion, and throughout the day.  This practice asks us to focus on what we actually do have now, rather than on what we don’t have in this moment.  Catch yourself putting conditions on your own happiness:  “I’ll be happy when I get a better computer, or more friends, or a car that doesn’t break down, or I complete this tax form.” When I notice my longing for what I don’t have, I can choose to silently express gratitude for what I actually do have: “I am grateful for good health,” “I am grateful for the love of friends,” “I am grateful for my parents’ gift of life…” These gratitude phrases can be combined with mindful breathing, silently saying the first half of the phrase on the in-breath, and the second half on the out-breath. 

When I do this, I always find I have a seemingly endless number of things to be grateful for.  This stands in stark contrast to constantly chasing after more, and creating tension and suffering for myself (and often others, too).  Gratitude is the true opposite of greed, and gratitude is a powerful remedy for always feeling like we have to have what we want and have it now.

The English word “meditation” is not a good translation for the Sanskrit word “bhavana,” which is the word the Buddha used.  The root meaning for the word meditate is “think,” so a premeditated crime is one that you thought about beforehand. Meditation is not thinking about something. Instead, bhavana literally means “to cause to be developed,” and refers to practices that are aimed at developing, training or strengthening certain mental and emotional qualities in ourselves.

Bhavana is cultivating something in ourselves in the same way that a gardener cultivates the plants in a garden that has been planted.  “Plants” such as patience, gratitude, and mindfulness will grow if they are watered and tended regularly.  Plants that are not watered, such as impatience, greed, and racing mind, will wither and become smaller and weaker. 

Patience is something we develop in ourselves, and we can begin to see changes in ourselves in just a few weeks’ time.  The key to changing ourselves is consistency in our practice, and being gentle with ourselves and not trying to force ourselves to be more patient—which is actually just another form of impatience. 

 

 

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            If you have questions, comments, or ideas for new Blog topics please contact Dale at ahimsaacres@gmail.com.