Live Session Summary, Sunday, October 8, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session exploring the theme of patience and its role on the path of waking up. Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems:
I began by sharing that the impetus for teaching on patience at this time was that I find in my own life it is both a challenging area of practice and one that provides great opportunities for insight when we bring awareness to the times we get hooked by impatience. Obvious examples are when we are stuck in traffic; when we are kept on hold waiting for customer service; when we are in a difficult conversation with a colleague, friend, or loved one and trying to get our point across; and when we are waiting in line at a store…
When we are in these and similar situations, it’s easy to get caught in suffering—wanting this person, situation, experience, to be different than they are and suffering because we are in conflict with reality, with life. When we are impatient, we can, if we pay attention, see the manifestation of the first two of the Buddha’s four noble truths: suffering (experiencing unsatisfactoriness with the way things are) and the cause of suffering (clinging to wanting things to be different than they are).
The Buddha recognized patience as an essential quality to cultivate if we wish to be free of suffering. It is one of what are called the ten Paramis, or perfections, in Theravada Buddhism. These are qualities of an awakened being that are essential to cultivate for anyone who wishes to be free of suffering. The ten paramis are 1) generosity; 2) virtue/ethics; 3) renunciation; 4) wisdom; 5) energy; 6) patience; 7) truthfulness; 8) determination; 9) loving-kindness; and 10) equanimity.
Cultivating patience—and working with impatience—are at the heart of our practice. Patience is accepting this moment, this situation, this experience, this person, as the way they are. There may be unpleasantness or difficulty involved, but when we are patient, we are not fighting with reality—we are accepting this moment as it is. We can try to change the situation without aversion or resistance, if it is possible and wise to do so. And if we can’t change it, we can surrender to the truth of the situation (Eckhart Tolle: “Surrender is not weakness. There is a great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender you will be internally free of the situation.”)
Impatience is non-acceptance. It is resisting what is. We are in a struggle with life, with this moment’s experience… and when we struggle with life, we don’t win out but rather experience unhappiness, dukkha. The good thing about impatience, if we bring awareness to it, is that we can see clearly where we are hooked—the second noble truth—and we can practice opening to the difficult feelings without reacting to them. This leads to letting go and freedom—the third noble truth, Nirvana, or freedom from suffering.
A key to working with impatience is to uncouple the beliefs and narratives in our mind—typically, that this situation/experience should be different—from our bodily sensations and emotions. When we say ‘yes’ to our bodily sensations—for example, tension or tightness, or energies of fight/flight—and the accompanying emotions—such as frustration, annoyance, anger, fear, sadness—and let them come and go without fueling thoughts and narratives about how things should be different, then we can ‘ride the waves’ of difficult feelings and let them come and go.
When we learn to stay with the difficult feelings without resisting or trying to escape them, they lose their power over us. Over time, we can make patience and the willingness to be with our experience our default—and limit the hold that energies of impatience have on us.
Quotes: Lao Tzu: “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”
Chinese proverb: “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.”
Gandhi: ‘To lose patience is to lose the battle.’
Pema Chodron: “Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa [being ‘hooked’], so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives, and the patterns we consider unhelpful don’t keep getting stronger…” (From ‘Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears’)
Poems I shared: ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite; ‘There was a time when I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi.
Wishing you a joyful and patient week ahead. I’ll see you for the next Live session next Sunday, October 15 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
