On The Practice Of Patience

While this talk is not specifically related to recovery, it does address something people in recovery can benefit from: patience, with ourselves and with others. The talk looks at patience through three different practices: forbearance, acceptance of hardship, and the acceptance of truth. Emphasis is given to the teachings of Shantideva in The Way of the Bodhisattva.

Transcript

My topic today,

Broadly,

Is happiness.

Happiness,

A subject about which early Buddhism has lots to say.

Once,

When speaking to a group of lay practitioners,

The Buddha outlined four virtues that he saw as conducive to the living of a happy life.

Faith,

Right action,

Generosity,

And insight.

And insight,

Having faith in our values,

Engaging right action through a practice of recepts,

Practicing charity toward others,

And developing the wisdom that leads to the cessation of suffering.

All good thoughts for living a happy and kind life.

In Mahayana traditions such as Zen,

However,

We know that it can't be just about us.

It's not that we shouldn't be happy.

You know,

In fact,

Happiness comes with a territory of practice in a lot of ways.

But in Zen,

We practice the path of a bodhisattva,

A being who,

In their own wisdom and awakening,

Helps others to attain their own wisdom and awakening.

This is our bodhisattva path,

The practice of a bodhisattva to be of spiritual aid to others.

The desire for which is born in our compassionate awareness of our interdependence with all beings.

The Zen teacher Uchiyama Roshi tells us that when we're not practicing as a bodhisattva,

We live according to our karma.

We respond only to our desires and attachments,

To our fears and aversions.

But when we practice as a bodhisattva,

On the other hand,

We live in the fulfillment of our vows,

Like the ones we chant each week.

All beings without number,

I vow to liberate.

Uchiyama tells us that when we live by vow,

Our motivation for living is different.

Outside of our vows,

We respond to narrow circumstances.

Through the narrow lens of our desires.

But for a bodhisattva,

All aspects of life,

All beings live within us and we respond with compassion.

So maybe the topic here is more than just happiness.

Maybe the topic here is well-being.

Our own well-being and that of others.

We have many practices in Buddhism that speak of well-being.

We don't have to go any farther than the Eightfold Path.

Wise thought,

Wise speech,

Wise action.

And we're taught to be thoughtful when considering what might be skillful action,

Or what might be unskillful.

Will our thoughts,

Our words,

Our actions,

Will they bring suffering or happiness?

Will they be beneficial or harmful?

But all that's a lot to think about.

And that's not really our way in Zen practice.

In Zen,

I find we tend to look at things in ways that become less points of understanding and more of a simple bedrock.

Something which becomes the ground of our life rather than something that we need to understand and remember to do.

Precepts are like this,

Depending on how we think about them.

Rather than seeing precepts as things that we choose to uphold or not,

We can see precepts as a reflection of the mind that we find in our practice of Zazen,

A beginner's mind.

Living in a way which is non-stealing,

Non-harm,

Non-lying.

Not choosing one way or another to lie or not to lie.

In absolute reality,

There is no question.

Only union and only the next compassionate response.

Just a simple bedrock.

Something else like these are the paramitas,

The culminating perfection of certain qualities,

Certain values,

Virtues,

Generosity,

Ethical conduct,

Patience,

Diligence,

Meditation,

Wisdom.

Each of these six paramitas is an attribute of an awakening heart and mind,

Culminating perfection of virtue.

Practicing the paramitas helps us reveal and strengthen our own nature as a Bodhisattva,

Living and acting in interdependence with all beings.

A wave not separate from the water.

The water not separate from the wave,

To use Thich Nhat Hanh's beautiful metaphor.

He refers to this as a state of interbeing.

As we deepen in Zen practice,

I found that the reality of interdependence becomes increasingly clear and the seeds of the paramitas,

Generosity and ethical conduct,

Patience,

Et cetera,

They begin to grow.

In his book,

Ethics for the New Millennium,

The Dalai Lama speaks of the importance of this and the challenge by referring to the development of virtue as a spiritual revolution and a redefinition of true happiness.

He speaks of a personal reorientation,

Away from our preoccupation with self and toward the realization of interbeing,

An end to conduct which promotes and preserves the well-being of all.

This is the heart of the paramitas.

So this morning,

I'd like to talk for just a couple minutes about the third of the six paramitas in our tradition,

Patience.

I've been at a family reunion this past week.

There are 50 people all in one place,

16 of whom are 12 and under.

It was loud and it was fast.

And I was sometimes trying to sit,

Sometimes trying to nap,

Sometimes trying to work on this talk.

I needed to think about patience.

And so this seemed like a good choice.

Norman Fisher,

Who a lot of us admire,

Wrote that patience is about keeping our hearts open and lovingly free.

Now,

Of course,

This openness can bring us emotional pain and we might build a wall to isolate ourselves from it or try to rearrange things to avoid it.

But when practicing the paramita of patience,

We keep our hearts open to what is hurting us because the pain we feel is interwoven with our love.

We can be hurt because we love.

The practice of patience is to work with our pain out of our willingness to love,

To bring our compassion to what it is that hurts us.

But that's hard.

So let's take a closer look at how we can live with patience.

This paramita gives us three practices that we can think about,

Three ways to offer a patient response to others.

Forbearance,

Endurance of hardship,

And acceptance of truth.

Now,

Forbearance is about dealing with people toward whom we feel aversion.

We object to their actions,

We object to what they say,

To how they vote,

Any number of things.

When we practice forbearance,

We practice not indulging our aversion,

Not indulging our anger,

Our attachment to what we think is right.

With forbearance,

We don't harbor ill will.

We don't seek to justify ourselves.

Now,

This isn't the same as acceptance of someone's wrongdoing.

Don't misunderstand me.

It's not just letting it go.

But our reactive ill will can cause a suffering on its own,

And more,

It can hinder our own effective,

Responsive action.

In a teaching known as the Way of the Bodhisattva,

The eighth century Indian monk,

Shantideva,

Spoke of forbearance,

Saying,

If those who,

Like wanton children,

Are by their nature prone to injuring others,

What point is there in being angry?

Like resisting fire for its heat.

And if their faults are only fleeting and contingent.

If living beings are by nature wholesome,

It is likewise senseless to resent them,

As well as be angry at the sky for having clouds.

Any moment can bring pain.

Some people seem to be willfully hurtful.

But if they are,

Shantideva asks,

What use are our difficult emotional responses?

Like resisting fire for its heat.

Other people's nature is wholesome,

But they can be hurtful in fleeting ways that are contingent on what's happening in the moment.

And what use is resentment then,

Shantideva asks?

It's like being angry at the sky for having clouds.

Forbearance isn't just about dealing with it.

Rather,

It's about keeping the way clear for our own skillful response.

Second practice is endurance of hardship,

And it's about dealing with difficult situations where we feel sadness,

Fear,

Disappointment.

Shantideva says,

Suffering also has its worth.

That's quite a statement.

Suffering also has its worth.

Through sorrow,

Pride is driven out,

And we find pity for those who wander in samsara.

Suffering.

Any moment can bring hardship.

And we suffer in response,

But can our suffering be worthwhile?

Can it teach us about our own pride?

Can it help us to develop compassion?

Sometimes the most skillful response to hardship is to see what it might teach us.

And then the third practice in this Paramita is acceptance of truth,

Which is about accepting things which we may not like or we may feel we don't agree with.

Acceptance is being willing to grow into truth,

Even if it may not meet our preconceptions or what we perceive as our needs.

Shantideva said,

Every injury,

Whatever,

A whole variety of evil deeds is brought about by circumstances.

None is independent and none autonomous.

Each moment is part of a continuum,

Not separate from what's come before nor from what will follow.

We don't always know what's brought us to this moment,

And we may not like how the next moment will be,

But sometimes we need to just accept what's true and what's real.

Forbearance,

Endurance of hardship,

Acceptance of truth.

What do these look like on the ground?

What do these look like in action?

Shantideva tells us,

Speak with honest words,

Coherently,

With candor,

In a clear,

Harmonious voice.

Abandon partiality,

Rejection,

And attraction and speak with moderation,

Which can be hard.

And why should we?

I mean,

We live in a world where patient understanding seems out of fashion,

Seems rare.

Conflicts happen,

Our emotions are real,

And I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't feel them or even honor them,

But a practice of patience is to work with ourselves so that we experience difficult emotions less acutely,

Even when things are hard.

Lama Zola Rinpoche,

Teacher in the Tibetan tradition,

Wrote in a book simply called Patience,

By training our mind,

We can definitely develop patience.

So often we train our minds perfecting impatience,

In the same way we can train our minds impatience.

He goes on,

By developing patience,

We help fulfill the real purpose of our life.

Because we can impact the happiness of all living beings,

We must develop patience.

With patience,

No living being receives any harm from us at all.

Instead,

They receive peace and happiness.

Zola Rinpoche throws down a real marker here.

By developing patience,

We help fulfill the real purpose of our life.

And what is that purpose?

As we practice our bodhisattva path,

As we walk as bodhisattvas,

What is our real purpose in life?

To be compassionate to others,

Live all beings.

Yeah,

Save all beings.

When practicing patience,

It's not just that our lives become easier,

Though they do.

But through our patience,

We help others to live without their own reactive anger,

And fear,

And resentment.

When practicing patience,

We live in a way that helps remove the hindrances that cause others to stumble on their own journey to awakening.

This is our bodhisattva path.

This is how we save all beings.

And so to the Dalai Lama's idea of spiritual revolution,

The need for personal reorientation.

When dealing with people who cause us pain,

Zola Rinpoche encourages us to consider the situation,

To consider that difficult people might really be helping us.

And I sat with this a lot yesterday.

To consider that difficult people who are causing us pain,

Might really be helping us.

He writes,

They're not only helping us,

But also all other sentient beings by allowing us the opportunity to practice.

To develop patience.

Those who cause us pain,

Protect themselves and all beings from our harm.

The Paramita tells us that as we develop patience,

We harm others less and less.

Offering them care instead of harm,

Peace instead of conflict.

In the Paramita of patience,

In the perfection of this virtue,

We are encouraged to see people for whom we must be patient as precious.

Precious.

For their gift to us of the opportunity to practice.

Zola Rinpoche writes,

In each moment of difficulty,

Each time we're called to a practice of patience,

We have found a precious treasure.

A sentient being who harbors angry thoughts about us.

To fail to see this would be an unbelievable loss.

He says.

In each moment of difficulty,

Each time we're called to a practice of patience,

We have found a precious treasure.

A sentient being who harbors angry thoughts about us.

To fail to see this would be an unbelievable loss.

So I said earlier that Zen practice offers us a supportive pharaoh.

Something which becomes our life.

And it's not something we need to learn.

It's not something we need to find or figure out.

It's something that our practice helps us to relive.

Shantideva tells us what that is.

He said,

And catching sight of others,

Think that it will be through them that you come to Buddhahood.

And so look on them with open,

Loving hearts.

And with any luck,

That will be the revolution of our times.

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An awakening in the wee hour of the morning. The path of practice is before me.