Do a practice together of meditation and contemplation on practice of patience.
Settling in,
Seated or reclined,
Resting the body,
Closing the eyes if you're comfortable doing so.
Maybe beginning with a few deep breaths on the exhalations,
Releasing,
Relaxing,
Feeling yourself settle on the inhalations,
Filling the body,
The energy of the breath,
Lightness,
Clarity.
And settling around the energy of the breath,
The natural breath,
So not controlling it,
Letting the body breathe in any way that it needs to,
Bringing your mind to wherever the breath is most obvious for you,
The belly or the chest,
The nose.
That helps a simple noting,
Breathing in,
I know I'm breathing in,
And breathing out,
I know I'm breathing out,
Breathing in,
And breathing out.
Training the mind by coming back again and again to follow the breath,
Letting go of the content of thought so that it becomes a kind of energy,
The momentum of the mental energy can still be felt,
But we're choosing again and again to not be involved in content.
Resting instead in the breath or in some part of the body,
The soles of the feet,
The belly.
If you can follow the full length of an inhalation,
The full length of an exhalation,
So there's a sense of slowing down,
Of the breath becoming more subtle,
More interesting,
More nuanced.
We experience a beginning,
A middle,
An end of the inhalation,
A pause or turnaround,
And the beginning of the exhalation,
Middle,
And end.
We can begin to contemplate patience right here in the breath,
Right here in the meditation practice.
The patience that is willing to allow the breath to move,
To be,
And is willing to stay with the sensation of the breath,
Not becoming distracted.
Having a kind of center or middle way between leaning forward and leaning back of our experience of the breath.
We're not anticipating,
But instead receiving the breath as it arises,
As it comes and goes.
Neither are we lagging behind or leaning back too much.
We're alert,
Bright,
Steady.
Patience has this quality of constancy,
Attending continuously and quite comfortably.
And if it's not comfortable or where it's not comfortable,
We encourage ourselves to relax,
Open,
Giving the breath lots of space and fine tuning our attention,
Kind of effortless effort.
A breath known,
Body and mind relaxed kind of attitude towards our practice and towards our knowing of the breath that is restful and engaging,
Something we could do all day.
When we take this attitude,
Suggest this attitude to ourselves,
It might highlight where we are,
Working too hard,
Holding too tightly,
Holding on to some idea of gain in our practice.
Wherever there is agitation,
Bring an acceptance that is smoothing,
Quieting.
And having rested in the breath in this way,
We can take the last few minutes of our practice together to consider patience off the cushion.
So when we're not meditating,
How do we practice patience?
How is patience experienced?
It can be helpful to consider patience as a spaciousness rather than something that happens across time,
Rather than a sense of waiting for conditions to change and then I'll be happy.
We allow whatever conditions are arising to arrive.
We make enough room for the experience that there is the least amount of disturbance in the heart and the mind.
We can observe ourselves in our daily life,
The kinds of situations that set us off,
Make us impatient or angry,
Frustrated,
Resentful.
We resolve to be spacious in those situations,
Avoiding taking actions that will regret,
Allowing ourselves and others to have faults or apparent faults,
Releasing ourselves from the sense that we have to manage and control it all.
