Patience: Transforming Suffering Into Virtue

In this talk and meditation, we explore the value of patience. Patience is a virtue that, when cultivated, allows us to use suffering, difficulty, and challenge to grow and to know ourselves on deeper and deeper levels. Ultimately, it allows us to move closer to experiencing reality as it is. Patience can be considered one of the foundational virtues, as it is the basis of cultivating all other virtues, through allowing us to be fully present and nonreactive to all that we experience.

Transcript

So it's interesting,

You know,

There was conversation before we started about spring and,

You know,

For those of you in Winter Park,

The long wait for the snow to melt and the flowers.

And that actually ties in perfectly because today I was planning to talk about the virtue of patience.

So I'll start with a quote from Hazrat Anayakan,

A great Sufi master who is credited with bringing Sufism to the West in the early 1900s.

And he lived a pretty extraordinary life.

He was at that time a more or less world-renowned musician,

At least as much as one can be without internet and the accessibility that we have today.

But he would travel all over to the courts of kings and queens and royalty and governments and he would play the veena music from India and it would entrance people because it was so beautiful and so meditative.

And there's a story that I like that goes,

That he would play and it was so enchanting that,

You know,

Kings would just take giant ruby rings off their fingers and gift them to him in gratitude for how beautiful the music was and how inspiring it was.

And so he had received all of these gifts from royalty and from different personages all over the world by the time he came to America.

But he was a Sufi and he was a very spiritual being and so he lived very,

Very simply and he was completely unattached to worldly things.

But he had kept all of these and so he had this trunk that he had and him and his brother came over and they looked like paupers,

You know,

They were probably barefoot and raggedy clothes and they had this chest.

And the story goes that they got to the US and they boarded a train to go,

I think,

To Boston or New York or something and they stowed the chest away.

And when they got off at their stop,

They got off the train and just completely forgot about the chest of jewels.

And it was just the complete unattachment.

But that's just a little background on this individual to give you an idea of his being.

But he has a quote that I really love on patience that keeps it in perspective.

He wrote that,

Patience is the most difficult thing in life and once this is mastered,

Man will become the master of all difficulties.

Patience,

In other words,

May be called the power of endurance during the absence of the desired things or conditions.

They say death is the worst thing in life,

But in point of fact,

Patience is often worse than death.

One would prefer death to patience when patience is severely tried.

And there's a lot there.

I can read it over and over to myself many times and I always learn more from it.

But really,

Patience is a virtue because of the qualities that it cultivates within us.

And he was so patient that he no longer had desire for anything to be different in the external world,

Which was why he was so unattached to the worldly things,

To the jewels that so many people would fight over or kill over or start wars over.

Because he had mastered patience,

He had become master of his own reality and he was no longer affected by things in the world.

And if you read his works,

It's just astounding the level of wisdom that he conveys and his message in my experience is universal.

He isn't tied to a specific religion and he'll quote Jesus and Mohammed and others and he just speaks in a way that is so full of wisdom and wisdom is one of those qualities that naturally grows as we are patient.

I've done a bit of research and writing and reflecting on the concept of virtue over the last couple of years.

And I've come to feel that patience is one of the most important because it is the basis of almost all of the other virtues,

If not all of them.

Part of the nature of virtue is that virtue is pretty much always a choice.

We have the choice to act and speak in virtuous ways or to not.

And ultimately what allows us to make that choice is patience.

Because most of the time,

For many of us,

We get caught up in the world and we become very reactive.

There's so much pain and suffering in the world,

In our own individual experiences with those we care about and with the world around us.

And it's very easy to become reactive,

To want things to be different than they are,

To try to control our experience.

But usually when we're reactive,

That's coming from a place of fear and it usually ends up causing us to act in ways that are not virtuous.

Because we want to try to change things and the desire to try to change anything outside of ourselves is often,

In its essence,

Violent.

Because it's trying to control or impose our will on conditions or others.

And it takes a lot of patience to cultivate the virtues,

To cultivate generosity,

To cultivate courage,

To cultivate humility.

Because all of those require a level of detachment from outcomes,

From how things are going to be in the future.

They require being present with what is truly right,

Right now,

In our words and actions.

I mentioned this in one of the other classes,

I think on Wednesday,

That another fascinating thing about virtues,

Besides that they are a choice,

Is that they necessitate having their opposite present within our experience.

To be courageous doesn't mean that we are not afraid.

It means that we are afraid and yet we still choose to do what is right.

You can't have courage expressed unless there is fear present.

We can't be humble,

We can't express humility unless there is some part of us that has ego,

That wants to be recognized,

Validated.

So it's important to recognize,

Because again,

Our tendency,

All of us,

Our mind is to try to avoid that which we think is bad or don't like and try to hold on to that which we think is good.

And so that causes us to deny parts of our experience or push it down.

We all have everything within us.

It is the nature of being human,

It is the nature of life.

We all have anger,

We all have violence,

We all have fear,

We all have anxiety,

And we all have courage,

We all have patience,

We have love,

We have beauty.

So part of the practice of patience is making space in ourselves for all of it,

For allowing all of it to exist within our beings,

Within our bodies,

Within our emotions,

Within our thoughts.

Being present to all of it and then using patience to allow it to be and to create the space to then choose what is really coming from a place of purity of intent,

What is coming from a place of love,

Of wisdom,

What is coming from a place of what is truly virtuous in this moment without any attachment to outcomes or what might happen in the future.

As I said,

The only way to have the ability to express the virtue is to have its opposite present.

With patience,

The opposite is obviously impatience.

And it's easy to be impatient,

To experience impatience.

And right now,

A lot of people are experiencing a high degree of impatience.

Impatience with being on lockdown,

Impatience with the uncertainty and the unknown.

And yet with impatience,

We have a lot of reactivity come up.

We want to make a choice,

We want to make a decision,

We want things to change,

We want to have clarity about what's going to happen in the future.

And that often causes us to rush through the present moment to try to get to the future.

And we miss out on the beauty that is present right here,

Right now within our experience.

We can't know what is going to happen in the future,

And we can't control it.

And a lot of times when we try to control it,

We bring about the very thing that we're afraid of or trying to prevent.

What we do have control over is what we choose to do in this present moment with our experience.

Because while there is an entire world out here,

There is an entire universe inside of us.

And the more we can start to shift our consciousness to move internally,

The more of that beauty we can experience that we have access to all the time,

Regardless of what's happening around us,

Regardless of whether we're imprisoned,

Regardless of whether we're experiencing physical pain.

There's deeper and deeper levels within us that are peaceful and quiet and full of joy and beauty.

But to reach those levels,

We have to cultivate patience and non-reactivity.

We have to learn to pause,

Even though we want to act,

To be still within and without,

And to just experience what is occurring and make space for it.

As I said,

The way to cultivate virtue is that it's a choice.

We have to choose it.

So how do we cultivate patience?

By being patient.

We have to choose to not react.

And with everything in our experience,

It all tends to work in a similar way.

Whatever we direct our consciousness towards,

Whatever we choose,

We make it that much easier to choose that again in the future.

It's like building a muscle.

Every time we're feeling impatient and feeling this internal desire to act,

To change something,

Because we're feeling uncomfortable in our experience,

In our body,

In our emotions,

We give way to reactivity.

Every time we choose to not react,

Even though we're feeling that,

To be patient,

To let it be what it is,

We become more grounded in the ability to be patient.

I've shared this before,

The etymological definition of patience is the calm enduring of suffering.

Doesn't sound pleasant,

Does it?

And yet the more we learn to be present to our suffering,

To pain,

To discomfort,

We grow in our ability to have patience.

And things that used to seem difficult become much easier to bear.

It's like when we're children,

You know,

Every little thing that we experience seems so overwhelming and intense.

We can't have a toy,

And so we throw a temper tantrum and we freak out and it feels like the end of the world.

And as we grow older,

We learn that that's not such a bad thing.

Well most of us.

Some of us are still very attached to having our toys.

But most of us,

As we grow,

We experience more pain and we realize that not having that toy in this moment is not the end of the world.

And it continues throughout life,

The more we allow ourselves to just be patient with those challenges,

The easier it becomes to be calm amidst the suffering of the world and the suffering that we experience in our own human lives.

It's a form of equanimity.

And when you think of equanimity,

You think of someone just being very peaceful.

And you think that they're that way because they don't suffer.

When in actuality,

The way to cultivate that equanimity is pretty much only through being present to our suffering.

So I'd like to read a couple of paragraphs from a book I've been working on over the last couple of years.

It talks about this importance of our agency in choosing to be patient with our experience.

It is our perspective and our decision to act on our agency to choose our attitude,

Words and actions in any given situation,

Regardless of external circumstances or how we feel.

That is where we find a true sense of the freedom that we always have access to.

In making choices to move towards virtuous action,

We find the antidote to fear-based thinking and action.

We have the power to choose to not let our actions and words be conditioned by reactions to fear and instead to let them arise from the wisdom,

Compassion and purity of intention that naturally grows as we cultivate patience,

Humility and gratitude with our moment-to-moment experience.

We have the choice when experiencing suffering to be patient or impatient.

We have the choice to be generous or not with those around us.

We have the choice to be humble or to give in to the desire of the ego for recognition and validation.

Often,

When we choose a less virtuous path,

It derives from reactiveness,

From fear,

From a lack of resolve or commitment.

Reactions and non-reactivity are similar to a muscle that can be trained and strengthened,

And the way to make it stronger is to practice,

To exercise it.

Every time we choose to be non-reactive instead of reactive,

The muscle becomes stronger.

It is a process of retraining the neural pathways of the brain and it begins to shift our perspective.

As we cultivate greater and greater skill with non-reactivity,

More space is created to experience things as they are in each moment,

Along with a profound ability to allow things to be just as they are,

Without any need to change them.

This in turn allows us to grow and develop according to our innate nature rather than as a reaction to thoughts,

Feelings,

Desires or external circumstances,

All of which are changing from moment to moment.

So for our practice today,

We'll work with cultivating patience in different ways.

Patience with the breath,

Patience with the physical body,

And patience with the mind.

With the breath,

I'll guide you into counting each inhalation and exhalation as a way of just becoming present to each moment of the breath.

Often when we're impatient,

We're always trying to get to the next thing.

When we're inhaling,

We're already thinking about the exhalation.

When we're on lockdown,

We're already thinking about all the things we want to do once we get off lockdown.

Patience requires just being present with what is right now in your experience.

When it comes to the body,

We'll work with stillness of the body and being present to what's arising in different sensations in different areas of the body.

I don't often suggest that people be very strict in their posture.

For today,

I'd like you to try to,

Whatever posture you're in,

Whether you're laying down or sitting,

For the entire length of the practice,

Try to be completely still in your body.

If you have an itch,

Don't scratch it.

If you have an ache or discomfort,

Try to be present with it,

Unless of course it's a pinching or sharp pain that might actually be causing damage.

If it's a general ache or discomfort,

Try to just be present with it without shifting your body or fidgeting.

You know,

I have done a couple of 10-day vipassana meditations,

And in those they're very strict.

You do multiple hour-long sits a day,

And you're instructed to not move your body for the entire hour.

It takes a lot of patience,

And you cultivate a lot of patience when you cannot move.

Fortunately,

I had prior experience,

Although not in a meditative fashion,

I wish I had meditation.

When I was younger,

When I was 18 years old,

I joined the Marine Reserves,

And I was a machine gunner.

When I went through basic training,

They would have you stand with your hands behind your back and in position.

Sometimes you would be there for a couple of hours,

And you couldn't move.

You didn't know what was going to happen.

They wouldn't tell you how long you were going to be there or what you were waiting for.

You'd get in trouble if you moved.

So you just had to stay there and not move a muscle.

That is suffering.

Especially when it's hot,

And you're sweating,

And there's mosquitoes.

So anyway,

That all to say that anyone can learn.

And we start with baby steps.

So I won't make you sit here for an hour or stand for an hour.

We'll just do about 15 minutes.

But I encourage you to try to not move,

And notice the desire to move.

Notice the discomfort that gives rise to this desire to fidget or scratch or shift,

And make the conscious decision to simply be patient with the experience.

So if you will,

Go ahead and come to a comfortable posture.

If you can sit,

I'd recommend sitting for this.

It's a little bit easier to not move when you're laying down.

But if you do have a physical issue that impedes your ability to sit,

Then please do not feel guilt or judgment or anything like that.

Please lay down.

And you can still practice with laying down.

Trust me,

Even with laying down,

When you try not to move,

Your body will want to react against it.

So you'll still benefit from the practice and have the opportunity for patience.

If you are sitting,

Just make sure that you're in a steady,

Relaxed,

And easeful posture.

The steady base and the spinal column and torso rising up towards heaven.

The head seated over the shoulders and spine,

Shoulders relaxed back and down.

And however your body is positioned,

Simply try to release any unnecessary tension from the body.

Gently close your eyes,

Softening the gaze and relaxing the eyes and their sockets.

Relaxing the scalp and the forehead,

The jaw.

Relaxing the shoulders and the torso.

The hips all the way down to the bottoms of the feet.

Become aware of the breath.

Naturally moving in and out.

Now,

Without trying to change the breath,

If it happens naturally,

That is fine.

But begin to count the seconds of the inhalation and then begin over when you begin the exhalation.

So for example,

You might be inhaling counting one,

Two,

Three,

Four.

And then you begin the exhalation,

One,

Two,

Three,

Four.

It doesn't matter how long each inhalation or exhalation is.

It might be two or three seconds or six or eight seconds.

They may or may not be even.

Just count internally in your mind and notice the flow of the breath with each second that you count.

Relaxing the shoulders and the forehead.

Notice if your mind is trying to go to other thoughts or if it's thinking about the next inhalation or exhalation or the next number.

And try to keep guiding your mind,

Your awareness back to each second and the sensation of the breath as each number arises in your mind.

Check in with your mind.

Check in with your body.

And if any unnecessary tension has come in,

Gently release without fidgeting,

Without moving the external body.

Just gently relax any tension within.

Begin counting each breath.

One,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Allow the counting to fade away.

And focus your awareness on the movement of the breath each moment.

Move closer to the breath.

Notice the moment-to-moment sensation as the breath moves in and out.

Continue this breath while becoming aware of the felt sense of the body as a whole.

Your body,

Which has been still for seven minutes now.

Notice if there's any areas that feel tight,

Constricted,

Or full.

Simply bring awareness to them without trying to change them.

Just allowing them to be just as they are.

As you observe them,

Move your awareness even closer.

Pay attention to the moment-to-moment sensation,

Even if it's uncomfortable,

Even if some part of you wants to move away from it.

Just observe without judgment,

Without trying to change it,

Without wanting it to be different.

As you move closer to these areas,

You may find that they change of their own accord.

They might get better or worse,

More pronounced or less pronounced.

The sensation itself may change into something different.

Simply observe and make space for the experience.

Continuing to breathe as you feel into the body.

Notice any reactions that arise in the mind,

Whether it's a desire to move,

To change,

To have a different experience,

And simply make space for that as well.

Notice how it feels,

Those thoughts.

Observe them.

Askson's If it starts to feel more challenging to stay still,

Make the choice to simply be present with it.

Observe it even more closely.

Move towards it.

Begin to notice how beneath the breath,

Beneath the physical sensations of the body,

Beneath the thoughts,

There is an inner stillness.

It is the stillness which allows us to create the space,

To be present to all that we experience.

Focus on that stillness.

Become fascinated by it.

Focus on that stillness.

Soften into the stillness.

Focus on that stillness.

Start to become aware of your breath,

Of your breath,

The felt sense of your body as a whole.

Feel the solidity beneath you,

Supporting you and holding you up,

And the air around you.

When you are ready,

Maintain a connection to the stillness as you gently begin to open your eyes and take in the world around you.

The cultivation of patience is a continual practice,

And it's a choice that we need to make,

And it brings so many benefits.

As we start to be less driven by unconscious reactions and emotions and thoughts,

We connect more deeply to ourselves,

And we find the freedom that we always have access to within,

The true freedom that we deeply seek,

A freedom that transcends our physical circumstances or what's happening in the world around us.

I'd like to end with a quote from Viktor Frankl,

Who was in the concentration camps in Germany in World War II.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walk through the huts comforting others,

Giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in number,

But they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing,

The last of the human freedoms,

To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

To choose one's own way.

This is the true freedom that we have that nobody can take away from us.

Thank you all for joining me again today.

I'm here if anyone has any questions.

And for the rest of the day,

Just try to be aware if you start to feel a reaction coming up,

Whether it's from the news or from a difficult interaction with a loved one or a friend on the phone.

And before allowing that reaction to guide you,

Take a breath and try to create a little bit of space within.

It's a practice,

And we will fail again and again and again.

But as we practice,

It does start to shift and over time with dedication and commitment,

The ability to choose the path of virtue grows easier and stronger.

We will always make mistakes.

It's part of learning and growth.

But we can move towards cultivating greater virtue within ourselves and in the world around us.

Thank you.

Reviews

Dear Thomas, I’ve been meaning to write you and this morning your practice around patience came to me. It was exactly what I needed. You would have laughed your authentic Thomas laughter this morning as I was practicing stillness while my son started to scream at me “food” and then “papa” so loudly. I channeled your exemple in the army neeeding to stay still. He eventually stopped. And afterwards it gave me the opportunity to explain my practice and relate it to him doing sets at the gym without interruption. Patience with my son is the biggest practice I have ever been through in life. So many times I have chosen to be reactive while I should have been still, breathing, giving space to the regulation process he needed. I am still experiencing impatience from time to time and this as you say allows me to notice when I am being patient. Thank you for sharing with us your research around virtues. It is very helpful! 🙏

Thomas
At the end of this class, I just found myself thinking, yeah! so good, so good. I find myself so grounded after one of your talks and meditations.. thank you.
Blessings to you..

Thank you for such a profound talk on the virtue of patience; came at a time I needed it the most. Will listen again. Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏

What a timely and pivotal practice for me. This is the muscle I will choose to strengthen. And no doubt will be given the gift to practice often. Thank you 🙏🏼 for this wonderful class. The quote by Victor Frankel is incredibly powerful and relevant.
And the Choice. I choose patience- to remain calm amidst the suffering and be aware of the less virtuous path that offers attention instead. Great learning opportunity! So grateful for this!!

Wow, this was excellent! I love all of your teachings, but I especially love this one on the virtue of patience. Thank you so much! 🙏🌼

Thank you so much again Thomas. I feel a profound stillness and a sense of being grounded. I will use this recording for my daily practice of patience. Wishing you the best.

I have listened to this before… but especially salient today as I face a physical pain that may take weeks to resolve. Thank you so much. Do you have a recommendation for a specific writing of Hazarat Inaya Kahn (sp?) that I might start with? What have you written??

Hazrat Inayat Khan said
“When the cry of the disciple has reached a certain pitch, the teacher comes to answer it.”
Thank you for wisdom and teaching.

Despite many interrupted attempts at sitting and not squirming, itching or fidgeting or moving my aching painful arm to date, due to giving in, I managed to sit through them all just now in the 15 min meditation. I now feel this new life is really happening.

I took your advice on the order of listening to the next few talks. Do you have any suggestion for the order in which I might listening to others?

It was great to hear about your experience in the marines. Namaste 🙏

Very inspiring! Thank you Thomas, your wisdom shines so bright 🌟💖😘

Thankyou so much Thomas. 🙏
I try to stay incognito on Insight Timer...But need to speak my appreciation of your work...
Since I have found you, I have repeatedly been guided by your wisdom through gosh..5? Of your meditations so far..Doing the “Mystical” one quite a few times...But this one for the first time...And for me today, perhaps the most resonant..Patience is a virtue...And one that’s needed for me to practice constantly!...But I’m getting there!...Yours, in honour and spirit..🙏
Thankyou again.💞

So happy when the meditation ended haha! Was listening to your lecture during my walk today and ended up doing the meditation in the park. Tried to find a spot without mosquitos but they did find me, challenged my patience not to touch my face and neck!!
Good practice for an impatient creature😅Thanks again for another wonderful session. Putting this in my favorite!

Absolutely excellent talk on patience achieving both simplicity and depth on the topic. Delivered with a wonderful attitude and small moments of humor

Perfectly timed and so much I could take away with me for my day. Thank you.

So beautiful and incredibly relaxing.
Thank you for the experience.
Namaste 🙏🏻🦋