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Happy Hour: The Gift of Patience

Welcome everyone. Welcome to Happy Hour. It is lovely to see you all, and lovely to be with you and feel your presence from around the country and the world.

For today's practice, I wanted to bring in the sense of patience as metta^[1]. Patience with ourselves, patience with others, patience with this body. Patience and kindness with causes and conditions not being what we want them to be. Patience with our to-do list. Patience can be such a beautiful practice; it is really an expression of love.

And again, we must have discernment. Patience is not just postponing and procrastinating. There is a wholeheartedness, a kindness, and a gentleness to appreciating when it is appropriate to have patience, and when it is appropriate to lean in and hold ourselves or others accountable. That is the role of wisdom. Compassion and kindness without wisdom become what Tibetans like to call "idiot compassion" or "idiot kindness." What is the appropriate expression of patience as kindness, as love, as metta for ourselves and for others, without veering into unhealthy enabling?

I leave that as a little contemplation, and I will lead us in a guided meditation to explore that a little bit.

Guided Meditation

Let's begin. Let's land in our seats. Let's arrive here, in this moment, in time, in this body.

Start with patience with this body. Patience with this mind. The body might still be settling, reverberating from the busyness of the day. Have patience with this mind, which might still be running around like a little puppy. Can we have patience with ourselves in this moment as we start to settle? Connect with the breath, and bring an attitude of spacious patience to the breath as it finds its way through our bodies.

Have patience with the heart-mind as it connects with the sensations of the body: the feet on the earth, hands on our lap, your sit bones on the cushion. Have patience with the unfolding of settling and arriving.

Have patience with this body. Maybe it's achy, creaky, a little unsettled, or sleepy. Whatever else might be arising, open your heart to kindness with patience, accepting the body just as it is in this moment. With each breath, accept the body just as it is. Do not wait to exhale when the conditions are right—relax and exhale right now.

And can we have patience with the mind? If this mind is drifting here and there, thinking about the past and future, it's okay. It's okay, dear; it's all right. Not judging, not attacking, but noticing. Noticing, "It's like this right now." Welcome awareness to reconnect with the breath right here, with patience. Lean in gently, kindly, lovingly. Connect with the breath. Lean in and land with wholeheartedness.

Notice what happens if awareness connects with patience, to the breath, to this breath right here. Be like a scientist of your own mind—a relaxed scientist. Notice what happens if you're not reaching for the next breath, or the next moment, or the next thing, but instead connecting awareness with the breath and the body sensations of the breath, with a lot of patience. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, but just to be. Just to honor, just to love, and be patient with this breath right here. This in-breath, this out-breath. It's our training today; it's our exploration.

Relax the body, connecting with the breath in the body. Connect with the body with a lot of patience. Khanti^[2] in Pali. A lot of patience, glorious patience. An expression of love, an expression of peace. Be curious. You can be non-patient in a few minutes, right after this practice, but right now, try it on for size. See what happens.

Be patient with your own heart, mind, and body. Patience as love. Kindness and goodwill as patience, right here, in this body, mind, and heart.

Can you be patient if judgments are arising? Can you be patient and loving with the judgmental mind if it's arising? Thank it: "Thank you. Thanks for trying to help me the best way you can." There's plenty of patience with whatever is arising. There is plenty of love for it to transform into wisdom. I love and am patient with myself as much as it's available in this moment, not pushing.

Can we open up this space of patience? Patience as love, love as patience, and goodwill. Can we open it up to include others? Can we offer our patience to someone we care about in our life as an expression of care and goodwill? Taking the long-term view of what they are doing or not doing. Part of it is, of course, their volition and responsibility, and a lot of it is part of causes and conditions. We offer our support and our patience, not our judgment. Transformations happen more readily in a loving, patient container than one that is filled with impatience and judgment. We know this. Loving patience. Patience not as a chore, but as a gift. It's a gift of generosity from our heart.

Can we expand further to have loving patience with causes and conditions? If that feels too abstract, stay with a being. Stay with someone in your life or with yourself.

Now, as we bring this sitting to a close, reconsider the gift of patience as a gift with no strings attached, to ourselves or to a loved one. Release. Trusting that patience, khanti, is one of the ten perfections, the paramis^[3]. Explore the equivalence of love and patience, and offer this goodness as a gift. May I love, accept, and be patient with myself just as I am, to create the conditions for growth, not for impatience and judgment.

Share our goodness, sharing our cultivation and the seed of goodness with all beings everywhere. May all beings, including myself, be happy, be well, and be free.

Thank you, everyone. Thanks for your practice.

Reflections on Patience

There is so much to say and explore with patience. The way we tried to approach and pour patience into the sitting was as an expression of love, as an expression of goodwill for ourselves and others. In this container of loving patience—again, not "idiot patience," but one that enables transformation, enables growth, and enables wisdom. If we are just impatient with ourselves, seeking the next thing or judging, it contracts the whole heart, both for ourselves and for others. This is a very rich topic.

I invite us to explore this topic and this practice together in small groups, with patience for ourselves and for one another. The question to explore in the breakout rooms could be about this guided meditation—if something showed up for you, revealed itself, or was surprising. Or perhaps just the general question of how patience and impatience show up in your life. Is it supportive when you lean into patience for yourself and for others? What do you notice? Just explore a little bit. Show up with your own kindness, experience, humility, and patience.

[Breakout sessions]

Welcome back. If you have any reflections you would like to share, you are welcome to raise your hand with questions, practice reports, or group reports for the benefit of yourself and everyone.

Malaya: I wanted to say that during the meditation, I was thinking about how a lack of patience and busyness are ways to sort of distract from a person's own thoughts, from being in the present moment, and a way to escape reality, which can cause suffering. I was thinking about where my mother's family is from in the Philippines. I remember when I was a teenager there, there was no internet, no cell phone service, no running water, and no electricity. When we weren't working or doing things, we passed the time by telling each other stories. People would tell the same stories over and over again, but you would be patient. You didn't tell someone, "Oh, you already told me that story," because they enjoyed telling it so much. You just let them tell you the same story again, day after day. When we didn't have anything to say, we would just look at each other, and when we were really bored and it was getting late, we would just go to sleep.

Nikki Mirghafori: Sweet, beautiful. Thank you so much for bringing that in, Malaya. That is lovely. This gift of kindness and patience, and letting people tell the same story that they enjoy telling over and over again. There's such sweetness about that, just patience with life, patience with one another, patience with ourselves. There is something about the pace of the modern world, especially with social media, that makes it unimaginable to be "bored" for a single minute. You feel you just have to pick up a device and keep scrolling for news and information. Instead, sort of just be here, just be patient, just cultivate patience. Maybe the next time each of us finds ourselves with a moment of waiting—at the doctor's office or wherever—we can take that moment to cultivate loving patience for ourselves as a gift. So beautiful, thank you so much, Malaya.

Quentin: I experienced something with my partners that was very unique for me, which I definitely think relates to patience. I've been studying Buddhism for a while, and many of the practice groups I've been to have been mostly Western Buddhists. There is a lot of philosophizing, and the politeness feels very surface-level. But my partners were able to share their thoughts, and I was able to share my thoughts, with kindness. It wasn't just the affect or facial expressions of warmth, but still speaking intellectually. Sometimes over the years, I have not been able to feel comfortable speaking intellectually, feeling that the body was left behind. My partner showed up with this boundary of, "I will get to know them over time, and I will still receive and give kindness." It was just really nice to feel that I was being received with kindness, while still allowing people to express themselves without having to be vulnerable in a particular way to feel connected. I haven't experienced that before in a long time. It definitely helped me with the idea of being patient and being comfortable with being intimate as things grow.

Nikki Mirghafori: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Quentin, for articulating that, and for feeling touched by that. I want to reflect back that just the way you were speaking about it—you were sharing this intellectual idea, this thing you had noticed in the space—yet you were so embodied. Sharing your own care, being touched, and your own vulnerability that it's been challenging in the past and was really different tonight. Thank you for modeling what touched you in the community tonight. This is something that I love about the Happy Hour Sangha^[4]: there is this embodied kindness through our practice, how we show up for one another and hold ourselves. Of course, we discuss our practice and the challenges that arose, but there's an embodiment of kindness, which is our intention in these practices. Right on. Thank you, Quentin. I really appreciate you reflecting that.

Vicky: I loved the thought of finding wisdom as you are having patience. I remembered a yoga teacher a long time ago saying that rushing equals violence. I thought about that with patience. A lot of it is holding one's desire to fix something or make it different, and having that calm to do it in the middle of really wanting to get things done or wanting to move things in a different way.

Nikki Mirghafori: Beautiful. Thank you, Vicky, beautifully said. Yes, the gift of patience in so many different ways—in the midst of busyness, in the midst of impatience. Can we feel into impatience as the violence of our minds? Beautifully said.

One of you also sent me a direct reflection: "Having patience with mind was a beautiful concept during sitting." Yes, having patience with our own mind, having patience with our bodies if the causes and conditions are challenging right now.

Thank you all. I appreciate your practice, your wholeheartedness, and your goodness in cultivating loving patience together as a gift. May we all wake up. May our cultivation and our practice support the waking up of all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy, may all beings be free, including ourselves. Thanks everyone. Be well.