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Guided Meditation: Patience

Good day everyone, and welcome to our meditation session.

As we sit and include your body as part of the meditation, it's helpful to have the body be at the center of your meditation. This is partly because being centered and grounded in the body gives us much more capacity for patience, for openness, and for an ability to be present for what is here. Cultivating and developing our capacity to be present for all the different things that can come in our lives is one of the tasks of meditation. Sooner or later, there will be very challenging things that we all have to experience, and we have to have prepared ourselves by developing our capacity to be present, to be open, and to be patient. It is so important.

Gently take a comfortable but alert meditation posture, giving some care to adjusting your posture in whatever way is appropriate for how you are meditating, so your body is a little more active and not completely passive. Even if you're lying down, having your forearms pointing to the ceiling—maybe your elbows resting on the ground or the surface and the arms pointing to the ceiling—gives a little bit more activation.

If it's comfortable, close the eyes, and take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Take your time with the inhale. As long as it's comfortable to breathe in, take your time to breathe in, feeling maybe the comfort or the pleasure of that. Take your time to exhale. As long as it's comfortable to exhale, perhaps enjoy the extended exhale.

With the extended exhale, relax in the shoulders. Soften. Soften the belly, and relax the whole body down into wherever your body is in contact with some surface—a chair or the floor. Release yourself to receive the support of that surface so that there's a feeling of being grounded, centered, or rooted here.

Let your breathing return to normal. On the exhale, perhaps you can soften your face, around the eyes, the cheeks, and the jaws. Also, relax the area of your brain, or wherever there might be some contraction or energy associated with thinking, wanting, or resisting. Relaxing.

As you sit here now, spending these few minutes settling in, can you recognize inside of you—in your body, your mind, your heart—the capacity to be patient with what is? A patience that maybe is an openness, or a supportive tolerance for what is uncomfortable. A recognition of the challenges that might be here while you're meditating. In the very recognition, there's a patience, a kind of acceptance and openness in that clear recognition of what is uncomfortable or difficult.

What is often underappreciated is that what's valuable is not what is happening, but rather how we're aware of it. Patiently, openly, non-reactively. Being aware with clarity and clear recognition: "Now this is what's happening," and developing the capacity to be present for what is, especially when things are uncomfortable. Coming to appreciate not that you can be with the uncomfortable, but appreciating how you can be with what's uncomfortable.

One support for this grounding in the body, for our ability to be patient and open, is the constancy of our attention to the breathing. The rhythm of breathing in and out becomes the beat that keeps us steady, going, and maybe uninterruptable in our attention here in the present.

If you are more settled than you were at the beginning of the meditation, recognize that. Maybe recognize it as a capacity to be more patient, more open to what's happening. And if you're not more settled, recognize that, and that is the place to be patient, open with how things are.

As we come to the end of this sitting, perhaps appreciate that when we can be patient with discomfort, then that patience can be offered as a gift to others. We can stay calm or non-reactive when situations are difficult. Maybe when people have difficulties that are uncomfortable for us, our patience allows us to stay present, attentive, and non-reactive so that our generosity, our kindness, and our care have space and room to operate.

May it be that our development and cultivation of greater capacities in patience, attention, and kindness can grow through our meditation practice in such a way that it can be a gift to the world. We can dedicate it to the world, so that we can live, act, and speak in ways that benefit others, supporting others to feel more at ease or more present in this difficult life.

May it be that our meditation practice helps us to improve the world for all beings. May we be a force of good so that all beings may be happy. All beings may be safe. All beings may experience peace, so that all beings may be free. May all beings be free from oppression and attachments. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Practice as Capacity Building

Warm greetings on this Sunday. I would like to talk a little bit about patience, or use that as a topic to talk about something which might even be more important: how one of the functions of Buddhist practice is to develop our capacities. To cultivate and develop our native, natural abilities so that we have a greater capacity for being present for discomfort and challenges, and a greater capacity to be at peace when things around us are difficult and not at peace.

Patience is part of this task. We have a capacity for patience and we can develop it. The Pali word for patience is khanti^[1] (k-h-a-n-t-i). It's a rich word that has many connotations that are maybe greater than the English word patience. For me, it has an association with an openness, a willingness to be present for experience, a willingness to be present for whatever is happening, including what's difficult. It also has the connotation of some kind of healthy, deep acceptance of what is true, even if what is true is difficult or challenging to some of our cherished attachments. There's a patience, an acceptance, and a willingness that is willing to work with us, stay present, and find our way.

These capacities of openness, willingness, and patience can be developed. I have the impression—speaking very generally—that many people don't have enough appreciation for delayed gratification. They want instant results from their meditation and from Buddhist practice. They want good results more than they want to develop inner strengths.

Sometimes people are searching for an experience of peace, bliss, or happiness. There are all kinds of ways we can fall into experiences of peace and happiness that don't necessarily involve developing ourselves or strengthening the capacities we have. If we always need to find refuge in places that are peaceful, quiet, and still, we might be able to relax and feel nice and good in those safe places, but it hasn't helped us to feel at ease or feel a certain kind of inner peace as we go into situations that are challenging or threatening. To only retreat into some kind of inner peace is not so helpful in the big picture.

In the bigger picture, especially of the Buddhist path, what we really want to do is develop our capacity to be present for what's difficult for us. To be present for our suffering and challenges so we can go through them and find our way with them, not so we skirt around them, avoid them, or hide from them. This goes along with the principle that we have a greater ability to have mastery of our own mind—to adjust our minds, to change our minds, to work with our minds—than we might have with changing the world or the circumstances around us.

If we think that we always have to change the circumstances around us to feel good and feel safe, then we're always going to be outwardly directed and constantly needing to change and fix things. It also can set up an unfortunate tension between us and the world. If we have to change the world so that we're safe, then the world has to accommodate us, and we have to assert ourselves; there has to be a push and a pull. Of course, that's appropriate at times, but if that's all we know how to do, then we actually make ourselves less safe because we always need to have the world change for us.

Buddhist practice is about developing an inner safety, an inner strength, and an inner capacity to be present. Buddhism is a capacity-building practice, and that needs some delayed gratification. It takes time to develop ourselves. It takes time to develop strengths of all kinds of different forms. It takes time to expand the capabilities we have so they become strengths. As we do so, our relationship to the world around us shifts and changes.

There is a little story from my book, The Monastery Within. The abbess once instructed the younger monks and nuns with the following: "If a fly lands on the back of an ant, it's a big burden for the ant. If a fly lands on the back of an elephant, it is a very small thing for the elephant. You will have many challenges in life. It's up to you whether you face them like an ant or an elephant."

This is the ability to develop ourselves so that there is a large capacity. As that largeness of our capacity to be patient, to be present, to be mindful, to let go, to be non-reactive, to be generous, and to be equanimous becomes stronger, we're not pushed around by the events in the world and what people say and do so much. We carry our peace with us. As we develop our capacities, we discover we have more choice to choose mastery of our own minds and our own hearts, as opposed to giving away the power we have of our own minds to others. To give it away based on what they say or what they do, so we're just washed out to sea with the slightest little insult or difficulty that happens around us.

Slowly, steadily, we develop capacity, and it does involve some letting go. There's a famous Zen story that has to do with a scholar. Someone who is an erudite scholar of Buddhism, who has spent decades studying Buddhist texts and knows the ins and outs of Buddhist philosophy, goes to visit a Zen master. He wants to ask questions of the Zen master, or be in a debate or discussion about these erudite ideas and opinions about what Buddhism is.

The Zen master says, "Welcome, let's have tea first." The Zen master gets the tea ready, makes the tea, and offers the scholar a cup. He then starts pouring tea into the cup, and when the water gets to the rim of the cup, the Zen master keeps pouring, so it starts spilling over the top.

The scholar says, "Stop, stop! It's already full. It won't take any more tea."

The Zen master then stops pouring and says, "Well, in the same way, you're so full of yourself, full of your ideas, that there's no space to take in more teachings or more understanding of what I have to teach."

Sometimes we have to let go of our ideas, our thoughts, our projections, or our stories that get in the way of our ability to be patient. The very reason maybe we can't be patient is because we're caught up in the swirl of predictive stories of what will happen. As we develop these capacities, we become an elephant rather than an ant.

I wanted to read this wonderful poem. I don't know if it's by the wonderful Zen master I studied with in Japan, Shodo Harada Roshi^[2], or if it's by his student Hogen Bays^[3]. I apologize, I don't know which one it is. The form I have here associates it with the Roshi.

In this passing moment karma ripens and all things come to be. I vow to choose what is. If there is a cost, I choose to pay. If there is a need, I choose to give. If there is pain, I choose to feel. If there is sorrow, I choose to grieve. When burning, I choose heat. When calm, I choose peace. When starving, I choose hunger. When happy, I choose joy. Whom I encounter, I choose to meet. When I shoulder, I choose to bear.^[4] When it is my death, I choose to die. Where this takes me, I choose to go. Being with what is, I respond to what is.

This willingness to respond to what is, to be present, and to meet what is in such a full way is a testament of capacity. It is a testament to having cultivated one's strengths and abilities, and cultivated enough letting go so that our strengths are not inhibited or held in check by our fears, our anxieties, our angers, or our desires.

We cultivate and develop these capacities so we can face our challenges. It's a teaching that you should spend time with people who don't try to protect you from the challenges of life, but rather spend time with people who appropriately encourage you to face the challenges—to be present for what's difficult in your life. Sooner or later, things will be difficult. Sooner or later, Buddhist practice will bring you into places of letting go, and places where the usual orientation, stability, and ways in which we hold onto safety are no longer available. Some people will retract and pull away and won't take the path all the way. But we must cultivate our ability slowly and steadily to develop strengths that hold us present and allow us to be there.

One of the strengths that meditators develop is the strength of being still. Not moving in the middle of whatever is happening in meditation. Sometimes there can be a lot of restlessness, fear, anger, strong desire, and agitation. There's something very significant about not giving into it physically—not getting up, pacing, and running around, not giving up on the meditation, but also not collapsing.

The idea in meditation is to neither collapse, nor retract, nor get up and run away, but to sit still in the middle of it. Ideally, sitting in some kind of posture that does express a little bit of strength and confidence. Over time, we're developing a confidence, a physical strength, and a physical malleability to be able to stay present for all kinds of difficult energies that course through us. Anything that's cultivated is cultivated gradually, by repetition. People who don't have capacity for delayed gratification, who are expecting instant results—to have instant enlightenment, instant peace, or to really have a wonderful experience in meditation—sometimes shortchange themselves in this gradual, slow cultivation of these strengths. The strength of confidence, of sitting still and not moving, of letting go of the forces inside of us urging us to react, run away, move, or collapse. Especially today, collapsing.

The wonderful thing about meditation is that it can be a place where we can feel the sorrow, the challenges, the grief, the angers we have, and the difficulties we have, but to do it uprightly with a dignified, confident posture. We might feel like it might be overwhelming, like it's just too much and we should collapse, but while we're meditating, the dedication is to never collapse unless it's impossible not to. To really stay there. That develops a capacity to be present. It's not rejecting the difficulty or the strong feelings; it's actually building the ability, creating more room and space inside to hold them. Over time we're developing this ability to hold more and more difficult things.

If you meditate every day, the wonderful thing about that is then sooner or later your whole life goes through that practice. Days which are good, days which are difficult, joyous days, sorrowful days—they all get processed. They all have their chance to be experienced in this meditation practice. In doing so, we're developing this greater and greater capacity to be with a range of experiences, a range of what's happening for us. We're cultivating ourselves. We're expanding our capacity.

Eventually, maybe our capacity becomes so big and so huge that most things that come along don't agitate us. Not because we're aloof from them or distant from them—maybe we can feel them even better than we did before. When there's a lot of reactivity and swirls of stories, ideas, and judgments, that's a kind of veil between us and our experience. But as we get quieter, stiller, less reactive, and less swept away in the stories, judgments, and commentary of what's happening, then we are actually more present to be there. Maybe there's a greater and greater capacity to hold it.

At some point, what we come to appreciate, or identify with, are the strengths and capacities we have, more than what our experience is. The experiences come and go as we go through our life. Identifying with our capacities gives a ballast to our life. It gives stability to our life because then we're not so easily swayed, pushed around, and impacted by the vagaries of life. The ups and downs in life are huge. I don't want to dismiss or diminish how huge the challenges we have can be, but we learn to choose an attitude.

We learn how we give away our freedom. If someone criticizes us or treats us as somehow being inferior, we participate if we start feeling inferior because of that. We are actually choosing it ourselves. To let other people have that kind of influence on us, so that we are choosing to go along with it, is really sad. This ability to master our minds and see what our mind is doing is one of the great skills of mindfulness meditation or Buddhist practice. There is a kind of self-mastery we develop so that we can choose how we are. We can develop an ability to be present more widely, and then we have, hopefully, with our wisdom, an ability to respond appropriately.

We're not here just to be patient with things and accept things and that's the end of the story. I hope we're here also to make the world a better place, to stand up and speak up when necessary, and to speak up against injustice when we encounter it. We don't want to just simply be patient with injustice in the world, but we want to have developed patience so that we are not coming from a reactive place where our capacity for difficulty has been diminished. Rather, we want to come from a place where capacity is expanded, so that we have a level of ease, peace, or non-clinging in how we then respond and act in the world.

I came across recently a quote by Viktor Frankl^[5], who wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning. He spent time in the German concentration camps in World War II. A lot of his philosophy and the teachings that he developed were inspired by the people in the camps who, he said, chose to respond to each thing with mastery. Not giving up, not abandoning their autonomy or their ability to choose what they do with their minds, their hearts, and with their speech. Somehow they would always choose not to collapse; rather, many of them chose to help and support the other prisoners.

I probably have said this enough now, but I just want to really underscore as I finish this talk that a very important part of Buddhist practice is cultivation. It's called in Pali, bhāvanā^[6] (b-h-a-b-a-n-a). In English, we might say, "I have a spiritual practice." The word bhāvanā is also sometimes used as the word for meditation, but literally what it means is cultivation or development. We're cultivating something and developing something.

For some people, this is an exhausting idea. For some people, it's a difficult one, because if it gets entangled with ideas like "I'm not good enough," "I have to prove myself," or "I have to now strain and try to get something beyond the present moment," then it can be quite a burden. But cultivating the ability to be patient, cultivating the ability to be open, and cultivating the ability to be willing to experience what is here—this is what we cultivate and develop. It goes along with not trying to change the world and not trying to change ourselves.

Hopefully, you don't get so entangled with the cultivation part, because what we're cultivating is the capacity to be present for what is. That is, I think, in some ways the ultimate capacity we're developing in Buddhism, and hopefully, it will support us in times of difficulty and in times of joy. Sometimes the capacity to hold joy is more difficult than the capacity to hold suffering. Holding both forms of experience, being present for them without being caught in them, leads to wisdom and to freedom.

May you cultivate and develop your native capacities so your capacities grow and support you. And may you become like an elephant, or maybe you have another big, strong animal that you prefer to be your model.

Thank you very much.