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Guided meditation: Patiently Practicing

Welcome, welcome everybody. Hope that you're well and I'm happy to be practicing with you all.

So to begin our meditation, just arriving this moment, arriving to this constellation of experiences and feeling into the body. What is it like to be here and now at this moment?

I like this expression to sit and know you're sitting. To sit with some balance, some ease, some alertness, some uprightness. Maybe checking in with the body and see if there are any obvious places of tightness or a little bit of discomfort. Can we gaze upon them kindly with our mindfulness? It might be that if we bring some kindness, some warmth, some non-aversion to those aspects of our experience that are uncomfortable, they might unfold differently under the gaze of kindness. No guarantees.

This is such a part of mindfulness practice, it's bringing our awareness to whatever is arising, including the uncomfortable aspects.

Allowing the awareness to rest on the sensations of breathing. Feeling the expansion, contraction as the body breathes. We might feel that in the chest, maybe in the belly. Maybe we feel the air going in and out of the nose.

And when the mind wanders, as it's wont to do, just very simply, gently begin again.

Allowing the attention to rest on the sensations of breathing.

And when we find ourselves replaying a story, lost in a fantasy, a memory, or planning, we just very simply begin again with the sensations of breathing. Can we do this without annoyance or irritation or exasperation when we realize that we've been lost in thought?

Just very simply, gently begin again.

It doesn't matter how many times we need to begin again. So much of what mindfulness practice is about is just beginning again, having the patience to hang in there, and allow the awareness, the attention, to come back to the sensations of breathing however many times it needs to.

What would it be like to bring patience to our practice, recognizing that it takes time for the mind to settle? Maybe you've had a busy day, lots of planning, lots of decisions or problems to work with. Can we just bring patience? This recognition that things might be a little bit uncomfortable or not settled, but that's okay, we just begin again.

Learning to be patient with our practice, in our practice with our minds, is a way that we can make room for them to be the way that they are. Sometimes our minds are busy, restless. Sometimes they may be drowsy or foggy. But many of us who have a meditation practice know if we just exercise a little bit of patience and very gently begin again with the sensations of breathing, the mind settles.

So how might we bring this lesson of patience to other areas of our life, so that our practice can support us and those we come in contact with? So that our practice is for the benefit of all beings everywhere.

Patience

So a very warm welcome. I wish that you are all safe and have some well-being. Really warm welcome.

So tonight I'd like to continue on this exploration of the paramis^[1], these ten qualities that are support for awakening and support for our general well-being. Last week I spoke about loving-kindness, which was a little out of sequence, but I gave the dharma talk on loving-kindness because I had taught about loving-kindness in another setting and it was what was on my heart and mind.

But now I'd like to go back to the sequence of the paramis, these ten qualities of generosity, ethical behavior, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truth, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity. So loving-kindness is number nine, but now I'd like to go back to number six: patience.

And maybe I should say from the outset as I was thinking about this talk and doing some reading and listening to other dharma teachers, you know, how did they approach patience, it became abundantly clear to me that, oh, this is the parami for me. I hadn't really noticed it so much before, but how much impatience shows up in my own life. So I'm humbly sitting here sharing this with you, this recognition that yes, in particular I think patience is something for me to work on and to practice with, and it shows up in so many different ways. Maybe it shows up in all kinds of different ways for you too, and I'll talk about some of that this evening.

But patience is sixth in this list of paramis or perfections, these qualities that we can perfect as a support for our lives and as a support for awakening. So patience comes after energy, viriya^[2], and we might say that patience and viriya counterbalance each other.

When I spoke about the parami of energy, I shared the simile about the goldsmith. The Buddha gave this simile, saying that when a goldsmith wants to work with gold, they heat up a crucible, a container, and when it's hot, they put the gold in there. And sometimes the goldsmith blows on the gold to heat it up, sometimes they sprinkle water on it to cool it down, and sometimes they just stand by. So pointing to this need for sometimes heating things up with energy, sometimes cooling them down, and sometimes just standing by. And we could say that this just standing by is patience.

So the parami of energy is about arousing energy, allowing energy to arise, but also to balance it with patience. Practice isn't only about applying more and more energy. I think we all know this, but sometimes we don't think about a counterbalance as being patience, that is this way that we can allow things to unfold. To stand back and look on and see how things are going. Does the gold need a little bit more blowing on, or does it need a little bit of water to be sprinkled on, cooled down?

One thing that I appreciate is that in this simile about the goldsmith, the Buddha continues and says that when the gold is the right temperature, when it has the right amount of malleability, then the goldsmith can make earrings or necklaces or bracelets or garlands out of it. We might imagine that it takes patience also to make jewelry. Earrings can be really small, some fine details, some fine work takes some patience and some steadiness just to work with the gold. Any artisanal activity we might do, whether it's knitting or crocheting or sewing or woodworking or sculpting, whatever it might be, a certain amount of patience is required in just the same way that we are shaping our minds with mindfulness practice.

[Laughter] Yeah, sorry that I had to cough there, I'm frantically looking for the mute button so that I can not cough into the microphone.

But we might say that if one is too patient, however, and then one doesn't make any effort, then just letting everything take its own course, just standing by, then we can get bogged down into maybe this sloth and torpor or laziness or slovenliness. Or sometimes if our standard approach is just to not put any energy forward—some of us might not have energy due to illness, but to not put any energy forward, whatever amount that we have—then we might just feel that our life kind of drifts away and we don't accomplish things that help our lives unfold in a direction that we would like to go, towards greater and greater freedom. So what we need is a delicate balance. Some energy, some effort, some endeavoring, as well as some patience, standing back, looking, observing, seeing what's happening without interfering.

So those of you who are familiar with this simile of the goldsmith might know that actually the Buddha says that standing by and looking on at the gold is actually equanimity, he's not saying that it's patience. So we might ask, what is the difference between patience and equanimity? They both have this quality of looking by or not being pushed to jump into activity.

So patience, we might say, is not acting on our impatience. It's not acting on our irritation, our annoyance, our exasperation, our wish for things to be different. So we might notice, we might sense that there is some discontent, a little bit of uneasiness. This might be obvious with some really strong restlessness, or it might be really subtle, just this little nagging feeling that sometimes the mind has, this restlessness of "this is boring, what else can I conjure up in my mind that's a little more interesting?" Or there might be a sense of "I wish something else was happening, that's not quite right." This kind of feeling of things not being quite right, we could say this impatience, "why aren't I awakened completely yet?"

So patience allows us to go through all these experiences of life, these little annoyances, irritations, exasperations, without acting on them. So it's not saying that we aren't experiencing all those different expressions of discontent, but we're not acting on them. We're staying with what is, we're not acting out.

In contrast, equanimity is when we're not actually experiencing irritation, exasperation, annoyance, this discontent, that wishing that things were different, a desire for things to be a certain way, or an aversion to the way things are. Equanimity is when those things simply aren't arising.

So maybe from the outside, patience and equanimity look the same, but patience is what allows us to be with all the experiences of our life. We're not always equanimous. We probably won't always be equanimous until we're completely awakened. So patience is a way that allows us to engage with the completeness of the human experience. And allows us, maybe is an expression of some wisdom that we might bring to our experience of things having some dukkha^[3], things not being exactly as we would like.

And I appreciate that Sylvia Boorstein calls patience this "unglamorous courage," the quiet moment-to-moment adjustment to unpleasant circumstances. This recognition that this does not match my preferences, but I'm not going to act out.

So in this way, practicing patience requires some unpleasant circumstances. It's not like we can practice it in the absence of unpleasant circumstances. It's not like a quantifiable object, it's not a commodity that we can just get an abundance of and then draw on it later, even though sometimes our language might be that "I'm feeling short of patience" or "I'm getting to the end of my patience," "I'm losing my patience." We have these expressions, but instead patience is a quality that arises in the midst of some difficulties. Just like courage, courage and patience are these qualities that we develop in the midst of our daily lives.

And so we don't need to devise situations in which to cultivate patience, they will present themselves freely. I've been thinking about this patience back when I was a research scientist, and I often would want to create shortcuts on my experiments. I felt like, "Oh, incubate overnight? Oh, I don't need to incubate this overnight, I can just do it for two hours, surely that's enough," and then the experience of experiments not turning out. So now when I look back on that, just the way that kind of impatience shows up, and I didn't really have the patience then to really follow the protocols and trust that following the instructions in these ways might be helpful, even if it takes longer. Maybe we have the same way with cooking, "Oh, I don't need to marinate this overnight, it'll be fine if I just cook it the way it is." Unlike these research experiments, the food still turns out fine, but it turns out differently.

So what are some ways in which impatience shows up for you? Maybe I'll share another thing for me. Sometimes while I'm driving I find myself not very kind-hearted, but sometimes when I find myself behind somebody who's going on the freeway going way below the speed limit, I find myself a little bit irritated. And I find myself saying out loud, "The rest of us are on the freeway!" So a little bit of irritation that shows up. So patience, how might we take these just so many small little opportunities that we have in the day to say, "Oh, okay, here's my chance. Here's my chance to practice with patience." What does it mean to not try to pull out our phone and immediately entertain ourselves? What does it mean to not give in to the impatience and allow it to tumble forward and get more and more irritation, and instead can we just notice, "Oh, yeah, this is what impatience feels like"?

Maybe I'll say something else that I noticed in myself. Sometimes when I first started a meditation practice and a yoga practice, I was just getting more and more accustomed to bringing my awareness to what my body was doing and how it was oriented in space, kind of really firming up this mind-body connection. And one thing that was really noticeable for me is that sometimes standing in line at the grocery store or wherever, I'd be standing with my hand on my hip, maybe with my hip jutted out, with this idea, you know, if you were to see me you would see like, "Oh, that person's impatient." But I didn't even notice that I was impatient until I noticed the posture that my body was in. So again, what are some ways in which impatience shows up for you? Not so that you can beat yourself up about it, but so that we might say, "Oh, okay, practice." The paramis are a practice that's really encouraged to do in our daily life. So what would it be like to have a little more patience in this moment?

So in our daily life, but also in our mindfulness practice. If mindfulness is not a practice about patience, I'm not exactly sure what is. The fact that mindfulness requires patience is an early lesson, right? When we start practicing mindfulness, maybe the first lesson is to realize how out of control our minds are, and maybe the second lesson is, "Oh, yeah, this is going to require some patience." Just bring the mind back again, and again, and again. Over and over we do meditation session after meditation session, we go on retreat after retreat, we listen to dharma talk after dharma talk. Just like any skill, just like anything that we wish to learn, it takes patience.

So chances are that we started a meditation practice because we had some expectations. We wanted to feel better, we wanted to embark on a spiritual practice perhaps, and chances are that our expectations weren't met the first time that we meditated. But maybe there was a hint of something, of the possibility that our expectations could be met. But when starting our practice, we realize, oh, when I have these really high expectations, perhaps I had this pleasurable meditation experience and I'd like to have that experience again. We all have this experience of wishing for that to happen again, and then when it doesn't, this feeling of frustration or irritation.

So can we bring some patience to that? Of course we want things to turn out a certain way, of course we have expectations, this is the human experience. As our mindfulness practice grows, as our wisdom practice grows, we can start to see how creating and holding on really tightly to expectations is creating the conditions for suffering. But we only see that or really learn it after we've seen that countless times. How many times?

But patience allows us to watch our experience of mind and body over again, and with this kind of watching the mind and the body, we discover how we are perpetuating our suffering, how we are perpetuating our difficulties. Whether it's the big giant difficulties or the small ones, what role does our mind have in contributing to the suffering?

As a society we certainly want things to happen quickly. The Instant Pot, just the name of this, right, was a sensation. I know a number of years ago people were talking about this new cooking appliance with this name Instant Pot, like how can we not want something that's going to instantly cook things? Not only do we want things to happen quickly, but we want them to be pleasurable and predictable.

But with patience, can we be willing to just simply practice? Can we be willing to embrace our mindfulness practice as an opportunity to simply meet each moment of our experience as it is, without insisting that the moment be different, without insisting that we be different?

And just like sometimes we notice that at the beginning of the meditation period our mind might be really restless, the body might be uncomfortable, but with some patience, as the meditation session progresses, most often there's some settling, there's some more ease that arises. So with that kind of recognition that if we hang in there, then there can be some greater ease and there can be some greater wisdom, some learnings. As the mind starts to settle down, we start to see where the impatience, if I can use this word, is showing up as some aversion or some desire. Some of these root defilements—but I don't like this word defilements—some of these root tendencies that humans have.

So with patience, we can start to hang in there long enough that we can start to see how we contribute to some of our suffering, and then we can soften or let go of some of those ways in which we contribute to our suffering.

So also we can have patience in our interactions with others. Patience with just how things, how situations are unfolding, patience in our mindfulness practice, and patience with how we interact with others.

Patience is a way that protects our good qualities, in the way that perhaps anger, which we might say is the opposite of patience. If patience is some cool standing by, anger is some fiery engagement. And in the way that with anger we might say or do things that are destructive, including our sense of well-being, or destroying our relationships or our sense of our self. We might have regret and remorse. Anger can easily lead us to be off balance. And there's like this blind anger of lashing out, where we are disconnected from our wisdom, maybe disconnected from ourselves in the moment in some kinds of ways. And lashing out blindly is never the way to solve problems. But instead, with patience, we can solve problems.

And this gets highlighted in a story that the Buddha tells to some of his monastics. So the Buddha is telling the story about this battle that went on between the gods and the demons, in ancient times or something like this. And as is the case for these types of stories, the gods win the battle and the demons lose. And then the ruler of the demons, his name is Vepacitti^[4], is brought to the ruler of the gods, Sakka^[5].

The demon hurls all these insults at the ruler of the gods. And while this is happening, the ruler of the gods, Sakka, his charioteer, somebody who is part of his army, is nearby and sees that the ruler of the demons is insulting his king, the king of the gods. So Matali^[6] is the name of the charioteer.

So Matali says to his king, the king of the gods, "O Sakka, is it from fear or from weakness that you put up with such harsh words in the presence of Vepacitti?" So Matali can't believe that Sakka is not fighting back. He is not spewing angry insults even though he won the war, the battle, and Vepacitti, I guess, is in irons or is harnessed in some way. So the charioteer can't believe that this happens, that Sakka is not fighting back. Maybe I should say that this is written in verse, and for me it has a little bit of a feeling of a Shakespearean play. It's not exactly that, but it has a little bit of that kind of feeling. So the charioteer says, "O Sakka, is it from fear or from weakness that you put up with such harsh words in the presence of Vepacitti?"

Sakka responds, "It's not out of fear or weakness that I'm patient with Vepacitti. For how can a sensible person like me get in a fight with a fool?"

The charioteer responds, "But fools would vent even more if there's no one to put a stop to them. A wise person should stop a fool with forceful punishment." So the charioteer clearly doesn't like that Sakka is just being patient. He thinks he should have punished the king of the demons.

Sakka responds, "I think that this is the only way to put a stop to a fool: when you know that the other is upset, be mindful and stay calm. When you know that the other is upset, be mindful and stay calm."

Matali just can't agree with this and he responds, "I see this fault in just being patient: when a fool thinks, 'He puts up with me out of fear,' then the fool will go after you even more, like a bull chasing someone who runs away."

Then Sakka responds, "Let him think he puts up with me out of fear if he wishes. Of goals culminating in one's own good, none better than patience is found."

"Of goals culminating in one's own good, none better than patience is found." Patience, when experiencing insults in this example, but how many other situations in our lives might patience be the right response?

When our minds get overrun and obsessed by anger or whatever it might be, we might feel miserable and want to get rid of it, but we can't because these thoughts keep bubbling up. Can we have some patience and, just like our meditation practice that recognizes okay, with time the mind can settle, the heart can soften, if we create the conditions in which some settling can happen, if we have the patience, then we can come back maybe to our bodies, to the moment, and allow our greatest wisdom to arise.

This last line, "Of goals culminating in one's own good, none better than patience is found." So may you find patience when you need it for any of your difficulties that you meet in these days. And might we meet some difficulties with patience that allows things to unfold in a way that brings greater ease and well-being, not only to ourselves, but to everyone, to others. So that our practice might be for the well-being of all beings everywhere. Thank you.