The Majesty of Patience
Patience is the path of grace. A mountain rises over millions of years, but its power is in the waiting. In its time a mountain creates wind, directs weather, experiences 
deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.
Tibetan Buddhist masters say that speeding through life is a fundamental disregard for our existence. Speed is anxiety based and causes us to rush forward damning anything that gets in our way. And once something does get in our way, the collision happens too quickly for a sane response. We become incrementally more important to ourselves the more pressured we feel. “Get out of my way! I’m late for my meditation class.” We become very important to ourselves when we feel pressured. We yell at the dog or tell the kids to leave us alone or otherwise react in ways that are not helpful. We have this great responsibility, with very little time to process our actions. I have a job I have to get to; I am important dammit! This is not living with dignity. This is not only unkind to those hurt by our reactivity, but it is unkind to ourselves.
A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.
One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet. The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze. When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond.
Patience is not holding us in white knuckled tension waiting for the storm to pass but actually slowing down and opening our heart. In this way we create a loving space between thoughts and reaction. We enact a gentle pause for consideration. When we are here and now, breathing, with feet on the ground, the space opens up, the game slows down and options beyond reaction are naturally revealed. Looking at patience from a practical point of view we can see it less as a pejorative or limiting action and more of a forgiving and opening. Rather than shutting ourselves down into a reaction, we are opening up to space. If we relax and create a gap before our next action, we are able to bring awareness into the situation. We are doing something healthy for ourselves and helpful to the circumstances.
Patience is a pause that opens to the light of awareness. Rather than reacting from our base mind circuitry by becoming conscious of breathing, we’re able to redirect the energy to invoke our higher cognitive processing ability, accessing our executive reasoning. We become considerate, or compassionate. We are able to look at the bigger picture and perhaps find a response different that our reaction. We are able to create a space for communication. Now I’m not saying we should become Gandhi. What I’m suggesting is that we pause long enough to be able to 
actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present. Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.
The fundamental work is recognizing, returning, and resting in our meditation so that we have built these tools in our life. In this way, awareness is the loving space that allows us to see the appropriate response. All we need to do is train in this. We don’t have to figure it out on the spot. It’s not on us. We don’t have to prove we’re right. We can just recognize the flashpoint and then remove the pressure. We can offer our anxiety, panic, and aggression. We can offer the assumed mental pressure of disempowerment and receive the natural patience of a mountain.
We can rest on the earth where we belong.
If Trungpa recommended we accept our thoughts without judgement, there is one category of thinking he deemed unacceptable. “Negative negativity” are the judgements we have about ourselves, including those we have toward our own negativity. Negativity is naturally inherited behaviour. Blaming our negativity is counterproductive. It’s essentially blaming ourselves. Whenever we feel the tightness associated with self-affliction, we can come to see that we are punishing ourselves, which is self-flagellation. We can just let any self-judgement go.WE don’t have to pretend we are a buddha, or Mother Theresa or Kendrick Lamar. We can be ourselves and accept negativity as small minded and self-defeating but entirely common and natural. We can allow ourselves to feel our negativity without judgement – but also without action. We can become aware of our underlying behaviors without acting on them. We have every right to feel however we feel, but no right to inflict those feelings upon ourselves or anyone else. If we act out our negativity we are training the mind to continue negativity. On the other hand, as we are socialized not to act out, “acting in” builds internal pressure until we explode, or fall into depression. Both of these actions build the propensity for us to see the world negatively making it easier to act out/in.
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Do gold rings and bling really satisfy us? Maybe. If we can access our essential goodness then the accoutrements of the world will be, as Chogyam Trungpa said, “ornaments which are pleasant to wear.” But when we forget to remember our basic goodness, acquiring any goodness of the world is, Sakyong Mipham says, “like putting elegant clothes over an unwashed body.” If we don’t recognize our own goodness and believe we are worthy, the goodness of the world will not be sustainable. Many of the things in life that we so desperately seek will only lead us from ourselves if we think these things will complete us. This actually erodes our wellbeing. On the other hand, there are things in life that directly feed our soul. When we are in tune with ourselves, we can feel this in our body. So, there are things we do that close us down and things in life that genuinely light us up. If these are the things that money can help acquire it might do better to focus on that which genuinely excites us and then allow the accumulation of wealth to be a practical means to that end.
For some, the money that drives our social economy is a cruel master that causes us to barter our passion for societal progress. Societal progress is not evil, but it doesn’t light us up. And motivating toward financial security is an obligation at best. But what is important is that we remember the essential cause of our motivation. We are humans, not machines. Caring for humanity is a way of transferring our anxiety into meaningful action. This makes us feel better about ourselves which allows us the confidence to recognize and accept goodness from the world. This reconnection to our basic goodness has to be maintained with the daily effort of coming back. We get lost and we come back. Over and over. There is no other way to progress. We train daily by simply coming back to the breath in our practice. Eventually, we gain the confidence to remember to recognize and return to the present in daily life. Then we can turn our life over to our higher power, which is always at the service of helping others. We can go from anxious self-centeredness, which is self-limiting, to the confidence to allow our life to unfold as it should. When we are selfish, we are walling ourselves away from goodness and so will struggle in fear. When we see this, our daily work, our good work, is to return.
attachment is not our fault. However, it is an opportunity to learn to let go. Learning to let go is a tool we can use often in our life and practice. Whenever we are stuck in a thought or feeling an emotion we can’t be rid of, we actually can just stop. We can pause. Once we’ve allowed a gap we might be able to step back and recognize that this experience is not about the object of our pain. It is about the action of gripping. I am holding on. The all-important next step is acceptance.
away we can release our grp with (self)love. Like Banksy’s image of letting go of a heart balloon. We simply open our heart and our mind and offer our anger, disappointment or insult into space. Our emotions are not
influence our life journey. Yet, as these belief systems stem from reactions to difficulties in life, they are defensive and don’t offer access to a larger world with more options and deeper understanding of each other’s beliefs. We just assume that we are right and write off those who disagree as misguided.
Helping ourselves we are more able to develop the clarity and strength to help others. Should we fall into self aggrandizing self importance we lose balance and fall into the river. THen if we surrender we can allow someone else to help us along. This seems to be the process. When we awaken into compassionate interconnection to life, we naturally care for the life around us. And that connection supports us as well. Of course we falter and sometimes fall. But we can learn that our ego is the part of ourselves that needs more and compares itself to everything else. We can recognize that ego is a defensive state that has been programmed to hide in the darkness. Try to make ourselves strong in order to best someone else feels good for a moment, but it is never enough and will never last. When we manifest strength by caring for others we gain a confidence that nurtures a part of us that lies deeper than our programming. With kindness to ourselves and others we nurture our basic goodness that has been there always. We have always had everything.
Of all the distractions in my life, my mind is the most seductive. I am perpetually engrossed in my thinking to the extent that if I was not a meditator, I likely would reside full-time in my head. While our minds are amazing tools, being lost there keeps us from accessing its power and potential. When I am lost anywhere, I am sucked into a part of my mind that cannot see beyond itself. This is to say I lose awareness. When I am unaware I am missing the beauty of my mind and my life. By cultivating UNawareness, I am putting my head in the sand, making myself vulnerable to danger. When I am not aware, a deep inner part of me becomes frightened. My reveries take on a paranoid hue as I succumb to anxiety about the future and regrets of the past.
This was the worst attack upon the Jewish people since the 2nd world war. It will precipitate an intense retaliation which will rock the foundations of world security. All this is happening in the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine that had shaken the world. AIt is also a time when technology has created more awareness and nuance than ever before. The world is either waking up or falling fast asleep. Or perhaps both. We have the setting sun approach turning toward darkness counterposed with the rising sun view of opening to possibility. We can take either position. We can take the easy approach of blaming a group and wishing for their eradication or we step back and try to see more clearly with eyes of healing and compassion. And just like any of us waking up on a spiritual journey, we will see harsh realities along with positive development. It is important not to latch onto solid propositions. As we develop spiritually, one of the things we are waking up to is the horror we are capable of inflicting.
As we journey up the mountain our view changes. We begin to value possibility. Instead of defensive protectives, we start to see the commonality in all humanity. We see that we are part of a greater whole. We are part of an experiment by the cosmos to develop wisdom and begin to see itself. But in order to do this we have to understand a very simplistic binary: acknowledge the mind that keeps us locked in suffering, but follow the higher mind that leads to clarity and strength. While the shadows of our past are still an influence, we can develop the power to look ahead toward a bigger view. No one looks out from the top of the mountain and says, “this sucks”. Sure, we may see all the refineries and junkyards but the view from above is nonetheless beautiful. In time, we will see more of the war and hatred people still rage upon themselves. But we will also see trees growing and life blooming. All of life needs to defend itself, and all life yearns to grow. This higher mind cares naturally for the world. And even as it hurts deeply for its suffering it rejoices in its liberation. We are evolving.
In the 90’s I lived in a meditation center in the Rocky Mountains. What was then known as The Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, was based on the Shambhala Buddhist Tradition and catered to a variety of communities. Each year a group of college students from Chapman University in California came for a 10 day immersion in the healing arts we called “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Madness.”Or program introduced a variety of ancient traditions from Buddhist teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham to the African tradition of Malidoma Some’. The director of the program was Michele Killoran, who was to become a major influence on my life. She had been leading the “Chapman Program” for a decade, when she picked me to be her successor. I was very new to teaching but my youth gave me entry into the students’ trust and heart. I immediately felt a kinship with them. And this was the first principle in the healing circle: trust born of heart connection.
MIchelle showed me the notion of the self-healing, self balancing community. Buddhists call this a mandala. Many indigenous traditions employ this principle, or their version of it. The mandala denotes a community or an environment that organizes around a primary principle. That principle may be a fire, a mountain, a lineage, a teaching, or an idea. In the Chapman program we used Wisdom as our organizing principle. Whatever tradition we introduced, we were looking to use it to develop wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is the map. Maps are important but they are the not the and they represent. The Buddhists talk about fingers pointing to the moon. The finger is not the Moon. Truly seeing the moon, as we would at the RMDC on high alpine nights, is an experience. It is contact with something we can never own. Wisdom is knowledge married to experience. It is knowledge that happens within us. Wisdom changes us. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we refer to transmission as an instantaneous download of wisdom that affects our body, spirit and mind. A given student might experience transformation in a moment or over time. The ones who were open might experience a transmission from launching a bow in Kudo – a ceremonial Japanese archery, or from a rebirthing ceremony with Meledoma, in the sweat lodge or a fire ceremony. The transmission might occur in meditation, when we come back to the breath. If we are open enough transmission may happen as we notice a falling leaf or hear a bird sing.
Years later, in New York City I met a woman named Jaime. She seemed a younger version of Michelle, with flowing gold-woven hair and piercing bright eyes. She was a student of mine, who quickly became a colleague and finally my teacher. She was a shooting star that illuminated my life and then touched down in darkness, leaving waves of her benign effect on the world. She was our original co-teacher in Dharmajunkies, a group we founded on the idea of the sacred community circle. Jaimie and I taught together weekly on Monday nights and her heart touched everyone who came into that circle. Jaimie instructed us on how to speak with each other in ways that opened hearts and fostered heartfelt communication. Like Michelle, Jaimie was gentle and tough. She ushered our group away from competition and comparison. She taught us to support each other by maintaining an awake, loving space. She taught us deep listening. She gave us the strength to be a community based on individuals who, like her, were entirely, completely, unapologetically themselves.
Jaimie was on vacation in Hawaii when she slipped on rocks overlooking the ocean, fell to her death, and was swept to her grave by Namaka, goddess of the sea. The hole she left in my heart will never be filled. Perhaps another key to the healing circle is that wounds need not be healed. That space need not be filled. That all is blessed just as it is. I suppose it is our work to remember that. Who are we bending ourselves to be? Who are we apologizing to? To whom are we explaining ourselves? And why?