Patience is the Stronger Position

I’m wondering about patience these days:
accepting that things are what they are.
I’ve studied and tried to practice that kind of patience
with friends and family and colleagues and students
and the everyday vicissitudes of life, 
and even with myself.
And all of that’s one thing.  

But then there’s the news.
And Anthony Romero’s suggestion (he runs the ACLU)
that if all else fails, “we may have to shut down the country.”

If patience is about accepting how things are,
is it also about waiting to see if all else fails?
And about shutting down the country if it does?
 
The Dalai Lama says patience puts us in a stronger position
 to judge an appropriately nonviolent response.
 That sounds so wise, to me. But so does Mr. Romero. 

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 479. This week I got interested in patience (k’shanti in the Sanskrit), which is one of the perfections of mind. My partner shared a piece he’d written about patience several years ago and when I read it, I started to wonder what patience could mean right now. 

There are different circumstances where I need patience. One is with other people: with the friend who’s late for dinner, the colleague who’s not understanding what we’re trying to say, the partner and we already know what they’re about to say because they’ve said it before (maybe many times), the student who isn’t doing the work. How to bear the experience of other people not being who I want them to be or not giving me what I want, when I want it, or not doing or saying what I think they should do or say or at least what I think they should want to do or say. 

Another circumstance where I need patience is with the everyday annoyances of life: the shoelace that breaks and we don’t have a spare. The flat tire, the parking ticket, the traffic. The rain or the cold or the heat. Feeling tired when I have more to do. Wanting more free time, or more work, and not having that yet. All of the ways everyday life doesn’t meet my expectations or satisfy my desire for things to be the way I want them to be. 

And the final circumstance where I need patience is with myself. I’m not moving fast enough or slow enough or I’m not working efficiently enough or not being kind enough or firm enough or whatever it is: those moments of self-judgment and they really speak to a lack of patience with this human right here, doing her best.

Patience in all of these circumstances, for me, begins with being gentle with myself in those moments of imperfection. I notice the body is tight and invite myself to relax. Or I notice the mind is edgy and sharp, and remember that I care about my friend, my colleague, my partner, my student. And about myself, too, and don’t want to live in tight body with an edgy mind, and also that I don’t have to do that. That whatever is causing my impatience isn’t really the problem because there actually isn’t a problem. I’m just activated and I can see that – see it without adding that second arrow of frustration on top – then it’s possible to relax, let go. And then, instead of impatience taking over, I can remember to care. Meaning, instead of letting frustration or anger bulldoze the present moment – and really, instead of objecting to the present moment – I can just agree: this is how it is right now. My friend is late, my partner is repeating themselves, my student isn’t very committed, or interested. And it’s cold outside. I can agree that these things are true, and in that simple act of agreeing to the truth of the present moment, space opens up. And in that space, choice arises, and I can ask myself that beautiful question Pema Chodron poses: am I going to practice peace or am I going to war. In a story I once heard, the teacher is asked about a variety of different and contradictory statements and just says, over and over, “I agree, I agree.” So the inquiry with patience, for me anyway, is, can I agree with this moment?

But then there’s the larger moment. And how to be patient with that.

I open the paper and I feel destabilized. I get into a political discussion with someone – whether their views are similar to mine or not – and anxiety or fear or sadness arises. 

So first, patience with the larger moment feels like agreeing that the larger moment is what it is. It feels like agreeing that feeling destabilized and anxious and afraid, are true. That the news is what it is, and that when I hear it or read it I feel agitation and restlessness in the body and mind; a wanting for things to be other than they are, or for an escape. Patience with all of that feels like being with all of that, because it’s true, and not getting into an argument with what is. Relaxing the body, relaxing the mind, and simply accepting this moment for what it is. 

That’s first. But then there’s what’s next. Did you see or hear David Remnick’s interview with Anthony Romero, the executive director for the ACLU, in the New Yorker on Sunday? Romero talks about all the lawsuits the ACLU is filing, and he’s somewhat optimistic. But then again the interview is titled, “We Might Have to ‘Shut Down The Country’” which is David Remnick quoting Romero, who says basically that if all else fails, we might have to take it to the streets. 

The Dalai Lama says that, too, in a way. In Ethics for a New Millennium, His Holiness says, “[Patience and tolerance] should not be confused with mere passivity. On the contrary, adopting even vigorous countermeasures may be compatible with tolerance. There are times in everyone’s life when harsh words – or even physical intervention – may be called for. But since it safeguards our inner composure, [patience] means we are in a stronger position to judge an appropriately non-violent response than if we are overwhelmed by negative thoughts and emotions.”

What I hear in that instruction is that no matter what we may need to do – take it to the streets, shut down the country - we also need to retain patience, or actually His Holiness’s translation of k’shanti, which is tolerance. It reminds me about Vedana, the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, that sense we have that each moment is either pleasant or unpleasant or neither. And how what matters, what we can do with the understanding that each moment has this valence, this Vedana, is to cultivate pleasant Vedana in the mind, or heart, or both. Which is more or less about cultivating equanimity. So that when we bump up against unpleasant moments, we can meet them with compassion and wisdom. It feels like His Holiness may be saying something similar patience, or tolerance: that we can cultivate a general sense of patience, tolerance, ease. That we can agree that yes, this is how things are. And that we can take that with us, no matter what’s called for. 

At the end of the interview, Remnick more or less asks Anthony Romero about this. He asks, “Is it possible to pace yourself considering the ferocity and speed at which things are happening?” And Romero says, “You’ve got to retain bandwidth. If we run the gantlet and we file all the cases that we need to right now, and then don’t have the ability to file them in years two, three, and four, we’ll do the country no good. We have to play this game smartly. And we are picking and choosing our battles.”

Sounds like k’shanti, doesn’t it? Sounds like patience and tolerance and compassion and wisdom all in one potentially very fiery strategy. To me, it sounds worth considering.