2021-08-23 Patience (1 of 5) Staying True Under Stress

2:59PM Aug 23, 2021

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

patients

patience

meditation

deepest

feels

impatience

stress

true

tense

stay

healthy

challenging

truer

word

reactive

buddhist practice

calm

losing

rush

point

Here we are first day of the week, Monday, first day for our next series. For these five days, I would like to spend our time reflecting, thinking about focusing on patience. The Pali word for patients khunti k ha en ti Shanti. In Sanskrit, it's a really rich word. And perhaps it was riches, the word patience. But, you know, it's multifaceted, and it's relevant. the very start of doing Buddhist practice, as I said, in meditation, or you have to, if you don't learn patience, quickly, meditation is gonna be much harder than it needs to be. And it's also characterized as some of the deepest insights, some of the deepest places to abide and to dwell in, in meditation, where there's a kind of something that called Kunti, something that's called patients. And so there's many forms of patience, and I'll talk about different ones. And over these five days, but patience is needed. Not because it's just a virtue, you always just practice it, because it's good to do. But patience is a response or a practice, to things that are challenging. And so when we get reactive in ways that are unhealthy for us, and healthy for others, sometimes patience is a better, better response than anger or resentment, or being stressed or being kind of getting tense around what's happening. And so this capacity to appreciate the value of patience, and understand how it enhances us, brings out the best in us, as opposed to patients with a damp it's dampens us down or represses us in some way and, and is actually adds stress to the system rather than freeze it to it. So today, I want to talk a little bit about I'll tell you the five themes of patience for the week. The first today is going to be be patience, which is being staying true. under stress, staying true to ourselves under stress. Tomorrow, it's gentle perseverance, under difficulties under challenges, Wednesday will be patients under insult the things that happen in their life, how people treat us to be patient with the insults. And so what does that mean? And then Thursday will be forgiveness when insulted into how's that help, how's that done in a healthy way. And then Friday is the kind of the deepest form of patients and the word Conti is used for this and we're their patients is the right word in English or not. But this has to do with their certain very deep patients with the some of the deepest truths that we can touch into through Buddhist practice. Some of the deepest realization insights that are you know, it sounds wonderful to have insights, deep realizations, but some of them are challenging to have. And so develop patience around these, these these things which are phenomenally true. But But you know, it's challenging to do. So, for example, we can realize at some point, I have insight and realization at some point of the possibility of not clinging to anything. But then we end up cleaning a lot. So how do we and and, and it can be frightening, this idea that let go of really not clinging and so to be patient, to be accepting to be some other some kind of healthy tolerance for this truth that clinging is not worthwhile. So today, that topic is being true under stress. And what I mean by this and this is particularly meant for people who I'm thinking in my mind, I'm thinking about people have some kind of ongoing spiritual practice, like meditation practice,

that at some point, we start having access or start experiencing a way of being that feels true Feels truer than being greedy, being hateful, being tense a lot, being afraid a lot is truer than kind of getting lost in fantasy and spinning around in thoughts. And when when the thoughts quiet down, when we feel more connected to ourselves more settled on ourselves, when we're not ahead of ourselves not behind ourselves, we're not not when we're not kind of carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. That, that make him feel like, oh, now I'm more myself, I'm more alive, and we're connected. There's something here, which feels true and honest. And so to connect to this honesty, to this true way of being, so it could just be maybe I'm talking a little bit in Grand terms, it could be that some like, meditation just helps us to be calmer a little bit. And then and that feels right. To not to calm feels a little bit commerce who feels better than being agitated. And so there's a reference point, something that feels healthy and good and desirable, a way of being. And so to be patient, is just for people have access to that is it stay true to it, in stressful situations. And there's a lot of what we know is an infinite number of situations we might find ourselves in that are stressful, it could be the most mundane, it could be that we're late for the dentist. And, and so we feel we have to rush and be anxious and worry. But we know that when we rush and worry that way that we actually lose touch with what's true about ourselves, I mean, it's true or connected or real or valuable way of being. And so maybe so to be patient is to not give into that rush, not give in to the the thoughts of worry that are spinning stories and stories. But to be patient with ourselves is to stay true to what we know is there. And what this means is that for people who don't have access to some way of being that feels like right way of being or better or a satisfying way of being, then patients might seem like just a, a, you know, I don't know, an obligation, it's like a work in and I have to work at this to being patient and, and it just kind of a drag because it's just like imposing a certain kind of virtue on top of us. But if we know something that's valuable, we know way of being that's healthy and good, then the to be patient is not to give that up easily. And not to easily succumb to the temptation, to be angry, the temptation to be worried temptation to want things to be different, and the impulse, strong kind of movements of impatience that might be there. And so to give, give, let go of the impatience. So that we can stay closer to what we feel is valuable. entities. And, and, and so and, and sometimes this idea of patience, has less to do with a way of being patient, as it is letting go of the impatience, whatever that is the forces of impatience, so that we can be something that feels innate, and healthy and good not to hold on to it, not to construct something, but let go into something deeper that we have. So one of the exercises you might think of that goes along with what I'm saying today, is when you meditate, and maybe you want to maybe meditate a little extra this week. So you can do this exercise. It doesn't have to be a long a 10 minute meditation, and is to when you finish your meditation, if you're a little calmer or more subtle than you were before, more connected and then you get up from that meditation and stay very carefully attentive to when you begin losing that calm, losing that subtleness. And when you do, stop in your trucks, and maybe even close your eyes, and check in with yourself and see what just happened here.

If anything happened here, that was a symptom of impatience and what would it And maybe Could I come back since it just happened just a few moments ago that I started to get tense or hurried? Can I settle back into this place of calm or subtleness? When I'm calling, and this is what I call being true under stress. So there might be good reasons to start hurrying and rushing and getting tense. But it's not necessarily the best thing to do. Even if the reasons are there. The results of being stressful, it stressed and doing as reactive things is we're less wise we're less involved, more forgetful, more easy to make mistakes. And sometimes, when we don't have to redo things, because we stay calm and do them carefully the first time. It's actually more efficient. So try this exercise when you come out of meditation, maybe even today. And after this talk, is notice when you begin losing some subtleness or calm and then see, what would it be like to be patient? Would it be like to be true to yourself under stress. So first type of patients being true and staying true under stress. So I hope that as we go through these five different kinds of patients, that it's kind of a little journey for all of us into kind of a deeper and deeper dimension of, of this parts of our lives. So thank you and I look forward to being here tomorrow.