I don’t know whether I’m more impatient with the world and the people in it, or with my own impatience.
When I’m impatient with the world and my people, the antidote, patience, feels like it softens striving. And more: patience with family, friends, the way things are, has a kind of alchemical quality. When it arises - in me or in anyone - everyone seems to relax, and to see and listen and care for each other just a little bit better.
When I’m impatient with myself, the antidote of patience is a relief. I can let go of being frustrated with myself. In fact, I can let go of “selfing” altogether (for a moment) – all that exhausting “I/me/mine.” I can be more present, hear what others are saying, and sometimes, listen to nature. There’s a window of peace. That alone makes the practice of patience worth it, for me.
(For everyone like me,
whose impatience has gotten the better of them now & then)
Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 437. Pema Chodron is talking about the six paramitas or perfections of mind, as we near the end of her book, The Places That Scare You. The first paramita is generosity and the second is sila or ethics or harmony, the topics of the last two Wake Up Calls. The next paramita is called k’shanti in the Pali language, the language of the ancient teachings of mindfulness. In English, k’shanti translates as patience.
Before I started studying, I considered myself a patient person. Now I can only say I’m practicing being patient with my impatience.
For me, impatience is sneaky. It slips into so many moments of my day.
Sometimes I notice impatience early in the morning when I walk up to my small practice space to meditate. I notice I’m walking up there with the intention to get to my practice, and if I’m being honest, to get done with my practice. I notice my feet moving more quickly than they need to, striving to “get there” so I can “get done” and then “get to” whatever I’m imagining is happening next. Sometimes I rememberJack Kornfield’s story of the young monk who was sitting, sitting, sitting, all day long, but agitated, looking around all the time. And the teacher came over and whispered to him, “there’s nothing happening next.”
This is always the case, isn’t it? There’s nothing happening next. We may think have this or that appointment, this or that deadline or meeting, this or that birthday coming up. But things can change in a moment. Our very lives can end in a moment. From that perspective it’s easier to see the truth of that teacher’s whisper: there really is an awfully good chance that there’s nothing happening next.
That truth is what helps me remember to slow down. Remember walk more slowly and remember to savor each step: savor laying out my mat, moving into each asana, concluding the yoga, setting up for meditation, sitting. And remember that each of those steps can be a moment of patience, and of peace.
And of course the ironic but completely obvious thing is, even when impatience is driving me, I don’t finish my practice any sooner. Patience doesn’t slow me down, but it does slow down my heart. It brings a kind of dignity to each moment. It reminds me that each moment is worthy of attention; that each moment is enough. Thich Nhat Hanh says, when we walk like we are rushing, we print anxiety and sorrow upon the Earth. Therefore we should walk as if we are kissing the earth with our feet.
Impatience shows up for me quite a bit in conversation. I have a quick mind – I suspect most of us do. Law school and the practice of law are training grounds for the cultivation of the quick mind. I can analyze a problem quickly, and quickly find a solution. When I came out of law school and began hanging out with my non-lawyer friends again, it felt like there were all kinds of wonderful people to hang out with, to play with. The problem was – and still is – their minds aren’t trained to be a quick as my lawyer-friends’ minds and mine. “The problem,” right?
This is also true at home. My brilliant partner, a physician who also understands how to fix, build, and plant things; who knows finance as well as the best expert; who navigates gatherings of humans with humor and grace…has a much more considered mind than me. I raise an idea and it takes him forever – seriously, it can be sixty full seconds – before he responds.
This is fertile grounds for impatience, for me. I notice my body tensing up. My belly, my throat, even my hands – it’s like I’m poised to pounce. I say something and I expect a witty, instantaneous, reply, and there are sixty seconds. I want to move into a conversation, or really, through a conversation, and to move on, and there are those sixty seconds. I have the urge to say something snarky like, hello??, and sometimes – and he definitely doesn’t deserve this – that urge into that hello more often than I catch it before I open my mouth. And it’s all just impatience.
When I do catch my “hello??” before I say it, or even better, catch my impatience when my fingernails start to bite into my palms, is to relax. Relaxing the body, relaxes the mind.
I say this imagining it’s completely obvious to everyone else. But for me, it took a long time to verify for myself that mindfulness of the body is about just that: paying attention to the clenched belly, the tightness in the throat, those sharp fingernails…and staying with it. Staying with it and, as Pema says, realizing that underneath it is my old friend, fear. Fear that things aren’t happening on my timetable or to my way of thinking or won’t get done or decided at all.
Pema reminds us that paying attention to the body “nails us right to the spot.” “Staying with that stickiness, the broken heart, …the feeling of hopelessness…,” she reminds us, “that is the path of true awakening.” Practicing with impatience so often, for me, feels sticky, broken, even hopeless. But I also have so much joy, when patience arises, like watching a beautiful porpoise breach the ocean, slowly, silently, from the shore. Patience is like grace itself.
And, I honestly don’t think I’ll get to a point when patience arises all the time, or when impatience never arises. So I’m trying to make peace with that: peace with knowing that impatience in one form or another is probably my lifelong companion. Patience with impatience.
It helps me to remember what Pema says about all of the paramitas: patience, generosity, harmony, and the other three we’ll explore over the next three weeks. She says, “being ambitious about paramita practice is a setup for failure. When we give up the hope of doing it right and the fear of getting it wrong, we realize that winning and losing are both acceptable. In either case, we have nothing to hang onto. Moment by moment, we are traveling to the other shore.”
