Here is a great working definition of patience:

Patience is a mind that is able to accept, fully and happily, whatever occurs. ~ How to Solve our Human Problems

Maybe we think that means we practice patience when someone criticizes me or I lose my job or something, and it does mean that we accept the circumstances of our life with a happy mind so that we can then learn and improve. But it also includes whatever occurs, including our own painful thoughts. We accept even our angry thoughts, accept them fully and happily – because they are there. Not, “Oh no, I’m having a horrible thought about this person, I hate them, I’m a failure, and all I wanted to do was practice patience!” No, we let it be there, but we don’t need deep conversations with it, we just let it sit there. We can even be sort of curious about it, but we give it no power, and we don’t identify with it. We identify instead with our pure potential, compassion, patience, faith.

Carrying on from this article.

What happens to the painful thoughts if we stop giving them the power to hurt us? They tend to slink away through our lack of interest in them.

Soon I shall be free

If instead we stew in these feelings, we are choosing to suffer. We can observe ourselves doing this and see how we are destroying our own freedom in the process. When we identify with these bad feelings, we lose our options. It is actually our self-grasping ignorance that is making us do this, tying us to suffering. If we can observe this, we can see that we are creating our own suffering and therefore have the power to destroy it. If we destroy our self-grasping ignorance we can and will be completely free.

Our thoughts are free

Geshe Kelsang continues to say about patience:

It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things. Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.

That “should” word. Point is, things are NOT other than what they are. You should be different; this shouldn’t be like this! I shouldn’t have this thought in my head” … this is not coming from a position of strength but of weakness, fighting or battling what’s going on. “No! I can’t deal with this!” But it is like that, so we are already losing if we don’t accept it. Whereas accepting whatever is arising fully and happily puts us in a strong position – we say “Yes, that’s happening” (because it is), and then deal with it. Whatever happens, fine, and now I can deal with it and/or let it go.

Watch the conversation in your mind when you are upset – there is a big internal NOOOOOOO!!!!! With patience it is “YESSSS!, or at least OK!” It is not gritting our teeth and bearing it, but genuinely accepting what is happening right now because it is what is happening right now. Of course, this is easier said than done because we are used to saying Noooo!, but we can still get started. As Geshe Kelsang says:

It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and peaceful heart.

If we haven’t trained, it is unlikely we’ll get to this point overnight, but we can improve over the days, weeks, and months until we are able to accept peacefully the challenges that life will inevitably throw us, as well as our feelings about them.

Seven sufferings

Patience is important because life is full of difficulties — we are constantly encountering situations or people we don’t want to encounter, probably even in the last ten minutes; and also the things we want to happen quite regularly don’t happen. Plus, there is that background niggling dissatisfaction at things not being quite as good as they should be – we still crave something else, or something more, and that makes us tense in itself.

Then there are the big sufferings in life – the “four rivers” of birth, ageing, sickness, and death. If we can’t transform sickness, we’ll get upset a lot because our bodies are choc full of stuff that can go wrong. Our organs, ears, eyes, head – these can all hurt and generally do sooner or later. We’re living in pain machines – it is so easy to torture people, you just have to prod them and it hurts. What about ageing? In our culture we worship youth and losing it feels like a freaking disaster. Every sagging jowl, every wrinkle, upsets us – “I shouldn’t look like that when I look in the mirror! Who can I blame? The hairdresser. He cut my hair so badly, it’s his fault!” Then after all this we die and, if we’re not practiced in patience by then it is probably going to be distinctly unpleasant to leave everything we know forever.

So patience is important now and later. And in all our countless lives. Happiness in the future entails controlling our mind now. Anger is an inner poison that can poison all our lives if we let it.

Patience makes us strong

We could be far more in control than we are at present. We cannot control whether or not someone yells at us or buys us donuts, much less control the whole world – but we can gain control over our own minds, at which point we’ll be free to react in whichever way we choose. When we master our thoughts, we can start to create the reality we want from the inside out. That is all the control we need.

More coming soon. Meanwhile, please share your comments on how patience has made you stronger, if it has 🙂

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