Patience - Chogyam Trungpa

Patience, ksanti in Sanskrit, is usually taken to mean forbearance and the calm endurance of pain and hardship. But in fact it means rather more than that. It is forbearing in the sense of seeing the situation and seeing that it is right to forbear and to develop patience. So ksanti has an aspect of intelligence in contrast, one might say, to an animal loaded with baggage which might still go on and on walking long the tract until it just drops dead. That kind of patience is patience without wisdom, without clarity. Here we are referring to patience with clarity, and energy with the eye of understanding. Generally when we talk of patience we think of an individual person who is being patient, but it also has a great deal to do with communication. Patience can develop if there is discipline and if one can create the right situation. Then one does not merely forbear because it is painful and unpleasant and because one is just trying to get through it, but patience can develop easily with the aid of virya, or energy. Without energy one could not develop patience because there would be no strength to be patient, and this energy comes from creating the right situation, which is connected with awareness. Perhaps the word awareness is a little ambiguous, since it often connotes self-consciousness or just being aware of what you are doing, but in this case awareness is simply seeing the situation accurately. It does not particularly mean watching yourself speaking and acting, but rather seeing the situation as a whole, like an aerial view of a landscape which reveals the layout of the town and so on. So patience is related to discipline, which in turn is connected with awareness.

© "Meditation in Action" by Chogyam Trungpa, published by Shambhala Publications, Inc., Horticultural Hall, 300 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115. Website: www.shambhala.com

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