Patience and Perseverance - Sayadaw U Pandita

If you practice with heroic effort, entertaining no considerate attachment to body or life, you can develop the liberating energy which will carry you through the higher stages of practice. Such a courageous attitude contains within itself not only the seventh, but also the eighth means of developing the controlling faculties. This eight quality is patience and perseverance in dealing with pain, specially painful sensations in the body.

All yogis are familiar with the unpleasant sensations that can come up during the course of a single sitting, the suffering of the mind in reaction to these sensations, and on top of that, the mind’s resistance to being controlled as it must in the practice.

An hour’s sitter requires a lot of work. First, you try to keep your mind on the primary object as much as possible. This restraint and control can be very threatening to the mind, accustomed as it is to running wild. The process of maintaining attention becomes a strain. This strain of the mind, resisting control, is one form of suffering.

© "Dhamma" (August 2003) published by Maha Bodhi Society, 14, Kalidasa Road, Gandhinagar, Bangalore 560 009. Website: www.mbodhi.com. Reprinted with permission.

<< Back