Don't tell me to be patient!

[Image: Blades and Droplets, Kristi Crymes]

By Bob Caron

In essence, patience is the ability to tolerate discomfort. It’s a useful skill, and one that is being put to the test right now: a full year into a pandemic. Who isn’t pining for restrictions to lift, family to embrace, work, travel and leisure to be restored? My experience this year has been challenging in many ways, and I can’t pretend that I haven’t wanted a return to better to emerge rapidly. My mental health has waxed and waned, and my intolerance has surfaced more often than I’d like. Patience is clearly not a virtue that I developed, but a practice that I work on. Sitting in meditation builds the muscle of tolerating discomfort with remarkable efficiency. When my posture is aligned, breath deep, and I’m present to gravity’s pull, I have yet to find the edge of my tolerance for discomfort. My tolerance is a trifle more limited when I’m not on the cushion but sitting has expanded it immeasurably. Yet, building that muscle is not the point of Zen meditation and, while one could easily be fooled otherwise, I don’t think it’s the lesson this year is trying to teach me either.

I don’t much like patience. It’s the kind of tolerance that I feel when I’m in a long line for something that doesn’t seem worth the wait. It’s me having the same conversation with my kids for the thousandth time as I’m wondering how this message hasn’t yet sunk in. It’s the skill I use in sitting when I’m just done with a sit and mentally disengaged, but the bell hasn’t yet rung. It’s really not pleasant, but it has some social utility. That tolerance for discomfort is what we feel when we are wishing for a future to happen now and most of us allow that future to linger in our thoughts and visions for an unproductive amount of time.

I sense that Zen and this year are both inviting us into this present moment and asking us to let go of the future that we can’t control, and to embrace the beauty of this moment for all that is it and all that it offers us.

I sense that Zen and this year are both inviting us into this present moment and asking us to let go of the future that we can’t control, and to embrace the beauty of this moment for all that is it and all that it offers us. Mostly, when I’m able to harness the power of this presence it’s because I’m less in my thoughts and more connected to my senses. I’m carefully noticing the sounds, smells, sights that surround me, and the subtle pull of gravity on my body. I do this most easily outdoors, but also in connection with my children. Those things bring me joy, and in joy connection is easily expanded. Perhaps you share my experience that this is a little harder to do when wrestling with tough decisions or when working through difficult circumstances. We throw the term shugyo around often in our training and lineage, and in essence it’s a term that suggests a depth of training that is integrated into every fabric of your being and every aspect of your life. Where living and training are indistinct. Frankly, I think it’s a depth of training that few have been able to achieve for long enough durations to make it stick but this is how I understand the phrase “the training is in the bones”. 

I have more work to do on this Way and more bones to train. Yet, I’ll share that for my part this training has served for me to recognize that beauty exists in this moment and all the moments, no matter the circumstance. I’ve noticed that compassion and joy are available – always – any time we wish to access them. I’ve been able to live with awareness of my thoughts and obsessions with the future and surrender what I cannot control about them while finding solace in the actions I can take in the here and now. I don’t want to mislead you into thinking I have something figured out that you don’t – and the more I train the more I know that I must train further and deeper. What I do know beyond any measure of intellectualization, is that this right here and now is perfect so there’s really no patience needed at all.

Bob Caron is a Zen Leadership Coach and Instructor