From Patience

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 along the track 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.

Discipline is in fact the key to everything, and sila, morality, is the source of discipline and the main function of discipline. And here there are two schools of thought: according to one, discipline is necessary and only through discipline can one learn and find the right way; according to the other school of thought, things should be allowed to develop in their own way, and if there is less discipline, if things are left to the individual's choice or instinct, then he will develop a personal interest in the subject and there will be no need to impose anything on him. Both are extreme views. Not that Buddhists like to compromise in every case; it is more a question of seeing things very clearly. Whenever there is too much discipline it is invariably being imposed by someone else. There are rules and regulations, and one is always being watched and told what to do, in which case one is not really being what one is—somebody else is merely expanding his ego and imposing his idea on you. That would be a kind of dictatorship rather than discipline, because it would be trying to force things to grow, as opposed to allowing them to grow naturally. On the other hand, if discipline is left entirely to the individual and he has to feel his own way, he would find it very difficult—except in the very rare case of a person who is very intelligent and highly controlled, in the sense of not being influenced by an irregular or neurotic pattern of thoughts, opinions and emotions. Which is not to say that most people are mad or psychologically disturbed, but this element is in everyone. There is usually a neurotic aspect which causes us in some way or another to react to a given situation and develop a neurotic way of dealing with it, which is not at all the true way. That is acting according to one's conditioning rather than according to what is. So in this case the person would not have the ability to develop freedom because freedom is not properly presented to him. Freedom must be presented properly. In fact the word freedom itself is a relative term: freedom from something, otherwise there is no freedom. And since it is freedom from something, one must first create the right situation, which is patience.

This kind of freedom cannot be created by an outsider or some superior authority. One must develop the ability to know the situation. In other words, one has to develop a panoramic awareness, an all-pervading awareness, knowing the situation at that very moment. It is a question of knowing the situation and opening one's eyes to that very moment of nowness, and this is not particularly a mystical experience or anything mysterious at all, but just a direct, open and clear perception of what is now. And when a person is able to see what is now without being influenced by the past or any expectation of the future, but just seeing the very moment of now, then at that moment there is no barrier at all. For a barrier could only arise from association with the past or expectation of the future. So the present moment has no barriers at all. And then he finds there is a tremendous energy in him, a tremendous strength to practice patience. He becomes like a warrior. When a warrior goes to war he does not think of the past or his previous experience of war, nor does he think of the consequences for the future; he just sails through it and fights, and that is the right way to be a warrior. Similarly, when there is a tremendous conflict going on, one has to develop this energy combined with patience. And this is what is known as right patience with the all-seeing eye, patience with clarity.