Patience & Persistence
The latest issue of Spirit Rock News featured an article by Phillip Moffitt, in which he talks about the relationship between patience and persistence and emphasized their importance “for developing a sustainable meditation practice and for making change in your life.”
Phillip says: Patience is the ability to abide with things the way they are. It allows you to tolerate failure, disappointment, defeat, unpleasantness, and confusion–without giving up–both on the meditation cushion and in life. Persistence is the capacity of energetic resolve–the determination to hold steady to your intentions. Persistence brings into play the essential energy for directing your attention to what needs to be done right now…
Sometimes we can be impatient with the world: however, I don’t recommend starting with the world as the focus of your patience practice. It is far better to begin with fostering patience toward yourself. When you are patient with yourself, you naturally become patient with others and it spreads to those around you…
Persistence gives patience a purpose. If there isn’t a goal with a set of values to which you are applying yourself, what can seem like patience is really dilly-dallying. You’re not really about anything. You’re doing a little of this, a little of that, and you can think, “I’m a patient person. I’m easy-going. I’m doing fine in this area of patience.” But if there is not a commitment to something, if there is no alignment of persistence, then is that really being patient? Or are you simply tuned-out?
Through persistence you will eventually develop insight. But, if you’re not patient with yourself, you will not be able to be persistent. You don’t have to do anything extra. Just be patient and persistent in staying present, and the insights will come.
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Read the full article on Phillip’s website by clicking here.
Another Way to Celebrate
In case you’re looking for a different way to start the New Year (if romping through the surf in your birthday suit isn’t an option), Sylvia Boorstein will be hosting a New Year’s Day Celebration and Intention Setting Event at Spirit Rock, which will be available by live video stream.
This special retreat day will be an opportunity to practice, to set intentions, and to connect with deepening wisdom. A portion of the day will be in silence, reviewing and practicing techniques to strengthen concentration and clarify mindfulness. Get out your journal to record the intentions you set!
This event will be held on Thursday, January 1, 2015, starting at 12:00 noon (St. Louis time) and run till 6:00 pm. Cost is $60. (Much cheaper than a trip to the beach!) For more information and to register, click here.
Going Nowhere
Another of my Dharma buddies (thanks, Thomas!) pointed me to a beautiful little book by celebrated travel writer, Pico Iyer, with the wonderfully provocative title — The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. Which was inspired by Iyer’s visit with the famous singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen during his 5 years of living as a Zen monk.
Here’s a passage from the book:
Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply…
So much of our lives takes place in our heads–in memory or imagination, in speculation or interpretation–that sometimes I feel that I can best change my life by changing the way I look at it. As America’s wisest psychologist, William James, reminded us, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
It’s the perspective we choose–not the places we visit–that ultimately tells us where we stand. Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into lasting insights.
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(The photo above is one of many included in the book, all taken in Iceland by Eydis Einarsdottir. Click here to see more.)
Not Moving and Not Still
One of my Dharma buddies (hi, Lori!) wrote to say that the book I posted about on Friday — Listening to the Heart — is a Christmas present she will give to herself and that next March, she will sit a retreat at IMS with the authors — Kittisaro and Thanissara. (Another great gift, I might add.) She asked that I post something more from the book, so here’s a passage, written by Kittisaro, which has already had a big impact on my practice:
During my sabbatical year on retreat I had the precious opportunity to continually empty the heart of subtle splits. Many times a day I would reflect on a phrase from the Heart Sutra: “All dharmas are empty of characteristics.”
I noticed that habitually my thoughts would label, define, and concretize whatever was happening, making that activity seem real. While walking, I ordinarily gave reality to the “characteristic” of movement.
Emptying the heart of that perception, letting that thought dissolve, I noticed the essential stillness within walking. I practiced walking while perceiving the unmoving suchness that is always here and now.
While sitting and feeling peaceful, when the heart attached to the perception of stillness, I noticed the movement within stillness–the breath flowing, the sensations vibrating, the sounds flickering. I reflected on stillness during movement and the movement within stillness, emptying the rigid distinctions I make unconsciously, all the time. Movement and stillness, each is just a way of talking.
Letting thoughts subside, the true Dharma is not moving and not still.
Similarly, there is a tendency to create a difference between good states and bad states, mindful moments and heedless moments, enlightened and deluded, in here and out there, feeling peaceful and suffering, meditating and not meditation, being on retreat and being back in the world.
Every time I noticed the heart making a mark, creating a split, I practiced letting that thought go, revealing its essential emptiness. This beautiful and peaceful practice is sometimes called cultivating patience with the non-production of dharmas.
It Just Needs to Ripen
“Wisdom is in you, just like the sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.” — Ajahn Chah
The quote for today is from a wonderful new book I’ve been reading by Kittisaro and Thanissara, who I’m going to be sitting with in South Africa for the month of January. The book is called Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism.
I’m only on chapter 4, but already I want to recommend it to everyone! Here’s what Phillip Moffitt has to say: “Listening to the Heart is three books in one. It’s a guide to deep understanding of Buddhist dharma, an explanation of psychological growth, and a love story.” (Twenty years ago Kittisaro and Thanissara were monastics, but now they are husband and wife!)
Add Flowers
And now a bit of dharma wisdom from that great sage, Michael Pollan:
Place a Bouquet of Flowers on the Table and Everything Will Taste Twice as Good.
(illustration by Maira Kalman, from Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan)
Hatred Never Ends Through Hatred
I feel so much sadness…and despair…over the Michael Brown case, and all the causes and conditions that led to it and that seem to be leading to more of the same.
So I offer these lines from the Dhammapada, which the monk Maha Gosananda chanted — and led his people to chant — as they walked back through the killing fields of Cambodia to reclaim their land at the end of the Vietnam War:
Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hatred alone does it end. This is an ancient truth.
It Takes Work
I apologize for not posting last Friday, but I was too exhausted from the mental “housekeeping” I’ve been doing — nothing traumatic, just working through a mind-storm of emotions around a situation in which I was (finally) able to set some firm, clear boundaries. (Not a practice I’ve done very well in the past.)
I think the worst is over. But I’m still in the process of calming down.
So I’ll just leave you with this lovely little “mantra” from Sylvia Boorstein, which I’ve found to be very helpful, and which I was reminded of at the Sunday Sangha sitting yesterday morning. (Thanks, Sheryl!)
May I meet this moment fully,
May I meet it as a friend.
All Of Us
I’m back from the retreats in Mississippi and Tennessee and now, of course, must turn my attention to laundry and grocery shopping and sorting through mail. Which is not that much different, really, than walking and sitting, because there are always thoughts and emotions and sounds and sensations….all coming and going….all pretty much all on their own. The mind is amazing. It never fails to put on a show.
For today’s post, I offer this poem, which I have chosen for many reasons… mostly unknown.
Too Many Names
by Pablo Neruda
Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the whole week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your exhausted scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.
No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it has no name.
When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.
It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year lasts four centuries.
When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not I while I slept?
This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into this life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formalities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much signing of papers.
I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, make them new-born,
mix them up, undress them,
until all light in the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crackling, living fragrance.
Extraordinary Accomplishments
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for another 3-day retreat at Flowering Lotus and then my friend Dolores (the founder of Flowering Lotus) and I will drive together to attend a 7-day retreat outside of Nashville, and then we’ll head back here to St. Louis for a visit to the Chan Monastery in Augusta, Missouri (MABA). So I won’t be posting again until after Wednesday, Nov 19th.
In the mean time, I leave you with this art piece by Maira Kalman, from the Oct 2013 issue of Mindful magazine. (click on the image to enlarge)
It reads:
I cannot stop talking. About my upcoming extraordinary accomplishment — a three day silent retreat.
I manage to insert it into every conversation I have. “I’d like half a pound of sliced turkey, I’m going on a silent retreat, and half a pound of potato salad, Thank you.”
What will we do? Not talk. Which has its big plusses. No worries about saying something stupid every five minutes. We will do some menial tasks. (I love this part.)
And we will meditate a lot. To tell the truth, I am wary of meditating all day long.
What demons lurk inside me that I would rather not encounter? For me, most revelations end with “I am horrible.” Who needs it?
What to bring? Nothing. No camera, notebooks, pens, books. No nothing. This sounds terribly boring (and interesting). Where will silence take me? I have no idea. Which is the point. I think.