Patient Perseverance with Ourselves and Obstacles
06/26/2017
Discussion led by Leslie Morgan, Assistant Secretary; and Marc Kaye, Communications Committee
“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.”
~Jalaluddin Rumi
“The Buddha famously declared khanti to be the supreme purification practice. He was playing on the Vedic term tapas, which signifies the taking on of an austere or ascetic practice such as fasting or mortifying the body in order to cleanse the mind of passions and attachments. But the Buddha pointed not to physical asceticism — which he frequently spoke against — but of the restraint of holding the heart still in the presence of its suffering until it lets go of the ways in which it creates that suffering. That is, the mind/heart (citta) habitually creates suffering and stress through reacting to, holding onto or getting caught up with what life throws at us. All the perfections contribute to the lessening or dismantling of that dukkha, but the specific quality of patience is to carry the heart through the turbulence of existence so that it no longer shakes, sinks or lashes out.”
~ Ajahn Sucitto
http://ajahnsucitto.org/articles/parami-2-patience
