“All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope”

~ Alexandre Dumas Pere

“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.”

~ Author Unknown

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

~ Saint Augustine

"Patience and fortitude conquer all things”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He that can have Patience, can have what he will”

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.  For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you.  So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind."

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Art Ticknor

Why Do You

Richard Rose organized a winter intensive in 1979-80, and in one of

the sessions he posed some rhetorical questions for consideration,

which I made notes of. One set of questions was the following:

* Why do you study, or why do you work?

* Why do you pursue whatever you're pursuing so actively?

* To get a better job? To get a better mate? To get a better

position besides just food and shelter?

* Is this a pursuit of wanting fantasy that will beget fantasy,

and fantasy again that will beget agony?

* Or do you study or work to buy a better house, so that the house

will own you, and then this house will stand to constantly remind you

that you are locked in space and time....?

Are you acting out the script to a play you didn't write? Sleepwalking

through life -- a life that's like a puppet show?

It doesn't make much difference how alert you think you are. You can

vipassana or zazen until the proverbial cows come home -- without

awakening. Spiritual action involves turning the attention around,

letting go of the fantasies.

Rose was pointing to the reversed focus of spiritual action in the

opening lines of his blank verse poem "The Mirror": Who is it that

speaks to you? Who is it that listens to me? Rumi was indicating the

same direction in "Table Talk": Who says words with my mouth? Who

looks out with my eyes?  If you could let those questions get past the

ego defenses, they could trigger the doubt sensation that announces

the opening of the door to looking -- and the possibility of awakening

from the sleep of merely believing.

Patience

"Patience has a quality of insight. One realizes that plans can be made but that anything can interfere with them. Sometimes this may even be a good or kammic result. One is willing to accept setbacks. If we can't accept what happens in our own life, we have double suffering. When we push against something hard enough, our hand starts to hurt. If we put our hand gently on a door or wall there is no pain. Resisting or wanting, that's where all our suffering comes from."

~  Ayya Khema

From the book, "Being Nobody Going Nowhere"

"Adopt the pace of nature her secret is patience''

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Moment Will Come

You may have moments,

where everything feels just right,

only to fall back into the shadows

of distress and deep fright.

Have patience dear soul -

the lower self is powerful indeed

but it is no match

for the higher Self - the Light within thee.

Sooner or later the scale will shift -

as long as you realize this,

there is nothing to fix.

Staying wakeful and watchful

is all you can do -

'Till there's nothing left -

of what you once thought  was you.

~ Nirmala

Never think of fruits. It is only small-minded people who constantly keep on thinking, "I am doing this, I am doing that; I am not hearing sounds, I am not seeing light." Be patient. If you fulfill your duty, no power in this universe can deprive you of what you have worked for.

- Swami Chidananda

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