Dear Ones,

This month, we are continuing our community-wide focus on the ten paramis: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, metta, and equanimity.  Together, the paramis give us an understanding of not just what the Buddha said, but what he did to attain his liberation. Practicing as a community in this way helps to bring cohesion and depth so that our many sanghas can practice collectively.

For March, teachers at NYI will be teaching from their lived experience of patience.

Patience or khanti, is the practice of perseverance or forbearance where we cultivate the ability to not demand that the moment be any different than what it is. It’s the ability to stay in the moment without being defined by the hindrances (greed, aversion, sloth, restlessness and doubt) that might arise. Patience includes the willingness to be with failure; to be lost, confused, impatient, or angry; to have fear and take action anyway.

The parami of patience is also connected to the perception of time and difficulty – for example, waiting for the bell to ring at the end of an uncomfortable meditation, or waiting through the unpredictable weather of March to finally get to spring, or waiting for police brutality to end, waiting for folks to lay down their guns, waiting for suffering to end…

Patience can feel like a sacred pause, a deep listening as our body restores its dignity, giving us the opportunity in between thought and action to decide how we want to respond. The practice of patience is not about doing nothing, but rather waiting for the appropriate time. It is not an absence of power, but rather a superpower that allows us to stay present no matter how hard things are.

Listen, patience has never been my strongest virtue! But by engaging with it, I’ve learned that the paramis are not about “being there”, but the process of attaining these qualities of heart and mind – of staying committed to this path, caring for how we move through the world and how we show up as we live the dharma in daily life.

Leslie Booker
Guiding Teacher
New York Insight