'Kshanti'- patience

Patience as an antidote to anger in our everyday life.

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Kshanti paramita is the perfection of patience in the Buddhist world. Even the word - kshanti - has a soothing sound to it. Like the shushing of a mother to a child.

To practice with this quality is to understand our reactivity to all that triggers us in life. We know from experience that we don’t decide to become angry but we find ourselves becoming so. This reflects the nature of our conditioning and how we respond to the conditions of our lives. We can’t always change our external circumstances so easily but we can change our responses. So, patience is a way of working with our responses to all life throws at us.

Patience is about forbearance, tolerance and forgiveness. In Buddhism it is the antidote to ill will and hatred. This might sound too strong a word but we all experiences little hatreds every day.

𑁍 It has been said there is no spiritual practice equal to patience.

To have imperturbability, composure, non reactivity based on capacity to bear difficulty without blame, to be still with things as they are without needing to fix things is a noble quality.

Life gives us plenty of opportunity to practice with patience. I speak as a parent and any parent will know how much children test our patience. Parenthood is rich working ground.

It’s not that I don’t experience reactivity but with practice - with patience - it is certainly lesser. I catch my self in the moment more often and sometimes even before the moment of irritation and anger.

𑁍 Patience is imbued with love and wisdom

Patience is thought about in three ways: patience towards the natural and external environment (let’s stop moaning about the weather), patience towards ourselves (let’s stop berating ourselves) and patience towards others (let’s try and respond with a little more compassion)