Patience and its Perfection (Khanti-parami)

By Bhikkhu Khantipalo

 
Patience is an excellent quality much praised in Buddhist scriptures. It can be developed easily only if restlessness and hatred have already been subdued in the mind, as is done by meditation practice. Impermanence, which has the tendency to make one rush around and thus miss many good chances, results from the inability to sit still and let things sort themselves out — which sometimes they may do without one’s meddling. The patient man has many a fruit fall into his lap which the go-getter misses. One of them is a quiet mind, for impatience churns the mind up and brings with it the familiar anxiety-diseases of the modern business world. Patience quietly endures — it is this quality which makes it so valuable in mental training and particularly in meditation. It is no good expecting instant enlightenment after five minutes practice. Coffee may be instant, but meditation is not, and only harm will come of trying to hurry it up. For ages the rubbish has accumulated, an enormous pile of mental refuse, and so when one comes along at first with a very tiny teaspoon and starts removing it, how fast can one expect it to disappear? Patience is the answer, and determined energy to go with it. The patient meditator really gets results of lasting value; the seeker after “quick methods” or “sudden enlightenment” is doomed by his own attitude to long disappointment.