Milarepa's Song on the Six Perfections: Verse 3 (Patience)

[Bill Gardner]

For patience, nothing to do,
Other than not fear what is ultimately true.

This is a shocking verse. Patience seems to be an easy and, as it were, domestic virtue. It's about counting to ten before you speak, and about waiting your turn. Patience is something that children lack and, by inference, adults are expected to have achieved. But for Mila, somehow patience lies at the crux of ultimate truth. Starting from the simple and everyday 'patience', the verse seems to run off a cliff.

What is ultimately true? I don't know. If I don't know what is ultimately true, how can I be said to fear it? It was said that the truth will make us free -- if so, wouldn't we be glad to find it, instead of fearful? If Mila is right, I expect that the reason I do not (think I) know the truth is precisely because I do fear it. If I fear it that much, how do I overcome that fear so that I can know the truth? And what does any of this have to do with patience?

First, we need to rethink patience. It is anything but simple and ordinary. Equanimity may be the better English word. Aquinas, quoting Augustine: "'A man's patience it is whereby he bears evil with an equal mind,' i.e. without being disturbed by sorrow, 'lest he abandon with an unequal mind the goods whereby he may advance to better things.'" Patience is therefore a kind of fortitude; it protects the other virtues so that we can hold to them with an equal mind through the suffering in our lives. The ultimate truth we fear is, I suspect, the first noble truth, that there is suffering, including old age, sickness, and death. Patience is, then, precisely not fearing this; not experiencing the fortunes of our lives as opposition to our desires and needs, and instead experiencing them directly, as what they are.

[Kate Mazetier]

The origin of the word patience- from the Latin- patientia, pati, via Old French and Middle English is the word suffering. If we don't fear the ultimate truth of suffering, there is nothing to do and we are simply here in our experience, whatever it may be. Not "patiently" waiting for it to change.

Often if I look a word up in the dictionary I realize that my working understanding of that word is sorely lacking and the connective tissue between one word and another starts to become clear and the original intent of the practice deepens and takes me into areas I could not have predicted. Love it!

You are right in saying that it is a shocking verse. It points directly to nothing being what it seems and leaves us right here to find what is alive and true in this experience.

Thanks Bill, for your initial exploration of this verse. Someone recommended that I use these verses as topics for writing and I am finding that to be wise counsel.

[Bill Gardner]

Cool! Although of course, looking at Latin etymology, or the Summa Theologica, will only tell us about what patience meant for us. Does anyone know more about the Tibetan word that KM translated as patience, or whether Mila actually used khanti (Pali; or kshanti, Sanskrit) in his verse?

[Pat Stacy]

Patience seems to be a discussion we had when this forum first started. I agree with Bill that there is a feeling of falling off a cliff if this verse is penetrated. Rather than starting with trying to determine what is ultimately true and hoping patience will arise out of that discovery, we are perfectly capable of awareness of times patience is lacking. Attention during a lack of patience might consist of recognition of body tensions and hardened thoughts. Any inquiry into this state will allow us to discover the fear that is at its base.

Frustration, anger, irritation, and boredom are indications of lack of patience. They arise because we absolutely do not want to feel the fear that underlies our existence. Even though these negative emotions are mildly unpleasant, they are preferable to feeling the fear that has arisen just prior to their appearance.

Milarepa, having penetrated to this underlying fear, tells us that all we have to do is find and face “things as they are” or what is ultimately true. The first thing we can face that is true is thatwe are impatient, standing in line at the grocery store, trying to get our dogs, cats, or children to do something they don’t want to do, or watching our retirement fund disappear. From the minor irritation of a flat tire to the possibility of homelessness, can we accept what is ultimately true?

We think we know what is ultimately true, as evidenced by a very successful campaign to cover this knowing up with impatience whenever it arises. We know there is suffering, everything changes, and there is no self, and these are frightening ideas. Standing in line at the grocery store we know we have no control over anything, we are as insignificant as every other person in line, a gap in frantic activity presents itself, and there is a very small panic covered up with impatience.

If Milarepa is telling us there is nothing else to do but not fear this condition, how do we arrive at that point of no fear of what is ultimately true? I think there is a clue in the word “ultimately.” All our fears are fears of what we think is true, but not of what is ultimately true, which I know to have no fear in it at all.

When I first started building houses, working on the roof of a one-story house was disconcerting. The fear of falling off was always present. Then working at that height became comfortable. Then it was two stories up that was uncomfortable, but I became unafraid of that also. Eventually I could sit on beams three stories up with nothing underneath.

Exposure to the fear, facing it, finding there to be no basis for it, and eventual comfort in what was once terrifying is what we do every time we sit to meditate, isn’t it? We develop a capacity to investigate uncomfortable states, mental and physical. We begin to comprehend the nature of fear and ironically not to fear the feelings or thoughts that accompany it. Fear is a fake, a trick of the mind that says, “Look over here, not at what just passed.” What just passed is what is ultimately true, and when we find that, there isn’t even the possibility of being afraid. Only the approach contains fear. Milarepa can tell us with perfect confidence that we don’t have anything to fear.

Pat

[Greg]

Well said Pat.

G

[Janet]

Pat,

You say, "We think we know what is ultimately true, as evidenced by a very successful campaign to cover this knowing up with impatience whenever it arises."

Could you say more about that? Yes, fear, anxiety or impatience arises as we get closer to what is true. But in what sense is it because we believe we know what is ultimately true?

And knowing it, why do we fear it? I'd be very interested in your elaboration of these points.

Janet

[Pat Stacy]

Karen, you said, “Could you say more about that? Yes, fear, anxiety or impatience arises as we get closer to what is true. But in what sense is it because we believe we know what is ultimately true?”

Yes, I can say a lot more. Thank you for asking.

It’s our belief system that gets us into trouble all the time. As Westerners we believe we need to learn something, add something, and qualify somehow, to be worthy to know truth. I think Buddhism presents a different view. It tells us what is ultimately true already surrounds us, permeates us, is us, and we know this is true on a subconscious level. But our habit of trying always to make ourselves into something bigger, better, or more perfect keeps us from the recognition of the absolute. I say we know it’s there because we struggle so hard to ignore it.

This is what I meant when I said we THINK we know it. What we think about it isn’t it, but what we think about it scares us. I’m confusing the issue by using the term ultimate truth to mean two different things. What we think it is and what it actually is. And I’m only using this term because Milarepa tells us to accept what is ultimately true. I’m not sure he would use the term ultimate truth as if it’s a discrete graspable thing.

I had a tooth pulled today. It was a difficult extraction. Afterwards I had a prescription for pain medication that needed to be filled. First I stood in the wrong line, and then when I found the right counter to turn in the script, the pharmacy tech was on the phone. I was in a lot of pain, and I became impatient. She continued to ignore me. I thought of opening my mouth and letting the blood fall on the counter as a way of punishing her. This nasty thought got my attention and I recognized how impatient I was.

So I reached for Milarepa’s prescription for patience. What I am capable of thinking about is what is apparently true. I’m aging, wearing out, dying. Losing a tooth is evidence that I will not live forever. Inescapable pain is evidence that I am vulnerable to being hurt just like every other living, breathing animal. Being ignored means even this is nothing special, I have no control over events. These are the apparent truth. I don’t want to know any of this, so I do impatience. That feeling is a more comfortable one that the others mentioned.

What is already there before any of the above arises is what is ultimately true. It contains none of those ideas or feelings, as in the Heart Sutra…no eyes, no teeth, no old age and death, no suffering, etc. And Milarepa knows that if we step into that we will not even be able to imagine impatience. For instruction on how to do this see Ken’s book, “An Arrow to the Heart.”

I could go on with examples of how I know I ignore it moment by moment. That’s how I know its presence---by recoiling from the contact. But I feel like I’m stirring up the mud.

Pat

[Valerie]

Dynamite post, Pat. Thank you.

[Janet]

Thanks, Pat. I so often act on emotions and beliefs -- including fear -- as though they were founded on absolute truth.

Yet, when I am quiet, I don't feel that I know what is true. The more deeply I look, the more I don't know what is true. Instead, the quieter it gets, the deeper the mystery seems. I'm not just talking about the mystery of life and death -- as though that isn't big enough. All of it.

In my case, plenty of mud. Your words were not stirring the mud. You drew attention to the process that allows mud to settle. So helpful.

Janet

[Bill Gardner]

Pat, thank you for this eloquent post!

A Zen teacher once gave me a teaching similar to your statement that Frustration, anger, irritation, and boredom... arise because we absolutely do not want to feel the fear that underlies our existence. Even though these negative emotions are mildly unpleasant, they are preferable to feeling the fear that has arisen just prior to their appearance. I think that does happen, but are you suggesting that fear of suffering and extinction is always the precipitating cause of afflictive emotions? That doesn't ring true to me.

[Pat Stacy]

Hi Bill, thank you for leading this topic.

Your question, “Is fear of suffering and extinction always the precipitating cause of afflictive emotions?” is a good one. In fact, I think it is a core question and well worth any level of investigation we are willing to apply. Your feeling that this doesn’t ring true is exactly my reaction on hearing this for the first time. I could immediately think of many instances where what I was thinking or feeling could not possibly come from fear of extinction. I’m leaving out fear of suffering because that doesn’t seem to be as primal a fear as fear of extinction or no self.

I argued with my teacher, and he let me do that. He would smile sweetly and say, “Don’t take my work for it. Look and see for yourself, and come back and tell me what you find.” He could say this with complete confidence, the same as Milarepa, because he had seen it himself. And now I can tell you that fear is the basis of all thinking and emotional reaction, even the ones we label as positive. It’s easiest to see with anger, impatience, greed, and boredom. When I say that, I don’t mean it’s easy to discover this, just that the basis for these is clearer or more discoverable.

There are probably many techniques for discovering what is underneath thinking and reaction to thinking. When I become aware of a feeling, I look to see what just happened, what came immediately before this one that I am aware of. Usually it is the last in a long line of reactions, and those are still hanging there, in the air so to speak, the way we can remember what we have just said in order to make subjects and verbs agree with each other.

That’s the process of going from gross to subtle. We can see it in the other direction when we sit in meditation and both the mind and body are perfectly quiet. Then there is the tiniest inclination to think. If we just observe this, nothing more happens. But, unobserved, that inclination produces a thought. It doesn’t matter what kind of thought or what it’s about. The impulse is to think anything in order to exist, but we will pick our favorite thoughts because they so reliably do the trick. This is how we discover for ourselves that fear of non-existence or no self is what motivates all mental and emotional activity.

The hardest thing to accept is that it doesn’t matter what I think or feel, it comes from the same place. The backside of this is that other people’s thoughts and feelings are just as valid as mine. Knowing my own motivation makes others transparent also. This does not mean that thoughts and emotions are wrong or flawed. Actions can flow from no thought. Generosity and Patience arise spontaneously from the acceptance of what is ultimately true.

Knowing what is present before thoughts and emotions arise moment by moment makes returning there possible and instantaneous. Question every strong emotion, allowing it to be both true and not true at the same time. Tolerate apparent truth and ultimate truth as coexistent. With practice we can become comfortable with both the relative and the absolute.

Pat

[Bill Gardner]

Well, OK then! I will analyze my emotions and see.
cheers
Bill

[Leslie]

Very simply, ultimately we die and all suffering ends. Until then, it is fear, separating from our experience, not releasing it as it arises, that creates suffering.
It takes a lot of practice to get to the state of no separation. In the meantime, my suffering is probably greater than before I started to practice, but my awareness, capacity in attention and compassion are increasing and my personal relationships are improving. This certainly requires patience with the process. At times, I think my performance gets adversely affected, but I can't stop. It goes on by itself. Last night I awakened with releases of physical pain from the upper body..very unpleasant, but just part of what is being carried in my body mind and unless it releases there is no chance of developing the capacity that Mila describes. My oh my, what have I gotten myself into!