Patience is one of life’s unsung virtues. When people write about love, they use capital letters, italics, and calligraphy; everybody gives love the red-carpet treatment. But where patience is concerned, who cares? Nobody writes poems about patience. There are no popular songs about it. If the word does make an appearance, it is only because it contains two syllables and fits the meter. This is unfair, because patience is the very heart of love. I don’t think any skill in life is more valuable. Patience is the best insurance I know against all kinds of emotional and physical problems – and it is absolutely essential for learning to slow down. Very few people are born with patience, but everyone can learn to develop it. As with slowing down, all we have to do is try to be patient every time life challenges us. And there are many, many opportunities to practice every day. This doesn’t require a gigantic canvas. Mogul art, one of the highlights of artistic achievement in India, often is in miniature. The artist concentrated on very small areas, working with such tenderness and precision that one has to look carefully to see the love and labour that has gone into it. Living is like Mogul art: the canvas is so small and the skill required so great that it’s easy to overlook the potentialities for artistry and love. One beautiful, balmy Sunday soon after my mother and nieces arrived from India, Christine and I took them out for ice cream. I rode in the back of our VW bus with Meera on one side and Geetha on the other. They chatted gaily the whole way, without a break, asking me all kinds of questions. I kept reminding myself of what most of us older people forget: that every child has a point of view. They have their own way of looking at life which makes them ask these questions, and for them, things like why Texaco and Mexico should be spelled differently when the endings rhyme are matters of vital importance. When we got to town, we had to walk slowly because my mother was almost eighty. The children, however, wanted to run – and they
wanted me to join them. I didn’t say, “It’s not proper for a pompous professor to be running about. It takes away from his pomp.” Instead, I made a good dash for it. I thought I would meet with appreciation, but little Geetha just objected, “You’re not supposed to step on the lines.” There was no “thank you,” no “well done”; I had to do it all again. Geetha had just learned to read, so when we reached the ice cream parlour she stood staring at the big board. “What are all those flavours?” I protested, “There are over a hundred!” She tried to read a few and then asked, “What is that long word I can’t read?” I said, “Pistachio.” “That’s my flavour.” So she got that, double dip, and Meera got butter brickle. They nursed their cones all the way home. I was in the back seat between them again, and every now and then they would exchange licks – across my lap. My first impulse was to warn, “Don’t drip on me!” Then I reminded myself that from their point of view, ice cream is much more important than clothes. We made it home without incident, with the girls and my mother laughing happily about a perfect day. We learn patience by practicing it, the Buddha says. What better way than by sharing time with children at their own pace and seeing life through their eyes?
Join us every Saturday India Immersion Centre facilitates a weekly spiritual fellowship group following Easwaran’s Eight Point Programme of Meditation in Chennai. E-mail us for more information at contactiic@ globaladjustments.com and Lakshmi Menon at 9710947713.
Reprinted with permission from “The Goal of Meditation” (Blue Mountain, Spring 2009). Copyright 2009 by the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, PO Box 256, Tomales, CA 94971, http://www.easwaran.org Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in 1961. The Center offers books and retreats based on the eight-point program of passage meditation that Easwaran developed, taught, and practiced. To learn more, visit http://www.easwaran.org culturama | october 2011
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