Now more than ever, when it feels like our lives are on pause, we must practice the art of patience in order to rest in the mystery of this strange period instead of looking forward to its end.
When we think of patience we mistakenly think of passivity, or of waiting for something better to happen, however, perhaps a better word according to Sōtō Zen monk and teacher Suzuki-Roshi is constancy. In his book ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’ published in 1970 he says:
‘I have always said that you must be very patient if you want to understand Buddhism, but I have been seeking for a better word than patience. The usual translation of the Japanese word nin is “patience,” but perhaps “constancy” is a better word. You must force yourself to be patient, but in constancy there is no particular effort involved — there is only the unchanging ability to accept things as they are. For people who have no idea of emptiness, this ability may appear to be patience, but patience can actually be nonacceptance. People who know, even if only intuitively, the state of emptiness always have open the possibility of accepting things as they are. They can appreciate everything. In everything they do, even though it may be very difficult, they will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.’ — Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’, 1970
As Suzuki clarifies, there should be no struggle or effort involved, but instead a peaceful emptying to give into the natural cycle of things. He emphasises the importance of acceptance as the key to allowing for this unfolding. We live in a hurried culture, expecting instant results and rewards for our efforts, however, constancy implies a certain amount of trust required to honour the natural rhythm of life — a word also used interchangeably by Buddhist practitioner and author Jack Kornfield. The Sufi poet Rumi depicts it like this:
‘Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.’ — Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Here Rumi focuses on the inevitability of growth and transformation inherent in nature’s unfolding. The cyclical flow of nature imbues the still world with a sense of continuous movement, filling any waiting or patience with an innate energy, as it denotes the growing of new life. One thing always leads to the next, again reinforcing the knowledge that everything is connected, and dependent on one another — as is being proven by the field of interpersonal neurobiology. There is a dualism in everything — we cannot have light without dark, good without evil — however, that dualism is two sides to the same coin, not two different coins. Taoism is built on this duality of yin and yang, yet constantly reminds us that these apparent opposites in fact complement one another and are part of an indivisible whole. For T.S. Eliot the synthesis of all of life’s antithetical elements occurs in the stillness of waiting. He describes his version of calm constancy in his 1940 poem ‘East Coker’ from ‘Four Quartets’ like this:
‘I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.’ — T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, 1944
He warns against hope as it can be self-serving, denoting a desire for something better in the future and thus a certain dissatisfaction with the present state of things. Instead again Eliot brings us back to the need for sitting in meditation to clear the mind of any wanting. That line ‘the stillness the dancing’ is particularly striking in reminding us that paradoxically there is always energy pulsing within stillness. He goes on to emphasise the ‘wisdom of humility: humility is endless’. This quality of humility points towards a loosening of the grip we think we have over the outcome of our actions. In the words of Thomas Merton:
‘Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.’ — Thomas Merton
This shift from being goal-oriented to instead allowing for the space within the emptiness where the natural order of things can flow encourages a depth of attention, of listening. Or the advice from Rilke in his ‘Letters To A Young Poet’ is this: ‘have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves’. For Rilke it means finding joy in the mystery, as opposed to trying to solve what is unresolved or push our personal agendas. Like Eliot he encourages the space found in darkness as providing the humility necessary to hand over our illusion of power to instead trust in nature’s unfolding:
‘Allow your judgements their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, bend the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!’ — Rilke, ‘Letters To A Young Poet’, 1903
Rilke’s insistence on allowing art and creativity to percolate and flourish at their own pace once again is likened to the analogy of nature’s seasons that unwaveringly unfold without our interference — reinforcing the part that T.S. Eliot’s ‘faith’ plays in this process. Equally stillness and silence are identified as the essential conditions for patience to exist. For poet Wendell Berry in his poem ‘How To Be a Poet’ he echoes the teachings of the Zen tradition to sit in silence. That is where we find the purest truth.
How to Be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came. — Wendell Berry
A line that stands out for me is: ’patience joins time to eternity’ — acting as the thread that connects us to timelessness. When we let go of time we can become one with it, vividly depicting the synthesis and harmony that is reached through constancy. The unwavering quality of constancy allows for the flexibility to join and merge with nature’s rhythm without trying to struggle against it in any way. Instead of imposing ourselves as artists we must extract what is already there, as evident in the closing lines. To join the flow without disturbing it is the only way to — as George Herbert put it in his 1633 poem ‘The Elixir’ — ‘make drudgery divine’.
I am going to end with one of my favourite John Milton poems — sonnet XVI — which he wrote when he finally went fully blind in 1652.
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.” — John Milton, 1652
In attempting to come to terms with his newfound blindness he must grieve and let go of his former role in the world as a political activist and propagandist; or so he thinks. Milton of course went on to write his epic poem and most famous work ‘Paradise Lost’ even after, and arguably because, he was consumed by blindness. This imposed darkness forced him to heighten his senses, find the good in evil, the light in the dark, and in his own words from one of the early passages — make ‘darkness visible’. Re-programming ourselves to accept our paths as things unfold in unexpected ways is key. As Milton closes with the powerful acknowledgement that ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’, he is learning a new form of action. Waiting in this context holds a new significance as it denotes not only ‘waiting for’ but also ‘waiting on’ as in service to God. Accepting that serving the world can take on many forms — often less glamorous or outwardly revered than we might think — allows for the tranquil conditions in which patience and constancy can flourish.
