Good Morning All,
This morning I am ashamed to say that I lost my patience with someone on the Tricycle Community last night. I spent a good deal of time after I deleted both his and my comments thinking about what had happened. My conclusion is that I didn’t exercise good judgment and that I let the fever of concern regarding the political issues of the day cloud my heart/mind. In the end, the man referred to me as a “pathetic old man.” This sort of stuck. I rather think he was right-on.
In any event, I happened to have a review copy of a new book sent to me by Tarcher/Penguin entitled, “Patience: the Art of Peaceful Living,” by Allan Lokos.($14.95, paperback). So, I began reading. The book is an excellent study on the practice of patience, something I am apparently not as good at as I had assumed.
Lokos says, “…the development of genuine patience requires introspection over time so that we can come to the root causes of our impatience” (p. 21). Yes, agreed. So, I began to consider this as I both, sat at my desk, and stood glaring at my easel (which had a fresh canvas on it). Earlier in the text Lokos points out the connection between anger and impatience citing none other than Shantideva, the 8th century Buddhist teacher. And I was angry.
The thing is, I seem to expect so much of people and when my expectations aren’t met or when people are thoughtless or rude, I go to that place I went as a young soldier. I remind myself then of the Arlo Guthrie rant in Alice’s Restaurant, “I wanna kill…” So, here I am, an old fart, some sort of Zen teacher, and off I go. Ridiculous.
The good news is, I do in fact catch my errant self in short order and bring myself back to a degree of equanimity. The bad news is, once the anger cat is out of the bag, its out.
I think though, this is a good thing as we are each human beings and as such we must notice that we are easily caught in our own crap. How would we know if we were full of it if we didn’t let it out from time to time?
Be well.
This morning I am ashamed to say that I lost my patience with someone on the Tricycle Community last night. I spent a good deal of time after I deleted both his and my comments thinking about what had happened. My conclusion is that I didn’t exercise good judgment and that I let the fever of concern regarding the political issues of the day cloud my heart/mind. In the end, the man referred to me as a “pathetic old man.” This sort of stuck. I rather think he was right-on.
In any event, I happened to have a review copy of a new book sent to me by Tarcher/Penguin entitled, “Patience: the Art of Peaceful Living,” by Allan Lokos.($14.95, paperback). So, I began reading. The book is an excellent study on the practice of patience, something I am apparently not as good at as I had assumed.
Lokos says, “…the development of genuine patience requires introspection over time so that we can come to the root causes of our impatience” (p. 21). Yes, agreed. So, I began to consider this as I both, sat at my desk, and stood glaring at my easel (which had a fresh canvas on it). Earlier in the text Lokos points out the connection between anger and impatience citing none other than Shantideva, the 8th century Buddhist teacher. And I was angry.
The thing is, I seem to expect so much of people and when my expectations aren’t met or when people are thoughtless or rude, I go to that place I went as a young soldier. I remind myself then of the Arlo Guthrie rant in Alice’s Restaurant, “I wanna kill…” So, here I am, an old fart, some sort of Zen teacher, and off I go. Ridiculous.
The good news is, I do in fact catch my errant self in short order and bring myself back to a degree of equanimity. The bad news is, once the anger cat is out of the bag, its out.
I think though, this is a good thing as we are each human beings and as such we must notice that we are easily caught in our own crap. How would we know if we were full of it if we didn’t let it out from time to time?
Be well.
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