Modern life is fast-paced and stressful and therefore filled with opportunities to become impatient. Here are four common situations which often cause people to react negatively and lose their patience. First example: An infant cannot stop crying and you are forced to listen to her loud complaints for hours. Second example: Your connecting plane flight is delayed by six hours and you're stuck in a crowded airport. Third example: Someone is talking at you in overly long, exasperating detail. Fourth example: You have an important deadline and are determined to be super productive at your job today and not be interrupted. As a result, you express frequent impatience and frustration with your colleagues.
A patient person faces such common situations with calmness, self-control and lack of complaint. An impatient person, on the other hand, faces them with franticness, loss of self-control and abundant grumbling. These are two ways of reacting to life: in a cultured manner or a crude manner.
The part of the instinctive nature that is being harnessed when we apply patience to our life is the tendency to lose emotional control and react with unkind words or actions when facing delays, difficulties and qualities in people that we did not anticipate. Gurudeva spoke about such situations: "Impatience is a sign of desirousness to fulfill unfulfilled desires, having no time for any interruptions or delays from anything that seems irrelevant to what one really wants to accomplish. We must restrain our desires by regulating our life with daily worship and meditation."
Gurudeva always told those on the spiritual path to be patient with circumstances and forbearing with people. Forbearance is a challenge for many people, and has been for as long as people have been on Earth. Over two thousand years ago Saint Tiruvalluvar wrote an entire chapter on it in his Tirukural. In chapter sixteen, titled "Possession of Forbearance," he speaks of how to patiently restrain yourself in trying circumstances. Being patient with fools, he observes, is a sign of inner strength.
Valluvar devotes four verses to handling more difficult situations, such as rude remarks, major wrongs and encounters with people who just don't like us. The poet urges us to respond to these situations with restraint and nonretaliation. In all situations his advice is that it is best to endure whatever sufferings our karmas bring to us and refrain from unrighteous retaliation. Verse 158 says, "Let a man conquer by forbearance those who in their arrogance have wronged him."
Of course, not everyone has these strengths at first, and Valluvar speaks of those who do not restrain themselves and retaliate instead, returning all hurts to those who hurt them. He says such a person is worthless, while those who are forbearing are as precious as stored gold.
An excellent key to maintaining patience is having the power of acceptance: accepting people as they are, accepting events as they are happening. Accepting life, no matter what comes, forestalls intolerance and impatience. Acceptance is developed by understanding the law of karma and seeing God Siva and His work everywhere, accepting the perfection of the timing of the creation, preservation and absorption of the entire universe. With this firmly in our minds, we know that in successfully facing the difficulties that come to us in life we are resolving karma and moving forward on the spiritual path. It is hard to express intolerance with people when we see the Divinity within them.
Life abounds with situations where simple acceptance is the only tool we need. For instance, we find ourselves responsible for taking care of an elderly parent. No matter how much care and love we give, the parent remains unhappy and complains constantly. We feel the parent should change, show more appreciation, be happier. But the more realistic solution is to accept the parent as he or she is.
Or we have an in-law whom we see a few times a year who is always criticizing us and backbiting others. Every time we see him, we are upset for days. Why? Because we feel he should act differently. What is the solution? Accept him as he is, imperfections included.
People are the way they are because of their experiences in this and past lives. Many people have no concept that they can change their nature by self-effort, improve their behavior if they want to, raise their state of consciousness through sadhana. Rather, they remain as the person they are because they don't believe it is possible to change. They are who they are, and that's that. Therefore, the wise approach to such people is to simply accept them as they are and not frustrate yourself by hoping for them to ever be different.
In some situations the behavior of the other person is more than irritating. It is actually hostile. An example is a husband who regularly speaks angrily to his wife and threatens violence. It is easy to feel justified in retaliating and speaking angrily back. This is where tolerance needs to deepen into forbearance, refraining from retaliating with your own angry words. It is far better for your spiritual well being to bear with the problem and respond in ways that encourage him to control his anger.
Certainly there is a tendency in man to feel justified in retaliating when seriously mistreated. For example, an individual consistently mistreats us based on a prejudice against our ethnicity, religion or nationality. Though such treatment is difficult to bear, even then we need to refrain from retaliation. In the words of the Kural: "Just as the Earth bears those who dig into her, it is best to bear with those who despise us." We certainly can avoid interacting with such an individual as much as possible. However, retaliation would create a negative karma for us to face in the future as well as stimulate our lower chakras, awakening the lower emotions, such as anger, fear and confusion.
Forbearance and nonretaliation are the spiritual person's goal in all cases of mistreatment. However, the Kural sets an even higher goal in the following verse: "It is always good to endure injuries done to you, but to forget them is even better." Even when we do not retaliate in words and actions, in our thoughts we may harbor deep animosity toward an offender. The feeling can be so strong that whenever we think about her, we immediately remember the incident in which she mistreated us.
How is it possible to forget about such an incident? It's not easy, but it is made easier if we forgive the offender based on a profound understanding of the law of karma. The offender is simply the instrument for bringing this karma back to you. If it were not that particular person, it would be another. In other words, from the deepest perspective, everything that happens to you is caused by you. It is a karma you set in motion in the past. The person is simply the instrument for returning that karma to you, not the cause of it. You can only blame yourself for everything negative that happens to you. By accepting our karma, and not constantly fighting it, we actually defuse it, help it to be resolved and go away. When we fight back, when we refuse to accept things that happen to us, we give that karma energy and allow it to persist.
Here is a typical incident. A teenage boy is walking home from school when a gang approaches, teases him for being different in some way and beats him up. A common response is for the teenager to feel angry at the boys who attacked him and harbor hateful feelings toward them for years. This is problematic, as it helps keep the lower emotions of anger constantly alive in his subconscious mind.
Gurudeva often told the story of Swami Sivananda's being attacked by a man who hit him in the head with a hatchet during evening satsang at his Rishikesh ashram. Swamiji's outraged followers soon subdued and confined the man. The next day Swami Sivananda met with his attacker and gave him a garland, a train ticket home, several spiritual books and some money. Swami said, "Thank you so much for being the instrument to bring this karma back to me. Now I am free of it." He felt no anger toward the man whatsoever. While Swami was able to free himself immediately from the bad memory of an attack, the teenager attacked by the gang might suffer years of torment from his memory of that single minute of abuse.
Clearly the ideal is to forgive our offenders. We do this best when we fully embrace and deeply understand the law of karma. This keeps us in a consciousness of comprehension instead of reaction. This prevents us from blaming others for our problems. However, the Kural takes the process of forgetting one step further in the following verse: "If you return kindness for injuries received and forget both, those who harmed you will be punished by their own shame."
It is also extremely important to maintain patience with oneself. Many people are masters of being patient with others but are frustrated with themselves. Take, for example, an individual who is impatient with the speed of his spiritual progress. He feels it should be faster, and that his negative habits are holding him back, persisting too long. This can be compared to watching a slow-growing tree develop over the years and feeling discontent because it is not growing faster. In both cases the solution is acceptance that this is the speed at which the process takes place. A tree does not grow faster when we are impatient. So, what is the benefit of our self-imposed anxiety in wanting things to be what they cannot be? None. If we are regular in our sadhana, regular in our daily worship and meditation and in our yearly routine of attending festivals and going on pilgrimage, tirthayatra, that is enough to move forward spiritually. There is no way we can make it happen more quickly. Simply accept it and be happy. Patience brings us a certain peace of mind.
In conclusion, restrain intolerance with people and impatience with circumstances. Be agreeable. Let others behave according to their nature, without adjusting to you. Don't argue, dominate conversations or interrupt others. Don't be in a hurry. Be patient with children and the elderly. Minimize stress by keeping worries at bay. Stop blaming others and take responsibility for everything that happens to you. Make the best of every circumstance. Remain poised in good times and bad.
