Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: patience

walking each other home
In meditation, we patiently cultivate two qualities of the heart that are so comforting and life-changing, some call them “refuges.”
Now, while loving-kindness and compassion might sound like these grand ideas, they’re actually really practical meditation practices. When you put in the effort, they truly transform your heart.
Think of it as a master gardener bringing dead soil back to life.
These practices can do the same for parts of yourself you’ve neglected.
In a garden, you set up all the right conditions for things to grow – rich soil, enough sun, regular weeding. All these things work together. But you don’t make a sweet potato grow.
When the conditions are right, it just grows on its own. We do the same thing with our hearts: we create the right inner conditions for good qualities to bloom.
And yep, we’re talking about loving-kindness and compassion.
These qualities are already in us, though maybe a bit hidden by past choices that weren’t so skillful. Our practice helps us see where suffering is popping up everywhere.
Here’s the cool part: when you gently tend your heart like a garden, pulling out the ‘weeds’ of fear, disappointment, and confusion, a deep tenderness starts to show up.
Loving-kindness meditation isn’t about being sappy or pretending to like everyone.
As the Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach says,
It’s not about turning somebody we don’t like into somebody we do like – or pretending to like everybody.
This practice gives you more inner space, making you friendlier to yourself and others as you quietly repeat phrases like:
May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful.
Compassion practice helps us see when others are struggling, and from that awareness, we genuinely wish for their suffering to end.
There’s no direct word for ‘meditation’ in the ancient language the Buddha spoke. Instead of just telling monks to meditate, the Buddha always talked about ‘bhavana’ – which means ‘cultivation.’
And it’s clear the Buddha was saying that spiritual development is not so much about attaining any rarified states of consciousness, but rather it’s more about cultivating what he called “wholesome” states of mind.
And yes, we’re talking about loving-kindness and compassion.
Since these qualities are already inside us, practicing loving-kindness is like tilling the soil before planting seeds. It breaks up hard spots and brings up richer, deeper parts of yourself.
When everything’s just right, things flourish.
But does a garden stop growing when the sun sets? Nope, the night cycle is actually crucial.
Our inner garden keeps growing even in dark times such as these.
When we let our hearts feel vulnerable during really tough periods, a new kind of sensitivity grows. We become so tender. Unhappiness can actually be a great tenderizer for the heart.
Our practice is to stay with this “quivering of the heart,” as it’s called.
And in that genuine sadness, there’s a deep love. As we move through layers of fear and denial, we start to see that at the core of heartbreak is love.
Our whole practice can be about learning to uncover and rest in this kind of love.
As we get comfortable with our own vulnerable hearts, we naturally connect with others whose hearts are breaking or who are feeling loss.
Ultimately, this practice helps us move through life with a light step. And in a beautiful way, it helps us carry others lightly in our hearts. It’s like we’re all walking this path together.
As Ram Dass often said: “we’re all just walking each other home.”

08/17/2025
a keener love of simplicity
Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around. Traveling lightly, we feel airborne. We move into a keener love of simplicity.
There is a story by Mark Twain about someone who dies and goes to “heaven” and gets a pair of wings and a harp. At first, they used the wings as a way of moving around the new place, and plucked on the strings of the harp trying to get some divine tunes out of it.
They soon realize, though, that in this place you don’t need wings to go anywhere and simply by desiring to hear divine tunes, celestial musicians (their house band, I suppose) show up and play.
After dropping the wings and the harp, they found a profound fulfillment in simply being.
We all just want to be happy and feel at home in our own lives, but, as the song goes, we are looking in all the wrong places.
We burden ourselves with unnecessary wings or harps thinking that happiness is all about having certain things or acting in a special way. Many of the voices we listen to lead us on a long walk on the hedonic treadmill Buddhists call samsara.
But one day we have this marvelous insight: we already have what we need.
This meditation is a radical act of self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.
One of my teachers Sharon Salzberg says:
We learn not to get caught in trying to reach after things we never really needed to begin with.
Along these lines, the poet Rumi asks:
How long will we fill our pockets
Like children with dirt and stones?
Let the world go. Holding it
We never know ourselves, never are air-born.
Rumi, translated by Andrew Harvey
Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around so we can be airborne and travel lightly. We move into a keener love of simplicity — of lifestyle, speech, and even how to do the dishes and arrange our sitting space.
We get less caught up in what others say about us, or imagine they say.
The grip on our likes and dislikes softens.
We eventually get how much nicer it is to relax into our natural, free and easy being-ness that is already right here, right now, than it is to struggle with having things be other than they are how they are.
But if we haven’t tasted this free-and-easy being-ness, it can be a hard sell to the psyche.
You’ll know the sweet taste of being-ness by accidentally stumbling upon it in your practice.
You can’t make this happen on purpose.
You just need to develop a daily meditation habit and put the time in. As the late Indian author and speaker Jiddu Krishnamurti remarked:
Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone.
Then, each moment is fine. Each moment is enough.
Each moment, no matter how mundane or annoying, is profound and meaningful.
We practice, as the poet Wendell Berry tells us in this his poem The Wild Geese:
… not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.
Be well, dear reader.
02/02/2024
monkey mind, crabby mind
Lately, I’ve been dealing with a relative of monkey mind I am calling crabby mind. They may be far apart on the biologic tree of life, but they are kissing cousins on my meditation mat.
I’ve turned into a real crab.
No, I didn’t wake up one morning to discover I was a decapod crustacean of the infra-order Brachyura, sort of like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, the sales agent in “Metamorphosis,” who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a giant dung beetle.
I’m not covered in a thick exoskeleton and I don’t have 10 legs.
But I’m a real crab, nonetheless.
The other day I was trying to figure out why my cell phone was acting so weird. The person trying to help me, well, let’s say explaining techy stuff in English wasn’t one of his superpowers.
He would begin a sentence, and not a few words into it, I would interrupt, anticipating he had misunderstood my question. I could have calmy let him finish, so we could calmly proceed to the next question, but no, I was not having it.
After a few exchanges like these, I finally caught on–crabby mind had taken center stage in my mind. I apologized, but it was too little too late on that one.
This morning I exchanged the usual greetings to my housemate, but within three seconds I answered a simple question in an irritated tone.
And a few days ago I texted someone who, well, sucks at texting. We won’t go into that one.
Yes, we all have these kinds of moments; yet, I am embarrassed to admit this. My responses were mine. I was crabby.
When I chose “crabby” from my mental response menu, well… it happened so darn fast!
Land crab with Tapia trifolia plant, 1731, unknown artist
Many folks complain about monkey mind-meaning their mind feels restless, and jumps from one thought to the other, like a monkey moving quickly from tree to tree in their native habitat.
This week I’ve been dealing with a relative of monkey mind I am calling crabby mind.
They may be far apart on the biologic tree of life, but they are kissing cousins on my meditation mat.
And while we are in true confessions mode, my monkey mind still shows up from time to time. Yes, even after 40 years as a practicing Buddhist. And that monkey can be a real drama queen sometimes!
Just as I have learned how not to indulge my monkey mind, I am learning how to shut down my crabby mind.
And I need to be a quick study on this one!
I know it makes no sense to get crabby about things that don’t matter all that much.
Some things that trigger my crabby mind don’t even qualify as first world problems.
At this point in this post you are probably waiting for some cool hack, some valuable insight, or some trick to nip our irritations in the bud.
Maybe we are just too conditioned by our streaming services to expect denouements. You know, the last part of a film or narrative that draws the strands of the plot together and resolves lingering questions.
All I can say to those who have been affected by my crabbiness this week, I’m really sorry and I will try better.
Winston Churchill once said:
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
Sir Winston Churchill
I just bring myself back to the breath or the body, and try to say something soothing to myself, like:
My dear, you’re being such a crab, but let’s work on this together, shall we?
The essence of Mahayana Buddhism is expressed in the four bodhisattva vows, one of which is:
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all.
Falling short again and again, I find consolation in my humanity, and recommit to the unfinished spiritual work ahead.
05/07/2023
does meditation help with patience?
I think so, but the real question is how to develop patience with the meditation process itself.

The only way to fail at meditation is to stop meditating.
As long as you show up, the meditative process happens. It’s really simple: sit down on a chair or a cushion, set the timer on your phone for, let’s say, 20 minutes, then pay attention to how your body feels, or how your breath feels.
Notice when you’ve been distracted, like for the 200th time, it doesn’t matter, and gently come back to feeling your body or the breath.
why do people give up?
And did I mention the benefits of meditation, both to physical as well as emotional well-being, are through the roof? So if the benefits are so great, and the practice so simple, why do people give up?
The three complaints I hear the most are: it’s not what I expected, it’s so boring, and I just can’t meditate– I’m always thinking.
Welcome to the club! If you experience any of those three, or a host of other complaints, it means meditation is actually working.
meditation is not what I expected
Is anything ever what we expected? Meditation is often not what we expected. And these expectations can cause needless frustration.
There is one remedy for all the above: let go of ideas of how things should be turning out and instead turn with interest and curiosity to what is actually happening.
whatever happens is just fine
Meditation involves a willingness to see what actually happens, not seeking experiences we are told should happen. Whatever happens is just fine.
Bored? Investigate how the concept of boredom presents itself. Can’t stop thinking? No problem, meditation is definitely not about stopping your mind from thinking; rather, explore the thinking mind itself.
just stay open and receptive to what is
All that is asked of you is to stay open and receptive to your present moment’s experience, no matter what that is.
Often, when meditation doesn’t seem to be going our way, we dig in and struggle. We tense up. Or when we feel bored we go off into fantasy. When you notice this happening, just get curious and interested in that.
meditation asks us to be patient with ourselves.
Patience brings a kind of self-compassion to our awareness, helping us accept our own process. A kind of compassion that melts our resistance to our present moment’s experience.
A compassion that allows us to be open to each moment as it unfolds, without judgement, trusting that the process is unfolding.
and have a sense of humor
This kind of patience is easy going. There can be humor and playfulness here. It’s not a grin and bear it kind of patience. As Pema Chodron says about patience in our meditation practice:
It’s a kind of loving-kindness–for your own imperfections, for your own limitations, for not living up to your own high ideals. Just being patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right. There’s a slogan someone once came up with that I like: “Lower your standards and relax as it is.”
Or as the 16th century French Bishop of Geneva, Frances de Sales, advised:
Most importantly, don’t lose heart, be patient, wait, do all you can to develop a spirit of compassion.
The contemporary Burmese meditation teacher U Tejaniya Sayadaw has a lot to say about how to skillfully approach our meditation practice:
Meditating is watching and waiting patiently with awareness and understanding. Meditation is NOT trying to experience something you have read or heard about. Just pay attention to the present moment. Don’t get lost in thoughts about the past or the future. Don’t try to create anything, and don’t reject what is happening. Just be aware.
Please keep going.
You are actually already there!
04/27/2021
the monkey pod tree in the beach park
Life just as it is, is eloquent. The world is its own magic. We need to need to stop seeking some additional meaning and just let things come forward and enlighten us to their magic in their own time.
Have you ever had the experience of being irritated with someone or about something, like a parking ticket, while waking somewhere when suddenly you notice a gorgeous sunset is also happening?
How long did it take you to let go of the “irritation voices” in your head to take in the sunset?
Or maybe you simply ignored nature’s evening show and continued in miffed rumination?
The ego wants to know how we can justify pausing to take in yet another boring sunset when we do not have enough time to do all we need to do, and plan for.
But as we learn to just be in the silent simplicity of meditation, we slowly let go of the life-robbing habits of worrying, planning, and seething.
As James Finley, a teacher of spiritual contemplation and student of the late Thomas Merton, writes:
We must be patient with ourselves as we devote ourselves to this lifelong, transformative process of meditation. Taking the time to transcend the tyranny of time is time well spent. In God’s good time, an underlying meditative awareness grows within us to the point of becoming our habitual way of experiencing everything that we experience.
“In God’s good time” = not according to the ego’s timetable. We are often so concerned, thinking Am I doing this mediation thing right? I should definitely be seeing some changes by now.
Results of meditation simply happen when they happen, no sooner.
Growing out of the shell of ego, leaving the nest ego has made for us, can be a little scary. It’s just part o the process, and you can’t accelerate this thing once it gets going, or you’ll risk what some folks call “spiritual bypassing.”
The caterpillar spins its cocoon of contemplative practice and emerges as a free flying being “in God’s good time.” Trying to break a little piece off the cocoon sends the whole thing crashing on the rocks of disappointment, resentment, frustration.
This is a poem from Swami Nirbhayananda, who lived in North India in the nineteenth century, which describes this process of what some psychologists call “transpersonal individuation”, or the gradual shedding of the tyranny of ego.
In this extract the Swami is speaking to his own ego:
Your thoughts are restless, mine are forever peaceful.
You are attached to name and form.
I go beyond them.
O dear one, I listen to you, but am not quick to respond.
O mind, we part company and are friends.
I salute you a thousand times.
You are all pain and tears.
I am peace and perfection.
Life just as it is, is eloquent. The world is its own magic. We need to need to stop seeking some additional meaning and just let things come forward and enlighten us to their magic in their own time, not ours.
This liberates us from the tyranny of our mind, borrowing James Finley’s powerful word. We are then potentially liberated by every moment in our life, if we allow ourselves to enter into them in intimate way mindfulness allows.
What’s the meaning of life? That sunset over there. Or that the monkey pod tree in the beach park.
There is a quiet, dignified feeling to sunsets and trees. Also to animals, children, food, sitting in the dentist’s chair, disease, frustration, impatience and death.
If I think “I see that monkey pod tree in the beach park over there” I am partly living in my own private conceptual universe, which is always a day late and a dollar short, as they say.
Our practice is experience is simply letting seeing see or hearing hear. At that moment there is no time, no space, no self, no other. There just is what is, “full and complete, lacking nothing”, as the Zen masters of old used to say.
Through our simple, quiet mindfulness practice, we shed our conditioned, conceptual approach to life.
But that doesn’t mean we somehow destroy it, no, we simply grow out of the compulsion to only experience life in this protected, safe way.
In the often quoted teaching to Bahiya, the Buddha just gave the briefest of meditation instructions, which hit the bull’s eye, and Bahiya awoke to his true nature.
In John Ireland’s translation:
“Then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.”
In savoring a sunset or seeing a monkey pod tree in a beach park we let go of the experience of “I see” and doing something called seeing. There is just the seen.
No mental overlays.
Then our so-called mundane experiences, of stubbing our toe or our ego, become magical, revealing to us our natural essence, which many have said is love. In this inner shift of “In the seen will be merely what is seen” mindfulness lets us in on the magic.
Of just this incredible tree. Or just this breath. Or a baby’s first tooth.
01/21/2016
wholeness and redemptive suffering
Redemptive suffering suggests that even in pain, there’s potential for positive change. We’ll look at practical ways to apply it in the context of contemporary mindfulness.
Redemptive suffering is the idea that suffering can lead to growth. It can bring about a positive transformation. Theology sees suffering as a path to atonement. Philosophy views it as an opportunity for self-discovery. Psychology suggests it can build resilience.
For Buddhism, this is the foundational insight.
Suffering takes many forms. Physical pain is one type. Emotional distress, like grief or anxiety, is another. Mental anguish, such as depression, also counts. Spiritual struggles, questioning faith, are included too.
Everyone faces suffering. It is an unavoidable part of life.
The Redemptive Element
How can suffering be “redemptive“? It can atone for past wrongs. It can help with personal and spiritual growth. Pain can breed empathy.
By understanding our own pain, we grasp the pain of others.
It’s vital to avoid romanticizing suffering. Pain isn’t inherently good. Don’t seek it out. Redemptive suffering is about what you do with the pain that you can’t avoid. Finding meaning in hard times is the key.
The Benefits of Embracing Redemptive Suffering
Facing suffering with intention can bring unexpected benefits. It can improve your mental state. It can improve your spiritual life.
Increased Empathy and Compassion
Suffering expands your understanding. It makes you more aware of the pain others feel. A person who has battled depression understands another’s struggle. This understanding can lead to acts of kindness. It can inspire service to others.
Spiritual Growth and Transformation
Suffering can shake your beliefs. This leads to reflection. It leads to a stronger sense of faith. Some call it a “spiritual awakening.” Difficult times prompt deep questions. They lead to profound changes.
Developing Resilience and Strength
Overcoming challenges builds resilience. It strengthens your mind. Redemptive suffering gives you coping skills. It improves your problem-solving abilities. Each challenge overcome makes you stronger for the next.
Redemptive Suffering in Buddhism
Buddhism sees suffering as part of life. It emphasizes detachment. Liberation comes from mindfulness. Meditation can reduce pain and suffering.
redemptive suffering in Buddhism
Other Religions/Philosophies
Judaism uses remembrance to give tragedy purpose. Islam views trials as tests of faith. Hinduism embraces suffering as karma to be worked through. Stoicism teaches acceptance of what can’t be controlled.
Practical Steps to Finding Redemption in Suffering
You can take action to find meaning when life gets tough. Here’s how to cope and grow.
Acknowledge and Accept Your Pain
Don’t ignore your suffering. Acknowledge it. Acceptance is the first step toward healing. It opens the door for growth.
Seek Support and Connection
Talk to others. Reach out to friends. Join a support group. Community helps you navigate tough times. Shared experiences make the burden lighter.
Historical Examples of Resilience
Nelson Mandela spent years in prison. His suffering fueled his fight for justice. The Civil Rights Movement arose from generations of oppression. Suffering can be the catalyst for social change.
Redemptive suffering is about finding meaning in pain. It’s a catalyst for growth. It brings transformation. Embrace suffering as a chance to live a more meaningful life. There is always hope, even in the darkest times.
As we surrender more deeply, we acknowledge our multi-layered resistances and face our egoic conditioning head on. Humility allows us to recognize and allow fuller access to these layers.
Every one would agree suffering is a natural part of who we are: we are born, grow old and sick, we die. Along the way there are countless separations and insults. This aspect of suffering is undeniable.
The Buddha also described a second, more subtle form of suffering.
He taught this level of suffering was entirely of our own doing: the psychic displeasure caused by clinging, by our attachments, our reluctance to surrender our views, opinions and desires.
In the Christian view, it seems Jesus took suffering and transformed it into love. He did not flinch. Through his courage we have come to know something very precious and transformative: suffering as redemptive.
When we approach suffering as ultimately redemptive, I feel we can appreciate the work of humility. No matter how advanced you think you are in your meditation practice, if you lose sight of humility, your practice is hurtful.
There is a tendency to think we can somehow get it all together with good meditation. That we can move past suffering for good.
We can experience life with more spaciousness, with less reactivity, and more warmth, but I don’t see us getting out of suffering, no matter what we read. I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to take on the programming regarding the end of suffering that is so prevalent in the spiritual advertising handed down to us for hundreds of years.
Rather, it might be more psychologically and spiritually grounding to acknowledge the saying attributed to one of the most celebrated spiritual figures of early Christianity, St. Anthony. He is said to have remarked “expect pain and temptation to the last day of your life.”
This just feels truer. No matter how advanced you think you are, or will ever be, expect pain and temptation.
I am speaking here from some forty years of Buddhist influenced meditation. I was taught over and over that there is an end to suffering. This sets up the expectation that this will come about with deeper and more correct practice.
Rather, let’s acknowledge that this whole thing is fragile and frail all the way through, from bow to stern. It’s so easy to buy into some fairy tale like expectation of getting it all together.
What if instead of getting it together, we allowed life to be fully tragic?
Isn’t this humility?
Cynthia Bourgeault, in a commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing, which I was listening to the other day on CDs received recently as a gift from a dear friend, quoted Helen Luke when she got to the Cloud’s teaching on meekness. I don’t have the exact words, but Helen writes something to the effect that wholeness is born out of the willingness to bear the struggle between the divine and the human.
Wholeness, or the transformation we all seek (w-holiness?) doesn’t come from the divine somehow canceling out the human. We stop thinking along these collusive lines. Wholeness is simply the willingness to bear the struggle; to allow whatever is there to simply be there. And to let ourselves be moved.
Self-emptying love
I think this may be what Christianity calls self-emptying. It takes on a very rich context in Jesus’ self-emptying love.
The heightened and extended practice of Buddhist nonattachment empties the self into nothingness; it is in this nothingness that we find peace. It is in this nothingness that Christian mystics find God.
02/14/2015