Can Patience Overcome Stinking Thinking? What are we attached to?

Ever ask yourself who’s really in control? Who can really judge you that matters? Those are words that come to mind when I think about reasons I should practice harmony, gentleness and honesty with myself.

When aggression moves you, you might feel the freedom to express what’s on your mind. But then you realize that you’ve lost self control. You have given into aggression in any of its many forms—resentment, bitterness, being very critical, complaining and so forth.

Responding: “Oops, I did it again!”

It is often mentioned that patience can achieve more than our force; if we are patient it can overcome aggression. By practicing patience we will not give in to our digressive thinking. Are we not familiar with stinking thinking?

Pema Chodorn (2005) tells how he’s learned what patience is and is not in an article “The Answer to Anger & Other Strong Emotions” in Shambhala Sun. He says “When we begin to investigate, you notice, for one thing, that whenever there is pain of any king—the pain of aggression, grieving, loss, irritation, resentment, jealousy, indigestion, physical pain—if you really look into that, you can find out for yourself that behind the pain there is always something we are attached to. There is always something we are holding on to.”

He says the difference between patience and aggression is that patience is not ignoring, in fact patience and curiosity goes together. You wonder, Who am I? Who am I at the level of my neurotic patterns? Who am I at the level beyond birth and death? In looking into the nature of our own being, you need to be inquisitive. On the other hand aggression puts a tight lid on curiosity. Aggression is an energy that is determined to resolve the situation in a pattern in which somebody wins and somebody loses.

Put to the test patience (to wait, soften and sit with the discomfort) as an antidote for impulse buying, impulse speaking, impulse acting and developing loving-kindness and compassion.