Pride is the natural opponent of patience. Pride is always boasting, always talking, so it’s impossible to hear what anyone else is saying. Pride makes you think you are the knowledgeable one, the intelligent one, the better one. Pride makes you closed so that you lose the chance to receive. Pride is quick to take positions, judge and see things from an egoistic perspective. Patience is the loosening of pride.
As you practise loosening and letting go of the attachments you have, for example being too attached to material possessions or to people or emotions or your view of the world, then you will begin to replace pride with humility. If you are still attached to your body, your looks, youth, wealth or anything, there’s no way you can be humble.
Letting go will open up your mind and your heart to the wonderful lessons life has to offer you. It will take you off the defensive because you will begin to see that these lessons are never designed to hurt or humiliate you, or to make you feel embarrassed.
If you can accept yourself for who you are, then every moment in life becomes an opportunity or simply an experience along the way. With humility, whatever you want to know, whatever people say, you listen and accept it and, in this way, you develop much faster than someone with pride.
For example, you do not need to be ‘proud’ of your skills or your achievements. This doesn’t in any way mean they aren’t important, but rather than defining who you are considers them as tools with which you can do your best work. For example, your skill might be with computers. You might be better than good, you might be an expert, but you shouldn’t be proud. Perhaps you are a terrible singer, and when it comes time to sing you can’t exactly boast that you are a computer whiz. It’s good to laugh about this—so what if we’re useless at some things? It’s good to know there are times when we are an expert and times when we are a nobody, we’re all the same in this respect. And with this understanding, pride soon goes down.
For many people, being useless at things is a source of great discouragement. But that is because our pride is getting in the way, our ego is hurt and this either makes us brittle and defensive about our weaknesses or makes us feel we are useless as a person.
So if we can release our attachments to all these things we do, then it no longer matters if we are a great expert or not.
We realise it’s a good idea to make the most of our talents for everyone but it’s no longer necessary to feel bad about things we may be less good at. We don’t need to take these things to heart; let them flow away with the stream.
The practice of patience, on the other hand, is the main door to enlightenment. Patience creates space to think and room to breathe. In an argument, patience creates a gap so that you may find a compromise or acceptance. Things just look a whole lot better when you view them with patience. On the other hand, if you don’t give yourself a chance to breathe and think, then your own desires will take over and anger will often burst forth. Constantly getting angry or irritated is a difficult way to live.
If you have patience and tolerance, your life will be rich, but admittedly they are not instantly easy concepts. That is why so often life is wobbly, like an old antique table. I used to have a very old British dining table and whenever you went near it, it wobbled and creaked—you couldn’t rest anything on it for fear it would break. This is like life without patience and tolerance. Patience creates a very supportive foundation. Whatever happens—and anything can happen in this life—you don’t mind, you can cope and you never lose your courage even when you face pain from others.
Patience helps us in times of suffering; if we have patience, then we will never give up and be discouraged. We persevere and continue to think and do good things. We are able to think of others who are in the same situation as us, we send out our compassion to them in the hope that they will not have to suffer like we do.
Patience is also extremely helpful whenever we are happy. It is easy to get carried away in life with success, or happiness. Patience tempers you from excess. You may be full of pride or find you are never quite satisfied and looking for more, patience helps you step back and check your desires, calm down and be happy for what you have.
Patience offers perspective. It is good to be happy, healthy, even wealthy, but with patience you will dispel your pride and realise how impermanent it all is. You will thank your good karma rather than look down on others. Pride comes naturally to us. Patience needs to be developed.
The author is the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order based in the Himalayas