This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Patience: The Unglamorous Courage ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome. Welcome. Nice to see you all. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Diana Clark. Happy to be here.
So this morning, one of my electronic gizmos decided to stop working. So I went online. Okay, I’m sure somebody else has this problem. And they recommended, you know, do XYZ. So I go do XYZ. It doesn’t work. And then I find a contact for the manufacturer, an email. So I send an email. There’s a problem. I get an email back a little bit surprising, you know, sometime later, of course. Try this. That didn’t work. And if that doesn’t work, here’s a phone number. I call the phone number and they say, try yet one more thing. Here’s a third thing. That doesn’t work. And then I thought, I think I’m going to give a dharma talk on patience.
You know how sometimes we have these things like, okay, this is something that used to work and then it just doesn’t. And somehow they should be able to help me out here. And yeah, so it still doesn’t work. They have no idea and they’re kicking it up to somebody or other, and you know how these things are sometimes.
So, patience. There’s this way in which patience, it turns out, is such an integral part of our practice, but often it’s not called out specifically. Patience is in one of those Buddhist lists. It’s in the list of Pāramīs1, the perfections. Patience.
Part of the way in which we could use it is, I mean, the obvious way, and kind of the little scenario that I gave this morning, is when we have this expectation that things should go a certain way and then it just doesn’t. But that’s an obvious way in which to work with patients. But there’s also this way in which maybe we haven’t even articulated this clearly to ourselves, but we might have this idea that this path of practice, if we’re going to have some more freedom and ease, then we have to work and work and work and work. You know, regular meditation practice, read those dharma books, go to the meditation sessions, go on retreats, whatever it is. There’s this way in which we might have this idea that it’s a big push, as we’re trying to shove ourselves into what we think a good dharma practitioner is.
But there’s this way in which certainly we need to apply effort and have some energy if we want our life to go a different direction. There’s some way in which our lives are like these giant barges or something, right? If we want to turn a different direction, it takes a lot of energy and takes time.
But there’s also a way in which nature has seasons, and so do we. There’s sometimes a way in which we feel kind of disconnected from nature and we kind of feel like, oh well, I don’t have any seasons. But there’s this way in which there’s this, we could say, a spring—this way in which maybe there’s some new possibilities, enthusiasm, and everything feels kind of exciting and fresh in some kind of way. And then there’s summer, in which things have this fruition, and there’s an energy and creativity, and ideas are flourishing. And then there’s fall, where maybe there’s some disenchantment. You begin to lose interest, lose some of this enthusiasm, and the energy is waning. And then there’s often this winter of discontent, perhaps, when things don’t feel quite as energizing. Maybe they even feel a little bit empty. And we might even wonder, will we ever have energy or enthusiasm again? Whether that’s for some particular project or whether it’s for our life in general. This works on so many different scales, the small scale and the big scale.
And so there’s this way that just to recognize that this is a natural process. And there’s a way that maybe any gardener will tell you—perhaps some of you are gardeners—that whenever we’re going to plant seeds or in cycles of growth, it requires patience. Patience. It’s an integral part of any endeavor that we intend to do.
And instead, there might be this way we just feel like, oh, I just have to push harder, or we think, I must be doing it wrong. Oh yeah, just another indicator of my failure because my enthusiasm hasn’t maintained or this isn’t giving me the… it’s not meeting my expectations. It’s not giving me the outcomes that I was expecting.
So just to say that this path of practice is not only about applying effort, it’s also patience. It’s time to simply, maybe patiently, abide or look on or observe as opposed to always pushing.
I’ve told this story here a few times when on a meditation retreat. This was a long meditation retreat, and the teacher said to me, “Well, Diana, people like you that are strivers…” from just trying so hard to get concentrated and just sit still, you know, with perfect posture and oh my gosh, I was just exhausting myself. But I just couldn’t see it because I had this idea that that was what’s required. That’s what was needed.
But there’s this way if we apply energy and never have patience or don’t have patience, we just feel like we have to push more and more, we will overexert ourselves and it’ll be something different than headaches. This is called burnout, right? Which so many people experience. There’s this way in which we just get depleted because we feel like there’s only this one thing that we have to do is just work harder. And certainly our society kind of supports this idea that you have to work more and more.
And there’s this way that we might end up actually wasting energy if we don’t take the time sometimes to have some patience because we might think like, “Oh, this is taking too long. I’m going to do a shortcut.” Even this happened earlier today. I don’t know why 101 south was just barely moving, like, you know, 4 miles an hour, 5 miles an hour, maybe 10. I don’t know. And I thought on my way here, I thought, this is so perfect, I’m talking about patience and here I am. So I don’t know what happened, and then I was tempted, like, I could take this exit, you know, get off. But then I saw, oh, those cars are not moving either. Okay, I’ll stay here. But there’s this way in which we often want to take shortcuts. I mean, this is an obvious one, right, with driving. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I’ve done this many times thinking, “Oh, it’ll be faster. I know the back roads,” and I’m not the only person that knows the back roads, right? And then it just ends up taking so much longer.
And I appreciate that the Buddha, he talked about this thousands of years ago. He says:
As the wagoner who left the highway, a road with an even surface, and entered upon a rugged path, broods mournfully with a broken axle.
Right? So he even pointed to this idea that we want to get places quicker, but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does. But sometimes we end up with a broken axle, which we might say is this maybe just giving up entirely or things being worse than how they were. We feel completely discouraged or distracted or something like this.
But then we could say if one is too patient and never makes any effort, like, yeah, I’m just waiting, things will work out, it’ll be fine. And then we’re just, yeah, I’m being patient, this is a virtue, something that should be cultivated. I’m just being patient. That doesn’t work either. If we have this way in which we’re just feeling like we’re just waiting and being patient and we’re not noticing maybe the quality of the mind while we’re waiting. There could be this way in which we’re unknowingly cultivating this sense of… maybe the sense in which that our energy, kind of the sense of vitality, just drains out. The enthusiasm that we had leaves. Or maybe we’re cultivating just this quiet aversion like, “Yeah, I don’t want to pay attention to what’s actually happening. So, I’m just going to maybe abide in this puffy cloud of not really knowing,” you know, kind of like feeling foggy or not really being connected to our life. This way in which sometimes it can feel a little… I don’t know how to explain it very well. I’ve spent time doing this, just dull and not engaged and not very much energy and feeling like, yeah, I think I don’t want to do that.
So there’s this way in which we can be patient but to notice the quality of the mind, so that the patience isn’t just a way in which we’re disconnecting and calling it patience. Instead, is there a time to not be applying so much effort, but instead to be able to say, okay, I think what’s needed here is not so much effort. Not to completely disengage, but to not be applying so much effort. And this often is hard to do. Sometimes we’re just all on or all off and not quite sure how to do something where we’re engaged and connected but not pushing. Just noticing the quality of the mind. What’s happening here?
Patience has a quality of spaciousness to it. This quality of like, things don’t have to happen right now. There’s a certain way in which we’re trusting. It doesn’t have to be fixed this moment. It doesn’t have to be different this moment. There might be a time in which it’s okay for it to be different, or maybe we feel like it would be much better for ourselves or for others to be different. But is there a way we can say, like, yeah, right now it doesn’t have to.
And some of you have heard me talk about this way in which we can work with difficulties that arise using this acronym RAFT. Tanya Wiser2 teaches about this. She came up with this initially. Recognize what’s actually happening, like, oh yeah, there’s… I feel impatient. I want something to happen. A, allow. Can you just allow it to be there? Because it is there. And there’s this way we can be subtly like, okay, if I turn my head, maybe it won’t be there. No, it is there. Recognize, allow. F, feel in the body. Feel the maybe the restlessness. For some reason, I feel restlessness often in my arms. There’s a sense like I kind of feel like I want to do something. And then here’s T. There’s a number of ways we could say it. T, trust that you don’t have to fix it right now. Recognize what’s happening. Allow it to be there as best you can. Feel in the body. Don’t get stuck in the head, all the stories. Just feel in the body. For me, impatience does have this little agitated feeling in my arms and it has a kind of a tightness, a general constriction in my upper chest, kind of this feeling. Trust that it doesn’t have to change that moment.
So there’s this way in which practice requires this delicate balance of, you know, some effort and patience. Effort and patience. And often we don’t think about how these go together. We think it’s like, okay, just one that I have to be patient when somebody else is holding me back. But instead, it’s a counterbalance to effort. And I appreciate so much that Sylvia Boorstein3, she talks about patience as “unglamorous courage.” Unglamorous courage, right? The courage to hang in there, not to completely disconnect.
So to say a little bit more about patience, it’s not a quantifiable object. We kind of feel like, okay, we only have so much. My patience is running out, or I don’t have the patience for this, or something like this. It turns out patience is infinite. It’s not a commodity. It’s not something that we feel like we only have a certain amount. It’s something that we can orient towards and it’s something that we can cultivate. Maybe in the same way courage or loving kindness or something like this. These are just qualities we can cultivate.
So we could say it’s related to just simply non-reactivity. This way in which we often… I mean, we’ve probably all heard this idea, well, just count to 10, you know, before you want to react to something that was unpleasant or uncomfortable. So it’s this just creating this little gap. So it’s not reacting as best we can to what’s happening. So not turning to blaming, not turning to anger, raging, and not despairing, but instead, can we in some ways count to 10? And that allows us to hold our difficulties in a more spacious way that feels more peaceful.
And then with this spacious way that’s a little bit more peaceful, then maybe we can see into something, the what’s causing the difficulty, instead of just, oh, it’s because that person in the checkout line, they’re rummaging around in their pockets or purse or something like this and can’t find whatever they need to pay the bill or whatever it is, and meanwhile the line is backing up or something like this. There’s this way in which we have this spacious mind is different than if we just start feeling impatient. A spacious mind, we can see, okay, this isn’t going the way that I expected. But that’s just because I have this idea in my mind, completely fabricated in my mind about how things should be. This picture about how things should be and things aren’t that way. I talk about this often because this turns out to be a ticket to so much more ease and freedom, is to recognize this gap between the way we think things should be and the way things actually are. And once we can just notice that, then we can loosen up this idea of like, oh yeah, I have this idea that everybody should be organized, forgetting the time that we were disorganized when it came time to check out. Or if it’s somebody who maybe can’t move quickly or something, recognize that may be us, right? There may be a time in which we’re the one who is moving slowly for whatever reason.
So this patience is about, you know, making space which allows us to not act out but also maybe allows for some wisdom to show up. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a moment here. But I also want to say that patience also has this feeling of some perseverance, of just hanging in there. So it’s this idea of giving up a deadline. Like, okay, this should have happened by now. I’ve been meditating regularly and I should be in the 28th Jhāna4 or I should at least be awakened by now. You know, these ideas that we have about what practice should be about. Giving up a deadline, but not giving up. Just giving up the idea that things should happen at a particular pace, a pace that we have set. Or maybe we know somebody and we have this compare and despair happening, like, well, my friend, you know, meditated three times and they’ve already completely changed their life. Or I’m exaggerating, but whatever it might be, there’s this way in which we might kind of glorify… this way in which we don’t see clearly other people. Social media certainly promotes this, and we might think like, oh, it should be this other way. So giving up a deadline, but not giving up.
So also I want to say a few words about what patience isn’t, because there’s this way in which we might feel like we’re being patient but we’re not. There could be this numbing resignation. This is this checking out. But there could also be this gritting your teeth, you know, kind of this growling, this like, and we feel like, okay, I’m waiting. But it’s just… that’s just cultivating aversion. That’s just waiting with aversion. That’s not patience.
Patience isn’t passivity either. It’s this way in which it doesn’t deny the difficulty that’s being experienced, but it’s this way in which it’s rooted in respect and compassion. Respect and compassion for ourselves, for other people, and maybe for just the process. Like things take time. Things take time. Changing our life, learning new patterns, being with difficulties take time even though we don’t want them to. Doesn’t matter so much what we want. Or we could even say maybe even the more we want them to be fast, the slower they take.
Maybe some of you have heard this little story. It’s a Zen story. There’s this person who decides that they want to become a monastic. So they go to the monastery and they’re going to dedicate their life to practice and meditation and this is what it’s going to be. So they go to the abbot of the monastery and say, “Well, you know, how long will it take until I have some more ease and freedom?” And the abbot says, “Well, I don’t know, maybe five years.” And the person is like, “Oh, well what if I work really hard and really dedicate myself to practice, you know, for some peace and freedom?” And then the abbot says, “Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. In that case, 20 years.” [Laughter] Right? There’s this way in which we push and push and then we’re not seeing how we’re like flagellating ourselves and trying to make ourselves do things and feeling like, oh, if those other people would only get out of the way and I should do this. But we’re not seeing all this aversion in a way that other things are getting cultivated when we don’t have the sense of patience.
So there’s this way I talked about how can we cultivate it or how is it… let’s say this patience is certainly a balance to effort and energy for our practice, but it’s also, I would say, an integral stepping stone to equanimity5. And equanimity is an integral stepping stone to freedom, absolutely. Equanimity is, you know, this balance and seeing the big picture. So there’s this way in which this literally or figuratively counting to 10, like having a little bit of space, so not being so reactive, it allows… so our choosing to not react allows this little pause. And in this pause, it kind of allows for some wisdom to show up, like maybe, you know, for some clarity about what is the next course of action. But it’s also this little pause also allows a certain amount of stability to grow instead of just this reactivity. The opposite of that is some stability. And then in this stability, as this grows, this grows into equanimity. That real stable, the sense of balance in the sense of difficulty.
So patience is related to equanimity. Maybe on the outside they look the same, but patience is where we’re feeling the difficulty and we’re intending intentionally to like, okay, I’m just going to hold this space here. And maybe we’re feeling the wind of the difficulty. We’re feeling the force and maybe we’re getting a little bit off balance, but we’re not reacting the way that we perhaps would have before we started practicing patience. Whereas equanimity has a little just more steadiness. It doesn’t even get pushed around even a little bit.
So patience is such an important… not only if you have an electronic gizmo that doesn’t work right and you have to call and email and all these things that we try to do to fix them. So patience, like courage, is something that increases the more we do it. The more that we set our mind that direction to be with what’s arising as best we can.
So there’s this lyric to a song that I heard so many years ago, decades ago, that has stayed with me all these years. It goes, “I’ve worried, is it so that lessons of patience are learned slow?” This idea, right, that we need patience to create patience. But this is how it works. It just makes it easier and easier to do it the more we practice it.
So what are some ways we can practice? Maybe I’ll say that mindfulness automatically helps support patience because we start to notice our impatience. We start to notice that agitation that we’re starting to feel, and that can be a tremendous support. Like, oh yeah, okay, impatience feels like this. And maybe we hadn’t even noticed it before. Maybe we hadn’t even noticed how we were standing there with our hand on our hip and, you know, tapping our foot, you know, when somebody is not doing what we want or they’re taking too long to do something.
But here are some other things maybe to just consider. When are you patient? What are some things, some activities in your life in which you feel like you do have patience? Maybe you have some hobbies, something where you’re willing to patiently do some activity, something with your hands. Or maybe there’s family members or people in your life that you have tremendous patience for. Sometimes young ones, right, who we recognize that they’re still learning and we have patience for them. So bring to mind, when do you have patience? And then just have this little query: What is it that allows the patience there? There might be something that you’re not even aware of. Maybe there’s a feeling that you have. Maybe there’s care or some respect, or maybe there’s just a sense of, oh, things don’t have to have a particular outcome right now. It’s okay to just be here. Or maybe have an image or a thought or something like that. It can be helpful to identify that because it becomes easier to… can you intentionally bring that to other situations in your life? This isn’t a panacea that automatically everything… you’re going to become patient. But it’s, why not work from our strengths? Work from what is already, those times in which we are patient.
And then there’s something we can do if you have a big project that you’re working on. There’s a way, and we often think like, oh my goodness, and then I have all this to do. I sometimes am doing this. I have this giant project and sometimes I just feel like, oh my goodness, it’s so much work. But instead, focus on what you’ve done. And I started to do this and that’s been fantastic. It’s been really helpful. Like, oh yeah, okay, I did this little bit and that was all right, that was fine. So why don’t I just do that little bit again, you know, and that gets further. So here’s something to consider just in your life, just to orient the glass is half full, you know, this way with a big project you have to do.
Or there’s this way in which maybe you could start a practice movement in the sense that if you do find that you are the one that people are waiting for, say, “Thank you for your patience.” Just to acknowledge that. And then people start to maybe shift a little bit like, oh yeah, well, we can be patient here. And then there’s this way in which just bringing the word patience in just allows a little bit more ease and spaciousness. And who knows, one of those people later might be patient for you when you need them to be, or maybe they will be saying to you, “Thank you for your patience.” And that will be helpful, like, “Oh yeah, I don’t have to be impatient here.”
There’s other things we can do. I don’t want to maybe just give a long list of do this, do that, do this other thing. But maybe I’ll end with a poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer6. Of course. What would I do without Rosemary Wahtola Trommer?
So this poem is called Lumbricus terrestris7.
Lumbricus terrestris
by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
On a day when the world is weighty, dark, and dense with need, I want to be the earthworm that gives itself over to tunneling.
It’s every movement an act of bringing spaciousness.
And when minutes feel crushed by urgency, I want to meet the world wormlike, which is to say grounded, consistent, even slow.
No matter how desperate the situation, the worm does not tunnel faster nor burrow more. It knows it can take decades to build fine soil.
To whatever is compacted, the worm offers its good worm work, quietly bringing porosity to what is trodden, compressed.
So often in my rush to repair, I end up exhausted.
Let my gift to the world be my constancy, a devotion to openness, my willingness to be with what is.
Let my gift to myself be patience as I tend what is dense and dark.
Let my gift to the world be my constancy, a devotion to openness, my willingness to be with what is.
Let my gift to myself be patience as I tend what is dark and dense. What is dense and dark.
Lumbricus terrestris. I just like saying that.
So, thank you for your patience during this talk and I’ll open it up to see if there’s some questions or comments. Thank you.
Diana Clark: Anybody have anything they’d like to say?
Audience Member 1: Is it a similar feeling to know when we need patience and when to strive? Is it like a bodily feeling you feel in your body, your mind, or is it two different feelings?
Diana Clark: You mean knowing to strive versus knowing when to apply effort?
Audience Member 1: Yeah. Knowing if I need more patience or if I need to strive harder. Is it the same kind of feeling in the body to tell you or is it a different kind of feeling?
Diana Clark: Yeah, this is good. So, it’s both maybe we could say a knowing, but what is the feeling? Yeah. So, patience, right? Has this openness and a spaciousness like, yep, okay, I’m just going to be here. But your question is, how do we know when to be patient and when to stop striving? When to stop pushing?
Audience Member 1: When to strive more?
Diana Clark: Do you have a sense, Matt?
Audience Member 1: I don’t know. Well, I mean, I think it’s more obvious to me when I need to be more patient because then I feel kind of hyped up and I just need to relax. But I don’t know about knowing when I need to strive more. I’m not sure about that.
Diana Clark: Yeah, there’s often if I feel like when the striving is too much, there’s a few qualities present usually, I would say in my experience. One is there’s a strong sense of, “I need to be having a different experience. I need something different.” So there’s a strong sense of, “Diana has to have something different.” And there’s also a sense of not only does it need to be different, whatever it is isn’t okay. Something particular has to happen. Dang it. It has that kind of quality like, you know, all chairs should be blue. Dang it. So I’m going to do something to make them all blue and I’m not going to rest until that’s done. Like there has to be… there’s this sense of this grayness is not okay and things have to be different. So it’s not only that they have to be different, but there has to be a particular outcome. And then often there’s this real pushing there.
But that’s in contrast to, “Oh, I think it could be really supportive if there were blue chairs. Yeah, I think that would actually, you know, brighten things up and bring the mood up and it would help people to meditate better. Yeah. I’m curious about this. Maybe I’ll see if there’s something to do about it.” So there’s not as much about, “Diana has to have something different.” It’s more like an idea that things can be different and applying effort. Thank you.
Audience Member 2: You know, I’ve been dealing with… I’ll get really specific and then I’ll pull out. But I’ve been changing phone carriers. I’ve been changing phone carriers and it’s been a really arduous process, but I’ve noticed that some personalities it pays to be patient with and some personalities it doesn’t really pay to be, at least in the way you were talking. I mean, sometimes with either if somebody’s bullying you or somebody is being stubborn, you have to push, I think, and you have to assert yourself.
Diana Clark: Oh, yeah.
Audience Member 2: And so I guess what I’m saying is I think there are different qualities of patience depending on the situation that you’re in.
Diana Clark: Yep.
Audience Member 2: Because people will push you around.
Diana Clark: Yeah. Patience is not passivity. Yeah. Patience is not passivity. It’s not letting people push us around. But it’s interesting that you said it pays to be patient and sometimes it pays to push. It’s interesting that you’re using this word “pays” because it implies that like, okay, how can I get to that thing fastest? Which is fine, right? And you spoke about a particular activity which has never in my experience been a pleasant thing to do. So yeah, there’s a way in which, you know, thinking about patience is also related to equanimity. So there’s a way in which sometimes people are pushing, this is their job, their livelihood is dependent on how much, you know, for sales or something like this. And is there a way that they can be pushing and we can just say, “No, thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you. I’m going to do this. No, thank you.” We end up saying no thank you a lot and just kind of staying here. So I don’t know. I’m just offering this.
Audience Member 3: I just wanted to make the comment that I really liked when you said, “giving up a deadline but not giving up.”
Diana Clark: Yeah. Yeah, I like this too. It’s very helpful for me because sometimes I feel like giving up the deadline is giving up, right? The sense like, oh, if I can’t have it by that time, I’m not going to do it. But just like, oh no, it’s going to let it unfold or be available when it is instead of demanding that it be another time. Yeah. Thank you.
Audience Member 3: Yeah. And I think also it allows us to take the time and space to be present enough to be aware of what we have, how far we have come.
Diana Clark: Yeah.
Audience Member 3: And be more patient to wait for what is to come and be grateful for what we have now.
Diana Clark: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That’s a very good point. Right. There’s this way in which we feel like, oh, there’s always something out there that we have to get or make or do or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Audience Member 4: In relation to your comments about energy earlier, I personally get a lot of energy from the desire for things to be different. Please tell me more about where else energy can come from.
Diana Clark: Oh, love. Things that we love, right? We have energy for things that we love. Right. That’s the opposite of, “this has to be different.”
Audience Member 4: Yes. And for the things that we love, there’s an element of we want to protect the things that we love. We want them to thrive. There’s always like this kind of flux and change with how we sit in relation even to the things that we love. At least that’s how I relate to it. But I guess I’m looking for how you’re thinking about love. How do you experience that?
Diana Clark: Yeah. So love… so I’m using this one word, right, which has so many different meanings, but things that we care about or have respect and that we maybe honor or appreciate or, you know, things like this that are meaningful, something like that. And so your question is that if it’s not… so I’m not saying we don’t change some things, right? Of course, we do change things, but it’s what’s maybe fueling it. And it’s also like, is it fueling it because there’s this strong sense of, “I have to prove myself,” or a strong sense of, “this is terrible.” Of course we all put energy and make and do things, of course, but is it born out of, “this is a problem and whoever did this did it wrong and I got to fix this to make it better and I’m going to show everybody how, here’s the best way to do it,” and this kind of thing. And on the way, everybody’s going to see how great I am at fixing this particular problem. Right? That’s very different than like, “Oh, wow, there’s a lot of harm here,” or, “I could see where this actually could be supportive for some people to do things differently here. I’m going to create this so that there’s less harm or I could support other people in a different way.” Does this make sense?
Audience Member 4: I think I’m hearing avoid aversion and the ego in terms of how you get energy. Those are the two things I’m hearing that might not be so helpful.
Diana Clark: Yeah. And they do, the interesting thing, aversion and ego do provide a lot of energy. I mean, they really do. But it works until it doesn’t. It’s one of those things, right? Then our life ends up getting filled up with aversion, which is not a life that ends up being so happy. And ego, then we have to bolster and protect and it’s exhausting.
Diana Clark: Thank you all. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for your patience. And I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening and safe travels home. Thank you.
Pāramīs: A Pali word meaning “perfections” or “transcendent virtues.” In Theravada Buddhism, these are ten qualities cultivated on the path to awakening: generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity. ↩
Tanya Wiser: A dharma teacher in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, associated with the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. ↩
Sylvia Boorstein: A prominent American author, psychotherapist, and Buddhist teacher. She is a co-founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. ↩
Jhāna: A Pali term for a state of deep meditative absorption. There are traditionally eight jhānas, each representing a progressively deeper level of concentration and tranquility. ↩
Equanimity (Upekkhā): A Pali term for a balanced, non-reactive state of mind. It is one of the Four Sublime States (Brahmaviharas) and one of the Ten Pāramīs, characterized by the ability to observe reality without attachment or aversion. ↩
Rosemary Wahtola Trommer: An American poet, writer, and teacher. She served as the poet laureate for San Miguel County, Colorado. ↩
Lumbricus terrestris: The scientific (Latin) name for the common earthworm or nightcrawler. ↩