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Guided Meditation: Simple Patience; Dharmette: Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose (4/5): Waiting Well - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 30, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Simple Patience

Good morning and welcome. I will say good afternoon or good evening, and I also like to say hello to those people in the future who are listening to or watching this. It is a recognition that YouTube and audio allow people to access this sometime other than in real time.

Today is the fourth installment of this series I am doing: "Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose." It is a recognition that practice is not entirely on the cushion in our formal meditation practice. Not only that, but what we do off the cushion impacts our meditation life. Of course it does, right? We only have one mind.

The invitation or orientation today is about patience. We all know we are supposed to have patience. This isn't anything new that you are hearing from me, but I am hoping to talk about it in a way that we can bring it in as a support in our daily life to meet things patiently, as well as in our meditation life on the cushion.

With that as a little introduction, let's take a meditation posture. Sitting in a way that is steady and kind. Inviting both stillness and warm-heartedness. The spine is upright without stiffness, and the hands are resting where they don't need to manage anything. They are just resting.

Maybe to begin, we will start with three touch points connecting us to this physical location, this moment. First, the contact of our seat with the chair or cushion; our buttocks with the chair, couch, or bed if you are lying down. Just feeling the pressure against the body.

Second, feel the weight and warmth of the hands. Whatever they are touching, as well as the actual experience of having hands, which might be some subtle tingling.

Then we will bring in this third touch point: the sensations of breathing. Feeling the body breathe. It is natural. Feeling it somewhere where it is easy to feel in the body. We will hang out here for a little bit with the sensations of breathing. Feeling the movement of the body as it breathes, or maybe feeling the different temperature of the air at the tip of the nose.

For this meditation period, let's make a commitment to not look at the clock. Time will pass in the way time passes. Let's just trust that everything has a beginning, middle, and end, including this meditation session. Can we just trust that without looking at the clock?

There is nothing to improve or change. We are just tuned into the sensations of breathing. The experience of breathing, not thoughts about experience. When the mind wanders, very simply, gently, begin again with the sensations of breathing. Softening any sense that we have to get somewhere or get something, we simply just be here the way that it is.

It might be sensations or experiences that are unpleasant. There might not be, but if there are, can the unpleasant not be a problem that we have to solve and fix? Can it be a visitor to recognize? We notice the unpleasantness and feel this surge of wanting to fix, wanting to run away. If it is okay with your body—but only you know that—can you feel it as a sensation? Pressure, stabbing, throbbing? And then not turn it into an action or a story. Can we just notice, letting the breath and these touch points support you? Touch points being contact with our sitting surface, hands, breath. And not looking at the clock.

If any impatience appears—wanting this moment to be different—can we just feel this and let it pass? Honoring it, respecting it, but not acting out on it. And not looking at the clock.

[Silence]

Okay. Bringing some movement into the body. Thank you.

This notion of not looking at the clock—some people never look at the clock when they are meditating, but a lot of people do. It is fascinating. I have noticed this myself because when I am leading a meditation, of course, I have a sense of the time and the clock. I notice when I look at the clock, there is a surge of restlessness. "Really, it is only X time?" or "Wow, why did I look? Because there is only X time left, I should have waited." There is never anything good that comes from looking at the clock.

If you are meditating by yourself at home, my recommendation is to use a timer and then just trust the timer. Put it out of sight but in a way that you can hear it. Or just sit without a timer but also without looking at a clock. Just having simple patience, allowing this meditation, this moment to unfold as it is. Because having impatience doesn't make anything go faster.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose (4/5): Waiting Well

So, welcome again to this fourth day of practice in this series I am calling "Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose." Being a little cute—"off the cushion, on purpose"—I kind of like it.

Today I want to talk about patience. There is this way in which we all know we are supposed to be patient. There isn't anybody saying, "Oh, be as impatient as possible. This is a good thing." Nobody is saying this. But I want to talk about it a little bit more and relate it to our practice.

Sometimes, if we are hearing instruction after instruction, there can be this feeling that we have to apply work. We have to do more. There is all this energy and effort, and we just feel like practice is more, more, and more. Actually, we need patience as a counterbalance to this notion of more work. If we just feel like we have to apply more energy and effort, then we overexert ourselves and become exhausted and burnt out.

This happens in our meditation. It happens in all areas of our life. There might be this underlying sense of "it's not enough" or "you are not enough." Then we try to work as a way to address this without even noticing that there is this underlying sense of not-enoughness.

I know I have certainly done plenty of this in my life. It has shown up in so many different ways. I remember on a retreat, one of the teachers during a practice discussion said, "Diana, you're such a striver." I was so offended. "I'm not a striver!" Oh my gosh, I was striving so much. [Laughter] I just couldn't see it. I just felt like, well, there are things to be done. I have got to "chop chop," get to it. If we think it is all about energy and work and effort and never about patience, then we end up overexerting ourselves and fueling this idea that we are not enough.

Not only that, impatience loves shortcuts. I would say by definition impatience is this idea of wanting shortcuts. We try to force a result or we try to outrun discomfort, and we often end up paying for it later. These shortcuts end up not being nearly as helpful as we think they would be. Literally, this happens with traffic. I feel like, "Oh, I'll get off the freeway, it's going too slow, and go down the city streets," but this doesn't work.

What is fascinating for me is that the Buddha spoke about this. He recognized this tendency of how we want to take shortcuts—this sense of impatience. There is a short little metaphor that the Buddha gives:

"As the wagon driver who left the highway, a road with an even surface, and entered upon a rugged path, broods mournfully after a broken axle."¹

This is a picture of impatience costing more than it saves. When we depart from this reliable path of patience and ethical practice—which in this little vignette is a highway with an even surface—and enter upon a rugged path thinking, "Oh, I'm going to take a shortcut," we often end up having some regret and running into difficulties that take a lot of energy.

Impatience wants us to take shortcuts which ends up not saving us time or energy. We experience this again and again in our daily life and even in our meditation practice. What is needed is this delicate balance of effort—striving, endeavor—and patience in our life and practice. It can't just be this way in which we are only patient, where we have this idea of just letting everything take its own course. If we do that, we might not notice the quality of the mind, or that the mind is going in an unhelpful direction—maybe towards disconnection, collapsing, or unhelpful patterns taking over. Practice and life is a balance of patience and effort.

So what is patience? First of all, I want to say it is not a commodity. It is not something where there is a fixed amount and we feel like, "Oh, I'm running out of patience." That doesn't exist. This idea that there is only a fixed amount, or that we might be somebody who "doesn't have a lot of patience," is incorrect. Patience is our way of relating to what has not gone our way. It is about our relationship to experience. It is not about some fixed amount of something.

In meditation, this might show up as a throbbing knee or a mind that doesn't settle. In daily life, it is a long line. For whatever reason, I have had to experience quite a few long lines recently. I notice how everybody else in the line with me is on their phones. But just yesterday in a line, I noticed that, oh, if I look out the window, there is actually a pleasant view. I allowed myself to watch some passersby outside the window and just be with the experience of standing and looking.

Sometimes impatience shows up when someone is taking a long time to get to their point. Whether this is in meditation or in our daily life, patience is the same. It is: Stay with what is here without adding harm, without adding anything extra, and stay long enough for wisdom to catch up.

Patience has two aspects. One is the staying part—not acting on our impatience. Patience is refraining from acting on this surge or quick impulse of anger, irritation, wanting to fix, or wanting to blame. There is this initial surge when things aren't going on a time scale that we want them to. Instead, patience asks: Can we hold these difficulties, these irritants, in a spacious way? This recognition like, "Yeah, this is uncomfortable. Yeah, this is irritating, but I don't have to fix it right this moment."

If we can hold things in a more spacious and peaceful way, then we can start to see some of the causes of suffering, rather than just trying to fix it. We know seeing suffering and the causes of suffering is the Four Noble Truths². This is deep practice. That is the first element of patience: staying.

The second is waiting for wisdom to catch up. We could say that is also perseverance—staying with what matters. It is not passivity. It is about giving up the deadline but not giving up the commitment or the dedication. Patience is having consistency rather than intensity. Often there is this surge of "I got to do something," but can we just stay with some spaciousness and continue to stay?

It takes time to unlearn impatience. But these two facets—this non-reactivity and this perseverance—are the same muscle groups that we use in meditation. We are not immediately enacting aversion, but we are remaining steady.

I want to say a few things about what patience is not. Sometimes we might feel like—and I know I certainly did, I fell into this a little bit—"Well, I'm being patient," when I was just waiting for the bell to ring. But patience is not gritting our teeth with aversion. That is just "waiting while hating."

Patience is asking: Can we hold it with some ease? Recognizing the discomfort, the irritation, honoring that, respecting that, but not suppressing it. We are not denying difficulty, but we are just holding difficulty in a larger field of care and clarity so that wiser action becomes possible.

In daily life, we don't need to manufacture particular experiences to practice this. Life will bring you plenty. Here are a few things to help with this practice off the cushion:

1. Put the irritant into perspective. Will this matter in 15 days that this grocery line is going impossibly slow? Or that the person in front of me and the cashier are having a conversation? Just put the irritant into perspective.
2. Choose to notice what you have already done. If you have a big project, rather than looking like, "Oh my gosh, I have so much more to do," reflect on what you have already done. This is a real support for staying with it.
3. Practice mindfulness of the body. If you do find yourself waiting in line, let the body be quietly dignified. Feel our feet on the ground, the breath simple. Sometimes we find people putting their hands on their hips, tapping their foot, when they are impatient. Can you just be with the bodily experience of being present with some care?
4. Thank others for being patient. Sometimes you are the one holding up the line, or maybe you are the one finding a hard time getting to your point when you are talking. Maybe you can just thank others for being patient. There is this way in which we kind of start a "patience movement." It is a way to diffuse your tension and diffuse others, and maybe encourage others to be patient.

So, waiting well brings some intention to our patience. Recognizing there are two aspects of it: not acting out this surge of impatience, and this quiet perseverance. Just staying there.

Thank you. I am sure today you will have some opportunities to practice patience. I don't have to wish this on anybody, but just an encouragement that when impatience arrives today, just notice: "Oh, here is my opportunity to practice patience."

Thank you for your practice.

Someone put in the chat, "Can't wait for tomorrow's story." Thank you for that. That is fantastic. [Laughter]

Thank you everyone. It is so lovely to practice together. It is really nice. Thank you.