Bearing With

The Buddha gives a lot of emphasis to the value of patient endurance, and as Ajahn Amaro pointed out very adeptly one time, “bitter endurance is not patient endurance.” [See Ajahn Amaro: “Patient Endurance, A Critical Quality,” (22 August 2010) and “Patient Endurance, The Entrance to the Four Noble Truths,” (18 February 2011)]

The perfection of being patient and enduring something is to bear with that which is unwished for, unwanted, painful, or unpleasant – absent any taṇhā or unskillfulness.

So, what might replace taṇhā and a desire for some different experience–and all the thoughts and emotions that come with that–could be something like equanimity. Or even just some sort of radical acceptance of the way it is. We do have the capacity just to bear with.

If we have the skillfulness to pare things back to really attending fully to the present moment, it’s amazing what human beings can bear with. All kinds of unpleasantness, pain, difficulty is something that we can hold in consciousness if we recollect this teaching of the second arrow and are very heedful not to create extra suffering.

The engine of creating extra suffering is this rejection of the conditions that we’re presented with. It functions somewhat on how we’ve been living and practicing. If we don’t have a habit of dwelling with a heart full of acceptance, absent of greed, hatred, and delusion–like the delusion that it should be otherwise or that we deserve some other experience or the delusion that it doesn’t belong–it would be very easy to have an experience that this [e.g. smoke] doesn’t belong. These things definitely belong; this is part of what it means to live in the human realm.

But even more importantly about that, really, is coming back to this question again: is this worth suffering over? Are you going to allow yourself to suffer over something which is painful, unwished for, uncomfortable? Or are you going to rise to the challenge to bear with –
to keep the mind in an equanimous state, and a patient state, grounded in the present, heedful, not to be emoting and spinning stories and a commentary that would feed the tendency to drift toward some form of desire (taṇhā) for things to be otherwise?

As one gathers the mind into awareness of the body, the breath, and the present moment, and pares things back to the way it is, learning to abide in that, not only do we find a refuge from generating and feeding the extra added suffering of responding to what our experience is presenting us with, we find that we’re quite resourceful in being able to bear with whatever life presents us with.

Over time that creates a lessening of anxiety and a kind of fearlessness that whatever life throws at us, we can probably take it. And we can probably receive it in a way that doesn’t generate any excess dukkha or doesn’t stimulate us to create harm to ourself or to others.

This reflection by Ajahn Sudanto is adapted from the YouTube video [beginning from 3:23] “Morning Coffee: Bearing With,” September 17, 2020.