Patience and Trust.
- clearstreamzendo
- Jun 29
- 2 min read
This week’s topic for reflection is patience and trust. Thinking feels to me like grabbing hold of and figuring something out where patience and trust opens us up and allows for new possibilities and discoveries. To be patient is simply to be present and open, holding the issue as if it's on your open hand allowing the answer to arrive on its own when it wants to. To trust is not knowing when it will arrive and being okay with that. Trust also involves not needing to know how it will arrive or where it comes from. Sometimes courage is needed to go through fear to arrive at patience and trust.
The process of patient trust can be effective when you loose your keys. You've thought about where they might be and have looked everywhere and still can’t find them. Patient trust is pausing to allow the keys to tell you where they are. I use patient trust in coming up with the topics for reflection. When I stop thinking about it, pause and wait, the topic eventually finds me. When it does arrive I know it.
Patient trust is the basic technique of zazen. This is patient trust where what is openly and gently held is the present moment without expectation or judgement. It’s important to practice doing this and being this way. As this ability grows or increases, it naturally integrates with activity and involvement, participation and choice. This is not about being stuck in anyway but free to see and move in every way.
Patient trust is difficult to do when starting out as our tendency and habit is to grab hold of and control. Eventually we see that patient trust is easier and actually a natural way to be in the world and with the world. It’s a natural way to be in this new and changing situation. This of coarse does not mean not having the ability to say no or yes or have healthy boundaries. This is more about not being stuck. Be like Einstein.
Please join us for morning Zoom zazen from 7:00 to 7:30 Tuesday and Thursday, and Sunday morning Zoom zazen and discussion of the topic for reflection blog from 8:00 to 9:00 Pacific Time. Here’s the Zoom link:
Meeting ID: 811 6100 3357
Passcode: 278259
Gassho,
Futai
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