Patience

Today the air is light, the skies are open and yet, there are grey clouds slowly making way across the expanse we call "sky".  It is still cool in the upper 40's fahrenheit.  The winds from yesterday seem to have cleared a few things.  It is Saturday and another day has already begun to unfold. 

At 6:12 a.m., a text came through - "Can you pick up bindattock from H mart?  I would appreciate it."  (smiley face with heart eyes). Odd.  Of course, she could not have known that I didn't fall asleep until almost 3 a.m.

But she knows that H mart opens at 9 and what this tells me is worried about something, and is not tracking on the fact that there will be no chance to eat this special savory pancake this weekend because it happens that every meal will likely be out, not at home.  (Thank you, brother from out of town!).

These are the kinds of sweet/sad exchanges that happen if one is fortunate enough to live with parents who have aged into their 90's and live close by.  There is proximity - less than 10 minutes by car - between the one asking and the one receiving the message,  and this fact means a number of requests like this. Sometimes it is papaya or avocado or a special kind of green that only can be found at H Mart or Hannam Market.  Other times, it is slippers, a bedroom bench, a specific kind of sunscreen, a sushi pack from Nijiya Market - not Tokyo Central because their sushi is "terrible".  Still other times, there are moments of "oops" - as when the unit flooded and was bad that it seeped down to units below.  Patience.

Patience is staring into a wall for nine years.  And in modern times, it is facing the world for a lifetime.  

Things happen at a global, local, individual level – all of it can be confounding. Some of it carries the sweetness of revealing what life is about; other things just bring chaos and confusion.  One cannot be confused about bearing witness to what it means to be a human being, with only so much time and capacity to understand. It is like a sticky-note that has been tacked on to one of the many walls we run into in life - and it is a reminder that we need to cultivate this aspect of our being if anything is to be truly understood.

And the point to not to be missed is that patience is related to perseverance, compassion, love.   It is exchanges like this that are the portals for looking into ones true nature.  And it is opportunities like going to find whatever is being asked that allows one to practice meditation in action. Not everyone can go live in a temple.  Then, one realizes, "I am the temple."