Ep. 2 - Not your garden variety patience

We talk about patience... in ways you may have not heard or thought of. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I'm here with Dr. Ruben Lambert. Dr. Ruben Lambert is a licensed psychologist specializing in mind-body wellness intervention. He's also a Zen monk with a very appropriate name. The absence of, one could say, the alleviator of the ghouls in the mind. And goblins. And goblins. He incorporates into his therapeutic approach the Zen philosophy to help and rescue people from their... clouded mind perception leading them to depressions, anxieties, etc., etc. He integrates the Zen with the modern scientific psychological research to provide training and intervention that target the mind, body, and spirit.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

Hello, everyone. Welcome back, or for first-timers, pleasure to meet you. I want to introduce to you Venerable Myung An Sunim. He is the abbot of Sosimsa Zen Center and with a very appropriate name also, Myung An, as the bright light that sees the pathway forward to help guide and restore peace and harmony to all those who come here. Sosimsa is a refuge where you can come to receive spiritual awakening. We have a variety of different health and meditation classes, one of them being the Intro to Meditation and Zen, another one being Tonggong Health Exercises. And if you want to have a chit-chat that might leave you pondering and also help you understand what your insights are and how to better make a life for yourself, you should definitely check out the Tea with the Abbot. I recommend that to everyone. Myung Han Sunim is a spiritual chaos specialist, an inner turmoil pacifier, stale water agitator, and a transformational guide, Zen master, speaker, and I can say personal friend for many years now. If you tuned into the last podcast, you would know. And I'm sure if you stay with us, you'll see that throughout these episodes.

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

Yes, and so the World Through Zenite podcast, by means of introduction, if you will. Who are we? Now you sort of get an idea of who we are. This is not an existential one. Who am I? It's more of what roles we play in our worlds and in this life. As far as the podcast goes, what do we do? Once a week, we take a look at the going-ons of the world and say something about them. Rather simple. The goal, I'm really just trying to make heads and tails of the great world roar of OM. Why? You may ask. To try and keep a modicum of personal sanity and stay off both meds and the Kool-Aid. And lastly, what is the point of the podcast? Again, points are very sharp and therefore violent. We just meander and go round and round and round. Worthy of a disclaimer... The views, perspectives, and humor of the speakers and guests of this podcast do not necessarily represent those of any associated organizations, businesses, or groups, social, religious, cultural, or otherwise. The entirety of the podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Topics discussed and views expressed do not constitute medical advice. As the saying goes, opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody's got one. Those of you who were so kind to give a listen to the first episode of this podcast, hopefully you liked it. Hopefully you subscribed to the podcast on whatever platform you can listen to it. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Buzzsprout, and the video version is available on YouTube. In the first episode... Which, you know, interestingly, I kind of came to think of the first episode, not really as the first episode, but more of a prolonged form of the disclaimer. We talked about words and words about words, and as a podcast, there is a lot of that coming. And this, more so perhaps, being really the first episode If you want to think of it that way. We have mentioned in the first episode how words have acquired this dualistic bearing. So we could say they've been hackneyed or become very polemical. They're polemical because they are sometimes used. They're very controversial. Sometimes they're purposefully so controversial. sometimes for sheer purpose of being controversial. And at times, they have grown fangs and become monstrous and caustic and intended to hurt and scar and maim, while at the same time, sometimes words have become so hackneyed and so used up to the point that they're just these barren, discarded casings of what the word perhaps was at one point in time. No profound meaning left anymore. Kind of gutted. Overuse. Overuse. Overuse of the word. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 6:58

Where people don't even really respond or react to it anymore. It's almost like falling on deaf ears because it's been used so much, people just don't believe the meaning anymore. Right. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 7:11

And so, in reflecting on that episode, And in thinking of this one, we sort of stumbled on the potential topic for this particular episode as patience. And very much in a way that words can and have frequently become these hackneyed, barren words. ideas and principles, I feel, sometimes see the same faith. And whenever the word patience is thrown out, usually what it's met with is unjustly so. And if you have a sort of rather vacuous approach to it where no further thought has been given to it, I could see that be the case. What I'm talking about is this idea that Patience is somehow surrender, right? That it's this, you've given up. And usually when patience is mentioned, what the response is, so do I just lay down and let the world bulldozer?

SPEAKER_01: 8:28

Trample over

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

me. Trample over me, just steamroll right over me, right? That's what you want me to do? I just should just give up and let the world have its way with me. And it's unfair. Poor patience, right? It's unfair. That patience. That patience gets a bad rap.

SPEAKER_01: 8:44

It

SPEAKER_00: 8:45

does, because...

SPEAKER_01: 8:46

And people don't accept it then, right? It almost, when you tell someone in those moments, again, maybe patience is one of those words like love that has been overused. Sometimes you tell someone, just be patient, and it actually has the counter effect on the person. They get more angry with you.

SPEAKER_00: 9:02

Right. It's like telling, calm down when they're furious. Calm down when they're

SPEAKER_01: 9:07

furious, right? It almost feels like you're not validating Their experience one and two, like you were saying, what do you mean? You want me to just have them continue to yell at me and scream at me like that?

SPEAKER_00: 9:18

And be a pushover? And we have to think a little bit deeper. Just skimming on the surface, it is a reasonable response. The vernacular use of the word patience is, It suggests kind of just something that I have to endure and frequently as a continuum of being a victim. It seems to suggest you shut your mouth and you just take it. And it isn't that. The refined idea of patience as a principle within Zen tradition in particular is that It's not merely enduring, which is this kind of one-sided transaction. You know, I'm just being pummeled and you're telling me to just accept it. There's a secondary element and that is that of forgiveness. So patience in this context really means not simply enduring an injustice as it frequently is kind of described, Siamese too. So it's not just enduring injustice. It's understanding the mechanism. And then the enduring, if you want to look at it that way, or the understanding really ameliorates the suffering, ameliorates the pain. It gets rid of some of the sting of what has been visited upon us. And this... forgiveness must also be without resentment.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

And

SPEAKER_00: 11:12

this is-. You

SPEAKER_01: 11:13

can ruin it for everybody. Right. Most people in couples therapy tell me like, yeah, I forgave him. And then six months later, I just laid it on him again. And then the other person complains like, why are we still bringing that up? It's like beating the dead horse or awakening the dead. The person keeps on bringing it up time and time again. Did you really forgive them?

SPEAKER_00: 11:33

Right, that's not forgiveness. And it's not patience. In this view of patience, the Korean term for it in the Zen tradition is inyok. And what it suggests is to cut down, actually, to cut down anger. And when you say that, the way that it's heard frequently is, All right, so the source of anger, I must cut down, I must strike down. And we say, yes, absolutely. And the person gets their sword out and goes after the person who has blamed or cursed them or somehow attacked them or whatever. And the idea is, no. Inyok. In the character of yin, there are two separate Hanzha characters. The bottom one is the character for mind. And so what the term yin-yok suggests is, yes, you strike down, you cut down anger, yes. Where? You don't cut down the person. It doesn't suggest to strike down the one who visited this whatever sort of suffering upon you. It's to strike down anger at its source, namely our own mind. But when we think of patience, we think of this kind of external thing, and I have to just endure it. We frequently forget the inner world, which we are, if we are at all, capable of having any control over. It's the inner world first. The outer world is very far away. You and I are rather close to one another, but yet still you are all the way over there. But my mind is right here where I am. And this idea of cutting down one's anger at the source and the source being the mind is really the refinement of patience.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

I think in the early stages, you might catch someone trying to practice patience, and it starts, it's almost like when water strikes the earth, it's on the surface, then it seeps its way into the inner depths. Same thing, you start on the outside, and then you have to recognize that the work is done on the inside, like you're referring to in the psyche, in the mind, where you have to uproot anger. It's not always the case where a person can simultaneously do that, right? So I think it's kind of funny when someone is dealing with a situation that, you know, pushes their bonds and they're like, I'm being patient right now, right? Yes. Your blood pressure would say otherwise. But outwardly, yeah, they're not dropping the bomb and cursing the other person. I guess that's some progress in the right direction, but we want to highlight that this isn't the destination. Ultimately, you want... The outside to appear like you're enduring the situation, but inside, you want to not allow the angry monster to come and hijack you

SPEAKER_00: 14:53

in that moment. Right. in which we divide the body into, or the organs at least, into

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

the five organs and the six viscera. And the way that the system is organized is that the organs control the viscera. And each organ set has assigned to it an emotion that governs it, an emotion that damages it. And so Ijeoma has this famous quote that letting your emotion run amok is equivalent to stabbing yourself physically in your organs, which then damages the kind of relationship between the organ and the viscera. But he makes a rather kind of extreme statement that if you in fact allow that, let's say, an emotion of anger to run so, amok within you, that this stabbing, the self-sabotage of your health, physiological, and we know this, obviously, this is no news to anybody, but it will take years to recover from. He really kind of drives this point of emotional turmoil within oneself and the disastrous circumstances and outcomes that it could lead to. And This isn't to say that we are anti-emotion, that we should be sort of somehow emotionally castrated and just blah as possible, right?

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

Right, the death stare.

SPEAKER_00: 16:47

Right. No

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

facial expression.

SPEAKER_00: 16:48

Yeah, that's not it. The idea is of some iota of control and emotions certainly inform and they have their function, but when they're gone on their off rails. We are just in the backseat or in the trunk being taken for a hijack ride.

SPEAKER_01: 17:09

Right. Yeah, because the emotion of anger is almost like a drunkenness. You're intoxicated. You're intoxicated by the anger. If you could just wait and be patient, when the anger wears off, you see the world from a completely, totally different perspective, right? There's so many times in an argument and a fight between two people where when the anger wears off, and the time span is different, let's say the next day, the next morning when you wake up, oftentimes people reflect and say, why did I say that? Why did I do that?

SPEAKER_00: 17:41

But in that moment... And then backpedal. I didn't mean to. They realize the damage that they've caused in a moment of being engulfed in a flame of anger, and then they share that... burning with others. You know, it is not sharing. Don't share that. I've

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

even had a situation with a patient of mine. He suffered from road rage, severe road rage. I mean, he even had legal issues regarding this. And so one day he told me a story where a person cut him off and he had no patience at that moment. Anger, hijacked him and he decided to race down and cut him off. He pulled his car in front of the other guy, sort of like he was a cowboy. Gets out of his car, gets in the guy's face and says, hey, go back to your country, mother effer. And the guy looks at him and says, I can't. I'm Italian. I was born here. And then both of them laughed. And it completely, like rain washing away the mud, in an instant, the whole situation was diffused. He gets back in his car and drives away. And he's like, what was I thinking? He was telling me later on. And, you know, there are many stories like this. I remember one time our teacher tells a story of a lady that at a restaurant threw the plate. And most of the people, most of the guests that he was there with just got angry. Like, who are you? Why are you serving me like that? And what he had explained to me was most of the time people with their egos, they think, why are you doing that to me? It's very difficult in that moment. was challenging, and I want to challenge people out there to think about the other person. What's going on with them? Why are they acting like that? Because if you can find out that piece of information, again, that might transform your whole view and alter your reaction. And there's one more story, too. This is a common story where someone gets cut off, again, in a road rage incident. Then you go up there. cut that person off, and you get out the car, you're gonna hurt them, and then you can see in the backseat a future mother in labor. And then at that moment, they stop. Ah, they feel guilty. So it's that assumption, jumping to a conclusion. If you stopped first to look, well, let me think about them, what's going on, let me understand them, then maybe that'll help inform you to have a better, more appropriate psychological, emotional response.

SPEAKER_00: 20:06

And you, of course, are not suggesting... that somehow by being patient, one is to pardon the party that is being hurtful. This is not a tool that is meant to excuse abuse, but it is meant to understand, to open the mind into a broader perspective. And speaking of which, Again, if we think of patience, we've naturally gravitated towards the emotion of anger because those two are paired so frequently as a kind of natural location where they would exist. But we have to consider patience towards gain and growth and blame and hardship and joy. And I saw recently, I don't know because I'm not, interested in in in that world per se but there was a was a football game or something recently and and people have taken to the streets and there was chaos and and and riots almost yes and and it is the super bowl okay okay and and it is my understanding i i've seen some footage of

SPEAKER_01: 21:33

it yeah

SPEAKER_00: 21:35

And correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that it was the winning side. So it's not even people who's like, meh,

SPEAKER_01: 21:44

we lost.

SPEAKER_00: 21:47

Right, and this is where we begin to finally refine the idea of patience as a broader approach. In that case, what is lacking is patience, but patience in a way that it's safe to say people would naturally not gravitate towards, namely patience with joy or with delight or with happiness. There's a need for patience in the face of delight, in the face of joy. The people rioting, destroying things, harming people at times, is done in the name of joy and celebration It's the most bizarre. I

SPEAKER_01: 22:34

don't agree with it, but yes, that's what it seems like. It's a very interesting. And so what is needed. True psychology going on there.

SPEAKER_00: 22:43

What is needed there is patience. Momentality, yeah. Patience. And so now we are back to this idea that patience is not just enduring, but understanding. It's changing. And it's not easy, absolutely. No one's suggesting that, but one must, in a sense, contort oneself, initially especially, contort oneself to imagine patience in relationship to this other, whether it's emotional states or other circumstances and situations. There is this lofty... spiritual, let's call it, level of patience, we call

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_00: 23:40

which is patience of no patience.

SPEAKER_01: 23:43

These are my favorite Zen riddles.

SPEAKER_00: 23:46

Right, and the idea is you have understood and transcended, and you've grown spiritually sufficiently enough so that patience doesn't even arise, because patience and the need for is a result, a directly result of the duality of that opposing force. So if it's anger, then patience is needed. But if we understand quickly enough, swiftly enough, the emotional upheaval that we are undergoing, and logic serves some amount of use here.

SPEAKER_01: 24:25

It can help you.

SPEAKER_00: 24:26

Right, it doesn't necessarily have to be some lofty spiritual transcendence of realities. There are layers, right? There are

SPEAKER_01: 24:34

layers to the cake. You can get to the inner core and get that nice sweet cream.

SPEAKER_00: 24:39

We'll start at the surface. Yeah, and so this idea of we could divide patience as this principle into two main groups. We say or

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.

SPEAKER_00: 24:57

And means the inyog, the patience. in essentially is patience with nature. There's another one that doesn't perhaps dawn in the minds of people. Patience with nature. Consider, if you will, a person who loves and enjoys taking a daily walk. And they've made plans. This is a perfect time when we see this kind of come up. The weather is breaking. It's nicer. So people are kind of changing out their wardrobe. They're pulling out their springtime and their summertime chemins. And so they're very excited about going for a walk. Finally, I get to get out. The weather is nice. The sun is out. The birds are chirping. They get themselves all worked up about it. And rain comes. And there are people who would then get upset at the rain. They're upset at the rain that has ruined their walk. Ruined my walk. Ruined my walk. Patience with nature. If you really think about it, Without the rain, you wouldn't have the great lush greenery that you're hoping to walk through. Those bird songs that you enjoy so much, they will all dry up and die. And so will we. And so this idea.

SPEAKER_01: 26:39

Or as you sip on your nice stainless steel Stanley cup, some nice refreshing water or lemonade. Right. Right, or iced tea. Without the rain, we wouldn't have that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:53

And so this idea that the great gods of nature will go out of their way to betray

SPEAKER_01: 27:04

me. I think that's a universal issue now that when you're saying that, because I just connected that to people that are quick to anger in situations. They oftentimes personify a situation and make it as though The situation is against me. Like for example, you woke up late, you rush on your way to work and there's traffic. but now they're against me. Why did everyone get in my way, right?

SPEAKER_00: 27:32

Everyone has woken up this day with a single talk. Just to get in front of me. How

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

egocentric is that? And the same thing with the rain, like you're saying, right? The rain just came down to ruin your walk. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 27:44

It is patience that we need with nature. I mean, it would be rather illogical to hope that by grabbing... a freshly budded sprout of whatever you're growing in your garden and try to pull it up in order to enforce its growth quicker. I want it now. I want it now. It won't work. It doesn't work that way. Why? Because nature, it's against nature. So understanding, patience with nature means understanding nature and not, like you said, making such a personal vendetta against it and imagining that entirety of the world has nothing better to do with its time than to get in my way. It's a very egocentric perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 28:43

I think like you said, the understanding increases patience, right? Because if we're taking an example of a seed to let's say a tomato and you understand there's a season, and there's a timing, which in Zen we call

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_01: 29:00

There's a timing for things to sprout. There's a timing for the return of your action to come. If you're hijacked, overrun by desperation, or you lack patience for things to come, meaning simply, I want it right now, you stick your hand in there, what are you gonna pull out? A half-grown seed, a sprout. You'll kill it. You kill it, essentially, right? And pulling and tugging or adding more water, all the things that make it grow, when you're in a state of desperation and you do more of it, you essentially kill it, right? I want it to grow faster. Let me add more water, right? Let me add more sun. You dry it. And so I think when you understand that life has its seasons and you have that wisdom, then naturally the inclination will be towards increasing more patience because instead of being angry at it for imparting this on me, then I understand that it is I that has to be patient here

SPEAKER_00: 30:01

and

SPEAKER_01: 30:02

follow the law.

SPEAKER_00: 30:04

Follow the law. We actually have... That, as one of the patients says, right? This is meaning the patience with time. And again, so, you know, there are overlaps. It

SPEAKER_01: 30:21

always tells me, I wish it was next year, or I wish this month would be over. And I can agree, but we don't have that

SPEAKER_00: 30:30

fast forward. What is there? I mean, there are so many layers here, because what is in that next month that they're imagining is going to be birthed into existence? The circumstances, the trajectory of our lives, we're largely on a train track, a fixed trajectory, and this imagining of some magically occurring change without the effort It's a fundamental kind of ignorance and delusion that we have in the three poisons, what we call greed, anger, and ignorance. So it is absolutely a source of suffering too.

SPEAKER_01: 31:15

And that's why I gave the or the metaphor of a plane taking off, because we wanna skip the process and just fast forward, jump and leap into. The flight,

SPEAKER_00: 31:25

meaning what I want. By the way, that is patience with the process.

SPEAKER_01: 31:29

With the process. Because if a plane has to achieve, let's say, 130 miles per hour in order to have takeoff speed, just because at 50 miles an hour you feel like taking off, or you're done, or you're frustrated, and you can't take it, and you say, let me go now, again... Just

SPEAKER_00: 31:45

like the example. It's with misalignment of the process. And I could certainly... I

SPEAKER_01: 31:52

love that word, the process.

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

Yeah. Well, in therapeutic plan, right, as created by the therapist for the client, there's a process that's intended. And this is also true with spiritual growth and so many things in life. There is a process. And this isn't... Again, when we say you have to be patient with the process, that impatience of, but I want it now, is imagined illusion.

SPEAKER_01: 32:24

If

SPEAKER_00: 32:26

you're baking a cake, and if you put it into the oven, and if the directions say it will take 40 minutes for it to rise and bake thoroughly, That is number one, we could say that is, you need patience with the process, you need patience with time. If you go and open the door of the oven every five minutes to peak, is it done yet, is it done yet, is it done yet? It will take 40 years to bake the thing because every time you open the door, you let out all the heat. You let out all the heat. This is never gonna cook. But it's this impatience, and so it presents, you know, it creates, it undermines the fruition that is, we could say, naturally guaranteed. I think

SPEAKER_01: 33:21

that's for a future episode, but maybe dab a little bit in that, because this gets very complex.

SPEAKER_00: 33:26

Right, there's a certainty, there's a certainty in cause and effect, and that fruition. If you had faith or

SPEAKER_01: 33:33

strong belief in that, Again, I think that's a point. If you have strong faith in what you're saying there, I already planted the proper seed. Then all I have to do is wait for the natural process to occur. If I have faith and confidence, then I don't have to, because all of this ties into to this anticipatory anxiety. I just want it now, right? You're just taking your mind and projecting it into the future and worrying about what's to come, right? So if you have strong faith in the in, in the seed, then you can sit back, right? You can sit back and don't worry. Human beings, unfortunately, they don't.

SPEAKER_00: 34:15

I have a very appropriate calligraphy penned by our ansanim. And it speaks to that. You do the necessary work You put your head down and you go forward. And the second part is essentially what it says, and the heaven never takes its eyes off of you.

SPEAKER_01: 34:40

That's

SPEAKER_00: 34:41

beautiful. So true. And the idea is if you persevere and the direction is true, because there's also, and without digressing too much, but there's right perseverance and there's also, we could say, wrong perseverance.

SPEAKER_01: 35:00

So

SPEAKER_00: 35:00

there's lacking wisdom.

SPEAKER_01: 35:03

I want this to grow faster. Let me persevere, meaning I'm going to put more water, put more water, put more heat. That's wrong perseverance. You're actually getting the counter.

SPEAKER_00: 35:10

You're going to drown the plant. It's going to rot. It's going to get root rot, and that's going to be the end of that. So it's absolutely, sometimes we just have to step back. And this is where There is an element of faith here, yes. Especially if the journey that a person's on is a new journey. They have never been to where they are heading towards. And so for them to have no prior, so this a priori knowledge of what it's going to be like when you get there, it requires absolutely a faith and patience with the process, patience with the time, that sort of thing. Of course, we have patients with, so we've mentioned they pop in the patients with the natural world. The second grouping, if you will, is

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_00: 36:07

patients with people.

SPEAKER_01: 36:11

And this is, and so, so. Right,

SPEAKER_00: 36:15

and so the one with the nature is rather, maybe easier to see how one could feel a bit ridiculous when one reflects on their actions and their impatience with nature. Because we see clearly, we see that nature is, in its sense, in relationship to a human being, kind of inanimate. It's not correct, but impersonal. So it's a thing. Clearly the clouds have not conspired overnight just to rain down on your parade.

SPEAKER_01: 36:57

Only in cartoons, though, they

SPEAKER_00: 36:58

would have

SPEAKER_01: 36:58

the little cloud just above that one person's head. But in reality, no.

SPEAKER_00: 37:02

Well, you know, there was an episode of Peanuts, I think it is, where the girl, and I don't know the names of the characters. Lucy. Lucy meets with the blanket boy.

SPEAKER_01: 37:16

That one slips my mind. Audience, put it in the comments there. Right. Throw that in the comments,

SPEAKER_00: 37:23

please. And I think the boy says, Lucy says, how are you feeling? He says, I'm really depressed. She says, well, you're standing all wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 37:34

Oh, yes, yes, I remember.

SPEAKER_00: 37:36

If you're going to be depressed, you have to concave your chest. You have to be slumped and kind of deflated. This is the way you really get the mileage out of your depressed state. You're standing too upright. Your chest is too open. You're broad. You're too... open and not collapsed enough to be depressed. So it's that. Because the

SPEAKER_01: 37:58

openness might get rid of the depression. You gotta shut yourself down, isolate and withdraw as much as possible and transmit that to the world.

SPEAKER_00: 38:07

Yes, and so we have this idea of the external world and nature. We could kind of see how silly we could feel if we had in fact reacted to the world and the clouds and the traffic pattern, I mean, what do you expect? Is it traffic hour? Right, and et cetera, et cetera. And so with this, you know, tree falls and one gets upset that the tree had fallen and blocked one's road and those sort of things. Then we have seng in, patience with human beings and people. And this must absolutely include not only others. So patience with one's own emotional state. Because again, when we think of this kind of classical relationship of patience, it's usually patience with another person. You just have to deal and endure and you just, you tolerate. Yes. And that puts us, and it is born of the

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_00: 39:21

of the ego part of our being. Because what it suggests is that I cannot possibly be wrong in being upset and frustrated. The only possible situation here is that it's somebody else's fault. And if I'm stuck in traffic, it's clearly 800 cars in front of me. It's all of their fault. Not the fact that maybe I left too early because I watched far too many episodes of something. Family Guy or something. Last night, yeah. And doom-scrolled until my eyes bled. That index finger had you

SPEAKER_01: 40:02

up all night.

SPEAKER_00: 40:03

Yeah. And now I've left late. I'm sleep-deprived. I'm under-caffeinated, and now I'm out there in the flow of traffic, and it's against me. The

SPEAKER_01: 40:16

slightest thing, you're a ticking time bomb. The smallest thing will make you explode.

SPEAKER_00: 40:20

Right. So it is the usual kind of place from which we approach the idea of patience, to be patient with external circumstances, to be patient, but patience with oneself, especially in moments of hurt. So in therapeutic environments, in dealing with traumas and suffering, we have to have patience with oneself, patience with the healing process, which is a process, but it's a different. We could also bestow some patience upon the hurt portions of ourselves. So it's not only this kind of be patient, be strong. No, there's a love and compassion and self-care that is possible to exist in this concept of patience as well.

SPEAKER_01: 41:12

I think that's a very valid point because the external situation can fade away in an instant, right? You can have a traffic jam and you wanna get to work, right? And then the traffic alleviates itself and then the road opens. But when you carry it internally, you had some shortcoming. You have a wound that you haven't been able to heal over time. Then when the self-judgment gets imposed on that moment, Everything elevates, everything escalates. That critical moment, you've now treated yourself without compassion. You were very harsh to yourself. You judged yourself for feeling. You did not validate yourself. And then this is where the wisdom comes into play because the person might not know any better They might have such high expectations for themselves that at the moment of a shortcoming, they viewed themselves or they judged themselves as being worthless or useless or you failed again for being angry, you failed again for being frustrated or anxious. When ultimately people want to relieve their suffering, but all you're doing is adding fuel to the fire, at the end of that exchange between yourself and yourself, those emotions are only elevated, more intense. They have a stronger grip on your psyche. It's going to further put you into this downward spiral that you don't know how to get out of.

SPEAKER_00: 42:35

And we see this so frequently with victims of abuse. The self-blame, the... Abuse is as if one were haunted. The abuser is a haunting that stays sometimes for some people for the entirety of their lives, the echo of this and the scars are never resolved. And it's in the process of that healing, especially with victims of abuse, whatever sort. where patience in its softer, gentler way with oneself is expressed as a self-compassion and self-care. As opposed to this sort of I have to be meddled and steeled and hardened and calloused against the world and against the thing. In moments of when our when the need for patience is called upon by an egotistic sort of rising of emotion. Jealousy inspired, prejudice inspired, et cetera, et cetera. And those moments when our emotions come out of those, that selfish, corner of the mind, in those moments, the patience is more stronger, it's more sword-like and armor-like, and it's more militant and harsh in a sense, and we must strike down anger at its source, namely one's mind. It is in a, it's a different flavor of that patience than the patience when one is working through the scars on their souls and their psyches and their minds and their experience, this idea of forgiveness, right? And it's not only towards oneself. And I mean, it's not only towards the other, but more so, especially such a significant element of forgiveness resolving and recovery from the traumas and the such. This is where the patience is more gentler with oneself. It's a self-care patience, like I said. It's patience where the resentment must be dealt with in a healthy way, et cetera, et

SPEAKER_01: 45:30

cetera. So... Wait, I just want to say you're hitting the nail right on the head. Everything you're saying there is very true. And I just want to highlight that for my movie fans out there because one of my favorite movies as a psychologist is Good Will Hunting. And one of my favorite moments in the movie was when... So Matt Damon played this genius who was physically abused. He was an orphan. He was physically abused growing up. And then he had a lot of problems with the law. And then he comes to Robin Williams who plays this therapist. And there was a very cathartic moment where... there was a release of the resentment and then a transformation into self-compassion. And the way that Robin Williams did that with him is he took all the files of his past because Matt Damon had collapsed his world and created an identity where this is who I am. And he showed him and he was like, this is not your fault. And then at that moment, From the depths of his soul, we talked about it many times, right? And psychoanalysis is almost like burping the soul, right? Where this moment in time, an air bubble got in and now it's trapped. And you have this discomfort for the rest of your life. And Will was resistant at first. And then Robin Williams approaches, takes a few steps closer and says, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is not your fault. It's not your fault. It's a fantastic moment. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't seen the movie, I suggest you go out and watch that movie. It's not going on YouTube and just watch that moment. It's a release. He gets a little bit closer. No, no, no, it's not your fault. Because this is what you've had your whole life. It's almost become who you've been, right? So to let that go of that resentment, it was groundbreaking for Will. And

SPEAKER_00: 47:11

in that scene, if I recall it correctly, the initial, it's not your fault, it's this, I know. And at first, if you compare the quality of the first I know, it's not your fault. I know. No, no, it's not your fault. No, no, I know. The first few I knows come from brain. They come from intelligence, right? So they're like, I know.

SPEAKER_01: 47:35

Well,

SPEAKER_00: 47:37

I know intellectually, but it hasn't seeped. This I know hasn't made its way into the heart. And towards the end of that scene, the I know becomes, I know comes from, there's a wailing and then the crying comes and the release of that burp, if you will, of trauma being released and his crying and wailing. But the words... if we were to kind of hanker back to where we were in last episode the words are the same i know the first i know and the last i know and the words are the same

SPEAKER_01: 48:13

yes

SPEAKER_00: 48:13

but they're not the same the first i know is the brain and intelligence and and cognition speaking the words that are not therapeutic. The first I know was

SPEAKER_01: 48:27

tight. The walls were closed. It was stay, don't go there, brain only, don't go there, stay away. I know means stop at that moment.

SPEAKER_00: 48:35

And then the last I know is a transformation of the soul. It's an acknowledgement, there's vulnerability, there's a true transformation. And so this kind of dichotomy of these two, the same phrase, where it comes from or what it enters. And so it enters into the mind, stays in the mind, comes out of the mind, and you get, oh, I know. Yeah, I know. I know it's not my fault. I've read the research too. I've read,

SPEAKER_01: 49:04

yes.

SPEAKER_00: 49:06

And the last I know is what we would call

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_00: 49:10

is a mantra. It's true language. the last I know that he says in that scene, right? I think it's, you know, I know that all of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the world know the sound, the meaning of the phrase, not by the construct of the letters that form the words and the words that form the sentence, but by that wailing sound of release, the cry of the world. And in a sense, The reason why the intro and outro for this podcast is this OM. This is the roar of life. Some of it, in that OM, there's joy and there's pain and there's betrayal and glory and all of this, the broadest spectrum of human experience. The roar of OM is life happening.

SPEAKER_01: 50:20

Before we finish, though, I want to leave our audience with one review of one of my favorite studies that has to do with patients. And I'll do it really fast because we're coming towards the end. And that is the Marshmallow Study. Oh, yes. Because I know a lot of the people that probably watch here are in education or an education-related field. And this has been done by teachers several times on YouTube. Hackneyed, I think. It's like, if I hear the Marshmallow Study, one more time. The Marshmallow Study, come on. But it's so great. It is. So they took a child, several children, but one child at a time, and they gave him a marshmallow, and they said, you have 15 seconds. If you can wait the 15 seconds, you'll get a second one. And then it's almost like a masochistic thing. It's like a devious pleasure. Then they walked, and the adults go into another room, and they watch the kid from a one-way mirror and just look what the kid's going to do. And some kids were tortured. They couldn't wait, and then... Ate it right away. Some kids, you would see how they would try to deal with it. They would cover their eyes to not look, right? If I can't see the marshmallow, it'll not be in my head. It doesn't exist. There was one that stood out, right? The kid that was really slick. I don't know if they gave him a second one, but he ate the inside. just from the bottom and then put it down and you could

SPEAKER_00: 51:35

just see the shell. That kid probably became a car salesman in the future. That could be something devious. But then they did a

SPEAKER_01: 51:43

longitudinal study, right? They took a look at the kids that were able to wait and get

SPEAKER_00: 51:49

the second marshmallow. And I think there's that unique element because they've checked with them however many years later,

SPEAKER_01: 51:57

right? Yeah, to see where they were in life,

SPEAKER_00: 51:59

right?

SPEAKER_01: 52:00

And they noticed it was a correlation that the kids that were able to be patient and wait for the second one, right? To sit through the process, to allow time to take its course. And then they got the second one. Those kids later in life were more likely to graduate high school with honors, go into college, do really good in their SATs, and hold down a career long term. So again. General success.

SPEAKER_00: 52:25

General life success. And we could say rather, I don't know if we could say direct linking, but there's absolutely an element that this patience then translates into success in life, right? That was kind of the conclusion drawn by it. Yes. Patience gets you more than impatience ever will. And this is a great place, I think, to conclude.

SPEAKER_01: 53:03

Patience prevents you. from becoming my patient. So

SPEAKER_02: 53:07

add that

SPEAKER_01: 53:10

to your repertoire of tools or the emotional intelligence skill of the week that you wanna develop. And also, one second of patience can translate into several months of peace and happiness.

SPEAKER_00: 53:28

So there is economy. I mean, we could go on and on. It's such a wonderful tool and such a powerful weapon in your repertoire, like you said, and in your toolbox of whether it's your emotional intelligence, dealing with the day-to-day minutia. But, yeah, and this is sort of what we're after. Vacuous, kind of not fully thought out initial knee-jerk responses to these principles of philosophy, which are profound. They are profound. And we must be very cautious at dismissing them as mere slogans and allowing them to be kind of hackneyed and kind of where they lose their true essence of what profound meaning things can have. But we have to give it some thought and not just dismiss it.

SPEAKER_01: 54:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 54:39

I concur. Until then, until the next episode of The World Through Zen Eyes,

SPEAKER_01: 54:47

my name is Mirgan Sinim. Thank you for being here with us. From my heart to yours, my name is Dr. Ruben Lambert, and we hope you enjoyed this podcast.