patience

04 Jan 2025 - 11 Jan 2026

I have always said that you must be very patient if you want to understand Buddhism, but I have been seeking for a better word than patience. The usual translation of the Japanese word nin is "patience," but perhaps "constancy" is a better word. You must force yourself to be patient, but in constancy there is no particular effort involved—there is only the unchanging ability to accept things as they are
interesting phrase. The ability is unchanging, but acceptance implies change
. For people who have no idea of emptiness, this ability may appear to be patience, but patience can actually be non-acceptance. People who know, even if only intuitively, the state of emptiness always have open the possibility of accepting things as they are. They can appreciate everything. In everything they do, even though it may be very difficult, they will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.

Whatever he is describing, it is not a method, it is more like a particular kind of knowledge. Knowledge of emptiness. Unlike mundane knowledge, you don't so much obtain it, as awaken to it as something you have always had (that's "constancy", or my interpretation of it anyway).

There's an inherent self-contradiction that pervades this stuff (duh). Some essence of self-undermining. Changelessness is not something that can be achieved, obviously. So either it isn't real at all, or it is something that is always with us, part of our constitution. To the extent we are also constitutionally temporal, it appears as an asymptote.

"Patience" implies a dissatisfaction with present state affairs, a desire for change, but a certain placidity about it. It is "forced", meaning we aren't really patient but feel we must pretend to be, to try to be. It is focused on the future rather than the present.

Thought of The Myth of Sisyphus. S does not have patience, he does have constancy, to a fault if anything.

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