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    Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength
    Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength
    Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength

    By Eknath Easwaran

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This little book of wisdom is full of insights and advice from one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers.

    "Patience is the ornament of the brave," Eknath Easwaran's wise grandmother used to say. Patience is also the mark of love, says Easwaran – with our children, our parents, our partners, our colleagues, and our communities.

    Easwaran is one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers and an authentic guide to timeless wisdom. In this little book, Easwaran lifts our spirits and gives us courage, with insights and advice, stories, and inspiration from the world's saints and sages.

    Just keep trying, Easwaran says, and you'll find there's no end to your patience – no end to the wisdom, love, and compassion in your heart.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNilgiri Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2010
    ISBN9781586380465
    Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength
    Author

    Eknath Easwaran

    Eknath Easwaran (1910 – 1999) was born in South India and grew up in the historic years when Gandhi was leading India nonviolently to freedom from the British Empire. As a young man, Easwaran met Gandhi, and the experience left a lasting impression. Following graduate studies, Easwaran joined the teaching profession and later became head of the department of English at the University of Nagpur. In 1959 he came to the US with the Fulbright exchange program and in 1961 he founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, which carries on his work with publications and retreats. Easwaran’s Indian classics, The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, and The Dhammapada are the best-selling English translations, and more than 2 million copies of his books are in print. Easwaran lived what he taught, giving him enduring appeal as a teacher and author of deep insight and warmth.

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    Reviews for Patience

    4.5/5

    7 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It's a beautiful writing on how you can really control you.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed reading it. It was very concise and well-written.
    • 4/5
      A great guide for slowing down and exercising patience and understanding others around you

    Book preview

    Patience - Eknath Easwaran

    INTRODUCTION

    PATIENCE IS THE ORNAMENT OF THE BRAVE

    WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN A LITTLE village in Kerala state, South India, my grandmother taught me more through her life than through words, but when anyone in the family needed a gentle correction, she always had a proverb ready. I often heard her repeat the beautiful phrase: Patience is the ornament of the brave. Patience is the real badge of courage; it is equally the mark of love.

    Being a good teacher takes patience; being a good doctor also takes patience. In fact, if you want to excel in anything, master any skill, patience is an asset. And if you want to love - your children, your parents, your partner, your colleagues - patience is an absolute necessity. You may be dashing, glamorous, fascinating, and alluring; you may be tall, dark, and handsome; lissome and lovely - or whatever the current fancy may be. But without patience, you cannot be called a great lover; it would be a contradiction in terms.

    Well, most of us say, I guess that leaves me out. Patience has never been my strong suit. Very, very few of us are born patient, especially today. There almost seems a conspiracy in our modern civilization to counsel just the opposite: be impatient, be angry, and look out for number one. But what is life without patience? What use is money if we live in exasperation with those we love, if we cannot stand to live with our own family? What good is it to have your picture on the cover of Time if you cannot be patient with yourself?

    Patience is the ornament of the brave. What a wonderful idea! Not swords or guns or medals, but patience. We seldom realize what power there is in patience. All the energy consumed in exploding against others, in retaliating, in unkind words, in the anger that brings grief to others and ulcers to ourselves - all that energy can be harnessed as positive, creative power, simply by learning patience.

    002

    PATIENCE COMES WITH PRACTICE

    AFTER I GIVE A TALK, PEOPLE SOMETIMES come up to me and say, But you don’t know the atmosphere in my home! You haven’t met my office mates!

    I hasten to assure them, You don’t have to give me the details. I wasn’t raised in a cave. I grew up in a large extended family, where we couldn’t escape rubbing shoulders with one another at every turn. Later I worked on campuses with thousands of students and attended hundreds of meetings where faculty members from all departments often disagreed, sometimes with passionate conviction. In every context there can be people who are difficult - every bit as difficult as we ourselves can be at times. Wherever we turn in life, we are liable to run into challenging predicaments.

    When I was teaching on university campuses, however, I was also practicing meditation and trying to use the teachings of the mystics in my daily life. Gradually I learned to cease looking upon challenges as difficulties and began to see tense situations as opportunities to put my growing love to use. We can do this everywhere; the family context is perfect.

    In every family, for example, there is likely to be somebody with a bit of Jonathan Swift in him. Swift, you know, had a sardonic tongue and a rather black sense of humor; he is said to have worn mourning on his birthday. This sort of thing has an inhibiting effect on everyone, and naturally enough, when the Jonathan of our own family enters the room, others may try to make themselves scarce. Not the person who is trying to take love seriously. She learns to come up with a genuine smile and say, Come in, Jonathan! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. To herself, she can add in a whisper, I need the opportunity to deepen my patience.

    This is a daily endeavor, like aerobic exercise. You don’t stop exercising when your heart rate gets up to 85. You say, My target rate is 120, and you keep at it until you get there. When your heart is accustomed to 120, you can start aiming for 130, then for 140. Where physical conditioning is concerned, everybody accepts this process.

    It is

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