Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama Quotes about Patience
Better grounded emotionally through patience, we become stronger mentally and spiritually, and tend to be healthier physically.
We are beset by problems and if we look for their source, we find they arise because of our selfishness, because we tend to pursue our own interests at the expense of others. Our various religious traditions exist to help us reduce these problems. They all teach ways to overcome suffering through cultivating love and compassion, tolerance, patience and contentment.
Our most valuable teachers are our enemies. While our friends can help us in many ways, only our enemies can provide us with the challenge we need to develop tolerance, patience, and compassion—three virtues essential for building character, developing peace of mind, and bringing us true happiness.
It is not just a person's physical constitution, their intelligence, their education, or even their social conditioning that enables them to withstand hardship. Much more significant is their inner development. And while some may be able to survive through sheer willpower, the ones who suffer the least are those who have a high degree of patience and courage in the face of adversity.
It is... very helpful to think of adversity not so much as a threat to our peace of mind but rather as the very means by which patience is attained.
One of the expressions of Western over-reliance on technology can be seen in the lack of patience in industrial society. When you deal with technology, everything happens at the touch of a button. This conditions you to become so impatient that when you have an emotional or personal crisis, you don't allow time for the solution to take effect. This leads to all sorts of rash responses, like quarrels, fights and so on.