The Dalai Lama Says...
Dalai Lama: "To familiarize ourselves with the virtue of patience, 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. From this perspective, we see that those who would harm us are, in a sense, teachers of patience. Such people teach us what we could never learn merely from hearing someone speak, be they ever so wise or holy."
I can agree with the statement above but only with a caveat.
Nomadic people, some Native Americans being representative of that concept, patiently followed the seasons and the migration of buffalo and other game. Ultimately, they were bowled over by the impatient, industrial mindset of migrating Euros.
Farmers follow an agrarian cycle. It requires a certain degree of patience to be a farmer for a living, and some science, and some prayer. Banks lend expecting payment when the crop comes in. If the crop fails the bank gets the property. The small farmer here in the US has been and is being bowled over by the federal government, banking, and big-agra, industrial complexes. Can you say, "Monsanto"?
In the city, we abandoned the agri-pay cycle in favor of something more immediate. Produce now, get paid hourly, daily, weekly, every other week, monthly. If you are in sales, can get paid a stipend on a regular basis, then sometimes you don't collect a bonus until the end of the month, and with some Wall Street companies you don't get squat until yearly sales have been tallied.
My point is this: These industrial production/demand/pay cycles do not promote patience. Nevertheless, patience can be developed. I have done it and remained at the top of the monthly sales board where I worked. Difficulty arises when some industrial production manager observes your calmness then decides you can produce more, and more, and more... Or when an accounting type sees you are making what it considers too much money so your commissions get cut, your territory gets cut, or both.
Here I have rephrased the Dalai Lama's statement to bring it closer to my home:
To familiarize ourselves with the virtue of self-employment and self-sufficiency, 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 self-employment and self-sufficiency are attained. From this perspective, we see that those who would harm us are, in a sense, teachers of self-employment and self-sufficiency. Such people teach us what we could never learn merely from hearing a boss or manager speak, be they ever so wise or holy.
I would add that in our money driven society, having enough lucre/moolah/dough/cash/scratch/cheese/Benjamins/greenbacks/cabbage/lettuce/bucks to hold the wolves at bay fosters patience. Hubbard's policies and recommendations on that matter work well as long as I run them on my own life, determining the value of my own production and stats, as opposed to someone running the policies and stat determination on me.
