Dear Friends and Students,

“May I ever be patient

May I be able to bear and forbear the wrongs of others

May I ever be tolerant and see the good will in others.”

– Buddhist Meditative words for Patience

Patience is a quality that many of us find difficult to cultivate. In the post-modern world as technology increases, higher production levels demand more from us, timelines force us to speed up, and we feel a need to multitask,what can we do? Our ability to take our time and let processes unfold at a slower pace is something from bygone days. 

These conditions cause a negative uproar within us; we feel overwhelmed and our behaviors tend to lead to frustration, anger, worry, and doubt toward ourselves and others. We feel the pressure of ”get it done yesterday”. This places us in a state of mental, emotional, and often bodily suffering. These burdens in the long run make us less productive and content in our lives.

I remember several years ago I was asked to write a blog about “How to Live in Balance at Holiday Time”. My contact was a young woman who worked for a Spa magazine in New York City, whose behavior was frantic, restless, and panicked. She kept calling and emailing me asking when the writing would be complete. I told her I was working as quickly as possible on it. I felt sorry for her because she was so driven, did not recognize it in herself, and was in what the Pali language called “Dukkha” or un-satisfactoriness. This experience felt ironic because it was so at odds with the nature of the article I was writing about living in balance. This is actually called impatience. The influence of a patient being and action would have been the way to freedom in this place.

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Dear Friends and Students,

Ever since I was a little girl I was always interested in why I looked the way I did. I wondered how and why the inner being was interwoven with the outer.

As time passed this fascination morphed into a state of sound awareness wherein the dialogue in my mind seemed to speed up and speak aloud in a voice that was not my own. This experience was both intriguing and frightening. As I got older if I found myself in a room with a few people, their manifestation would get larger and their voices would get louder and louder.

These experiences were mysterious and lured me into questioning why was I here on earth, who I was, and in growing up, what was the nature of getting older.

I found I was both fearful of aging and yet very motivated to find answers to these phenomena. When I tried to speak to my mother about it, she said “Leslie, you think too much, ignore it”. This left me feeling flat with not too many options for these lifelong questions.

So in the simplest of ways I became a ‘seeker’ always on the lookout for someone or something that could direct me on a path to understanding. It was when I first was introduced to the bust of a Black Buddha resting high on the wall of my best friend Ilene’s living room that I perceived a being whose presence was ephemeral, with the soft slant of his eyes, the subtle smile of his lips, that I realized I had touched the depth of a being who had no end.

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