in his eyes; she never had any sense of him as a per-
son. It was all for display, and it hurt. So that’s part of
the point of this slogan. You have to question what’s
behind your action, especially if it is making a big
splash.
Cultivating patience. The last of the three basic prin-
ciples is to cultivate patience, which is the same as
cultivating nonaggression. Patience and nonaggres-
sion are basically encouragement to wait. Sometimes
I think of tonglen that way. You are in a situation in
which you would normally just yell back or throw
something or think of the person you are with in the
same old stuck way. Instead it occurs to you to begin
to do the exchange for other. This whole solid sense
of self and other begins to get addressed when you
cultivate patience. You learn to pause, learn to wait,
learn to listen, and learn to look, allowing yourself
and others some space—just slowing down the cam-
era instead of speeding it up.
It’s a little bit like the old advice to count to ten be-
fore you say something; it makes you pause. If you
become afraid or angry, there is a natural kind of
adrenalin principle, when the camera actually starts
to speed up. The speeding up itself can bring you
back to the present. You can use it as a reminder just
to slow down and listen and look and wait and de-
velop patience.
***152 Compassionate Action