Life Wisdom - By Words of Taoism
Oct 17, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
Impatience has become so ordinary in this way of living that we hardly recognise it any more, and it passes for the normal speed of life. **More resources:** - Free resources, books and more on…
Chen LiHost
We usually think of patience as the ability to wait without complaining, a kind of endurance we summon at the doctor's surgery or in a traffic jam.
He lived in a monastery high on a mountainside, facing a great peak that rose on the other side of the valley, gray and massive, with snow on its shoulders for most of the year.
Every morning, his teacher sent him to sit on a flat rock in front of that peak with instructions to look at it and to meditate.
Every morning, the novice sat down with good intentions, and within minutes, his mind was racing, asking when he would make progress, how many years this would take, and why the others seemed calmer than he was.
After months of this, he went to his teacher in some frustration and told him that the mountain never moved and never changed so that he could not see what it was supposed to teach him.
So the novice went back, at first with resentment, since he had hoped for a better answer, and then with an attention that began to change without his deciding it.
He noticed that the light on the rock was pink and gold at dawn, flat and white at noon, and amber in the late afternoon.
The same slope seemed made of a different stone at each hour, He saw the snow retreat in spring, leaving dark streaks that changed shape from week to week, and the clouds that gathered around the summit never twice in the same way.
The mountain he had called motionless had never stopped moving, and what had been motionless all along was his own gaze, which had looked for the change it expected and missed all the change that was there.
That story turns patients inside out, since the novice believed he was waiting for something to happen, when everything was happening and he lacked the eyes to see it.
Most of us live a little like him before his teacher's answer, since we are so intent on getting somewhere else that we rarely look at where we are.
We glance at things on our way to other things, eat while thinking about the next task, and listen to someone while preparing our reply so that the world reaches us in a hurried summary.
Impatience has become so ordinary in this way of living that we hardly recognize it anymore, and it passes for the normal speed of life.
the particular texture of a silence, a mood that shifts over an afternoon, a friendship deepening through a hundred small moments.
These things unfold at their own pace and reveal themselves only to someone who stays long enough, which is why a hurried life can be full of events and still feel thin.
Gritting our teeth while time passes is a poor kind of patience since it mostly teaches bitterness.
The patience the novice learned consists in lending our full attention to what is in front of us, long enough for it to show itself.
We usually think of patience as the ability to wait without complaining, a kind of endurance we summon at the doctor's surgery or in a traffic jam.
He lived in a monastery high on a mountainside, facing a great peak that rose on the other side of the valley, gray and massive, with snow on its shoulders for most of the year.
Every morning, his teacher sent him to sit on a flat rock in front of that peak with instructions to look at it and to meditate.
Every morning, the novice sat down with good intentions, and within minutes, his mind was racing, asking when he would make progress, how many years this would take, and why the others seemed calmer than he was.
After months of this, he went to his teacher in some frustration and told him that the mountain never moved and never changed so that he could not see what it was supposed to teach him.
So the novice went back, at first with resentment, since he had hoped for a better answer, and then with an attention that began to change without his deciding it.
He noticed that the light on the rock was pink and gold at dawn, flat and white at noon, and amber in the late afternoon.
The same slope seemed made of a different stone at each hour, He saw the snow retreat in spring, leaving dark streaks that changed shape from week to week, and the clouds that gathered around the summit never twice in the same way.
The mountain he had called motionless had never stopped moving, and what had been motionless all along was his own gaze, which had looked for the change it expected and missed all the change that was there.
That story turns patients inside out, since the novice believed he was waiting for something to happen, when everything was happening and he lacked the eyes to see it.
Most of us live a little like him before his teacher's answer, since we are so intent on getting somewhere else that we rarely look at where we are.
We glance at things on our way to other things, eat while thinking about the next task, and listen to someone while preparing our reply so that the world reaches us in a hurried summary.
Impatience has become so ordinary in this way of living that we hardly recognize it anymore, and it passes for the normal speed of life.
the particular texture of a silence, a mood that shifts over an afternoon, a friendship deepening through a hundred small moments.
These things unfold at their own pace and reveal themselves only to someone who stays long enough, which is why a hurried life can be full of events and still feel thin.
Gritting our teeth while time passes is a poor kind of patience since it mostly teaches bitterness.
The patience the novice learned consists in lending our full attention to what is in front of us, long enough for it to show itself.
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