Zen and the Art of Losing My Patience

Monday morning. 6:30 a.m. The hour of fools and zealots. A time when only the deeply devoted or the clinically insane voluntarily drag themselves from the sweet embrace of sleep to sit cross-legged in the dark, breathing with intention, pretending that their minds aren’t a carnival of stray thoughts and half-formed grievances.

This is my weekly sangha—a committed group of spiritual seekers united in our yearning for enlightenment as much as our masochistic indifference to sleep. Our leader delivers some remarks on the monthly theme, followed by a half-hour meditation and a brief, interactive dialogue.

For the third straight week, said leader has hammered away at the notion of patience, a virtue often framed as a moral achievement—something that separates the enlightened from the barbarians. The ability to grin and bear it in the face of aggravation, to endure suffering with a serene detachment rather than succumb to impulse. But that’s the cheap, off-the-rack definition of patience, the kind hawked by Sunday school teachers and half-baked philosophers.

Real patience is a deeper beast. It isn’t about virtue—it’s about survival. It’s about standing knee-deep in the chaos of the present moment and not trying to strong-arm it into something else. It’s the conscious rejection of fantasy—the gut-level understanding that life doesn’t give a damn about how you think things should be. The traffic is what it is. The neighbor’s barking dog is what it is. The unbearable uncertainty of your own existence? What it is.

And so, with these noble ideas rattling in my head, I settled in for the half-hour sit, a willing disciple of stillness and radical acceptance.

Then it happened.

A sound—sharp, buzzing, like a malignant fusion of a toilet flush and white noise. A quick burst, then silence. I ignored it, returning to my breath, my practice, my self-assured grasp of patience.

Then it happened again.

Eyes closed, I ran through the list of participants in the Zoom room. Someone had failed to mute their microphone. An inconsiderate jackal, violating the most basic of 2025 Zoom etiquette. A savage among monks.

The third time it happened, my irritation began to curdle into enlightenment. The sound had interrupted my train of thought. It had severed the leash of my monkey mind and, for a brief moment, left me utterly present. A blinding flash of pure, unfiltered mindfulness. I was a Zen master. A warrior of the Now.

And then it happened again and just like that, I was no longer a Zen master. I was annoyed.

The fifth time, I was scanning the gallery of muted faces, sharpening my blade for whoever had ruined my perfect, fleeting moment of wisdom.

And then I saw it—the only unmuted microphone. The leader. The man leading the charge into the depths of patience was, himself, the cause of the disturbance. A cosmic joke. A cruel experiment in endurance.

Did he know? Was this intentional? Some kind of perverse spiritual test? My rational mind knew the answer—glitches happen. But my emotional mind was already setting fire to the temple, hurling stones at the statues, demanding justice.

Then I gave up.

Abandoning my newfound philosophy, I checked my email. If I was going to be derailed from enlightenment, I might as well get some practical use out of my time. Inbox: an email I’d been anxiously awaiting. Good news, even. I read it, closed the tab, turned off the laptop volume, and returned to the meditation. Screw it—I wouldn’t know when it ended, but at least I wouldn’t have to hear that godforsaken sound again.

A few minutes later, I opened my eyes. The others were reappearing, turning their cameras back on, returning from whatever higher plane they had ascended to. I switched my camera on, playing the role of the diligent student.

When the leader invited reflections, I said nothing. What was there to say? That I had achieved patience only to abandon it the moment it demanded real effort? That I had cracked the code of mindfulness, only to be undone by a rogue piece of static? That I had learned nothing, and yet everything?

No. I just sat there, nodding in quiet understanding.

Patience, after all, is the acceptance of what is.