Khanti - Wat Pah Nanachat

this steadfastness and willingness to be with the unpleasant
without pushing it away, without rushing towards it, just being
there with things, not giving too much importance to the
emotional tone of the experience, but more the whole structure,
the flow of experience. With pleasant and unpleasant
experiences you can almost feel like one simile is: surfing the
unpleasantness, rather than fighting against it. This is
particularly in the case of unpleasant physical sensations.
So we are taking khanti as a spiritual ideal as something
that we really want to develop in our practice, and seeing the
value of khanti has significant results. In terms of the areas that
we exercise this quality, I have spoken already about
unpleasant physical sensation (dukkha vedana), and I’ve
spoken a little bit about the reaction to external stimuli, and of
course there is the dealing with mental states arising in the
mind, irrespective of externally stimulating things that arise
within meditation. Generally speaking, we need to have the
ability to be solid, present and peacefully with things that are
irritating, annoying, and unresolved and bitty. You know, often
things are in an unformed state that we can’t really work
without yet and there is that very strong tendency to want to
have an answer for things straight away. We want everything
to be worked out, to be neat and tidy, and the ability just to
leave something; to say, “Yes, I don’t have the wisdom, the
ability to come to any firm decision about this, I’m not quite
able to deal with this effectively, I’ll just leave it there for the
time being.” This is an aspect of khanti which I think is often
overlooked.
You may remember the practice of Luang Por
Sumedho, in his first year here at Wat Pah Nanachat. When
this meditation hall was first built, there was no Ajahn’s kuti.
He lived in a little room at the back of the meditation hall. You
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