When things are up and down, when you’re not getting what you want, when the world looks like it’s in a downward spiral—where can you turn? What can you lean on when everything seems to be shaking? In a word: patience. Not a limp patience with no guts. But patience as a parami, khanti parami: the warrior’s ability to be with, to bear with, to bear witness . . . and then, from this compassionate stance of bearing witness, to act.