Stoic indifference is not the same as Christian patience

Nor should Christian patience be confused, either, with that equipoise based on intellectual discipline and a kind of natural asceticism which we know to be a specific ideal of Stoic philosophy. The Stoic endeavors to acquire an artificial disinterestedness in regard to all things, thanks to which nothing can any longer perturb his composure. His aim in so doing is to safeguard his sovereignty amidst all situations; for he deems it inconsistent with his dignity to be agitated and buffeted about by the blows of fate. It is, we may well say, repugnant to his pride that he should admit his infirmity and his creaturely dependence on a higher power.

The reason why he exhibits no sign of impatience is that there is no longer anything that can move him deeply or touch him to the quick, no object to which he would abandon himself with his inmost being. His patience, then, is merely a manifestation of his indifference to all things except his own imperturbability—of his apathy and ataraxy, as the Greek names go—which of necessity also implies a loss of the response to values.

It is a purely negative accomplishment bought at the cost of his renunciation of a most necessary virtue: to wit, an ardent zeal for the victory of the good. On no such foundations can we base our obedience to the call implicit in the words: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.” Of course, he who has no vital interest in anything can well afford to wait placidly; he is unlikely ever to lose his temper, ever to press onward tumultuously, ever to grow impatient.

Buddhist placidity is not the same as Christian patience

Another attitude that bears an outward resemblance to true patience but is essentially distinct from it is typified by the Buddhist mood of an even-tempered endurance in regard to all that comes to pass. This, too, implies a capacity for waiting indefinitely without falling into impatience.

What we are faced with here is not the psychological device for ego protection that the Stoa commends under the label of ataraxy. it is a fundamentally different attitude to the world of real things, and hence to that eminent and constitutive aspect of natural reality, the reality of time as such. To the Buddhist, all real being is mere appearance, devoid of true substantiality. His attitude, therefore, is that of detached contemplation of reality, dispensed from all obligations of action and accomplishment.

This position of a pure spectator, unfavorable to all activity and tension—in fact involving an aversion to all endeavors at realizing a purpose—precludes the very basis on which the virtue of true patience might unfold. Certainly it also keeps out impatience in the sense, that is, of uprooting the common presupposition (the importance of reality and of tasks ordained to its shaping) for the actualization of both impatience and patience, just as a lunatic can no longer commit any sin but can no longer display any virtue either.