A Chance Encounter with Bonsai; Three Thoughts on The Practice of Attentive Patience

The dichotomy of attending to patience in an impatient world.

That’s Unusual

Recently I’ve been doing some work in Invercargill.

Invercargill is a small farming town — it actually has the designation of city — at the southernmost point of New Zealand’s South Island. It has a rich history, and has been and still is the connection point between the Southern Ocean and the fertile plains that sit south of New Zealand’s Southern Alps.

It is quintessentially Kiwi. The town serves the farming community, and has a farming edge to it. That’s not unusual, many farming towns in New Zealand have that same kind of feel. It has a quaintness, and is relatively unspoiled by contemporary ‘conveniences’. That, too, is not unusual, and is the charm — nay, joy — of small-town New Zealand.

The walk to work from my accommodation takes me past a dairy, which is what we Kiwis call the corner store or convenience shop. That’s not unusual. There are dairies scattered throughout small New Zealand towns, and large New Zealand cities for that matter.

What was unusual about this dairy was the bonsai trees for sale, in displays on the pavement outside. Maybe 20 or so trees, of various sizes, ages, and varieties. All beautifully attended to, in gorgeous pots. That is unusual.

I can’t recall seeing a bonsai display like that, ever. Much less on the pavement outside a dairy in a farming town in New Zealand.

The juxtaposition was jarring enough to pique my intrigue, and take me down a rabbit warren of learning more about bonsai.

A Latent Fascination

It turns out that I’ve been harbouring a latent fascination with the practice of bonsai, and the outcomes of the practice.

I have an interest — that’s putting it mildly — in all things miniature. I love making models. I have a ‘thing’ for model trains, especially when running in a deeply detailed dioramic settings. It’s an itch that I scratch vicariously through YouTube videos, and a long-term goal of a miniature world of old locomotives winding its way through my garden. Each to his own…

Bonsai fits in that circle of interest, and then more so.

Along with other forms of miniaturisations, the practice of bonsai entails patience. A patience that is years long, though, as opposed to weeks or months that you would take making a model.

The practice of bonsai also entails constant attention. The results of the practice eek out over such a long period of time, but only so with constant, delicate and deliberate pruning, very careful watering and attention to the tree’s wider environment.

Those two things together, patience and attention, just add to amplify the fascination I have with bonsai.

An Ancient Practice

The purpose of bonsai is to create a representation of nature in miniature, capturing the essence of a full-sized tree within the constraints of a small container. Bonsai is not considered a specific species of tree but rather a horticultural technique applied to a wide range of tree species. The goal is to create a tree that looks natural and evokes a sense of age and maturity.

Bonsai is an ancient Japanese art form. The word “bonsai” itself is derived from the Japanese words “bon” (meaning tray or pot) and “sai” (meaning plant). While bonsai is strongly associated with Japanese culture, its origins can be traced back to ancient China.

The practice of growing miniature trees in containers has roots in Chinese horticultural traditions, where miniature landscapes in containers were created as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE). These early examples were known as penjing. The art form eventually made its way to Japan, where it evolved into what we now recognize as bonsai.

Bonsai became particularly popular in Japan during the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and later gained prominence among the Japanese aristocracy during the Edo period (1603–1868). Over time, the cultivation of bonsai became more refined, incorporating principles of art and philosophy. Today, bonsai has become a global hobby and art form, with practitioners worldwide.

The more I dug in researching bonsai, the more I became aware of how it is not just about the physical appearance of the tree; it also embodies several Japanese aesthetic principles, including simplicity, balance, and harmony.

While bonsai is primarily an art form and horticultural practice, it does have spiritual and philosophical dimensions deeply rooted in Japanese culture. The spiritual purpose of bonsai is often intertwined with Zen Buddhism and traditional Japanese aesthetics.

Many bonsai practitioners find a meditative and contemplative aspect to the art form. The process, the practice of attentive patience to caring for a bonsai can be a form of personal meditation.

The Path is the Destination

The rabbit warren that I went down led to the realisation that bonsai as a practice is as much about the curation of a miniature tree as it is a tangible way to practice attentive patience. The act of bonsai is as valuable as the product of bonsai, probably many times more so.

And, as with any contemplative good practice, learnings and insights from this attentive patience can be applied more broadly in life. Attentive patience can usher in a raft of benefits, all of which are valuable — some even essential — to accessing the best of ourselves in an increasingly volatile world.

· Mindfulness and Presence: Attentive patience involves being fully present and engaged in the current moment. This mindfulness allows us to let go of distractions, worries about the future, or dwelling on the past. Being present can lead to a sense of peace and a deeper connection to the spiritual aspects of life.

· Inner Calm and Serenity: Patience involves accepting the unfolding of events without frustration or resistance. This acceptance leads to a state of inner calm and serenity. Through patient attention, we discover a source of peace that goes beyond external circumstances and perceived issues and problems that force there way into our days.

· Connection to Spiritual Practices: Many spiritual traditions emphasise the importance of patience in various forms of meditation, prayer, or ritual practices. Patience becomes a tool for cultivating a deeper connection to one’s spiritual self and the divine. A spiritual practice isn’t a woo-woo topic, and shouldn’t be considered as taboo. Our tendency to marginalise and exclude our spiritual beliefs, especially in the ‘professional’ compartments of life, means that we remove access to an important enabler of our full contribution.

· Enhanced Emotional Resilience: Patience is linked to emotional resilience, allowing us to respond to challenges with a calm and measured demeanour, valuable in navigating the ups and downs of life.

· Deepening Compassion: Patience activates, and is activated by, empathy and understanding, both for oneself and others. Through patient observation and acceptance, we develop a greater sense of compassion, recognising the shared human experience of facing challenges and uncertainties.

· Growth and Transformation: Cultivating patience is a form of self-discipline. It requires perseverance and a commitment to personal growth. As we navigate challenges with patience, we experience a transformation and a deepening understanding of ourselves.

· Appreciation for the Journey: Patience encourages an appreciation for the process rather than just focusing on the end goal. This mindset can be particularly relevant in a spiritual context, where the journey itself is as significant as the destination.

· Alignment with Spiritual Values: Many of our Great Traditions emphasise virtues such as humility, acceptance, and surrender. Practicing attentive patience aligns us with these virtues, fostering a sense of humility in the face of life’s uncertainties and a willingness to surrender to the natural flow of events.

Attentive Patience is an Incongruous Act

In a hustle-hustle, time-is-money, get-there-first economy (and hence pervasive culture), patience is the enemy. It’s a weakness. It’s a passive response — a act of just waiting. When we say, “be patient”, our words convey (intentionally or not) “do nothing”.

It seems we don’t have a word that adequately conveys what attentive patience seeks to achieve, or at least not one that I can think of.

Attentive patience is a kind of active patience. It’s the kind of patience that encompasses and makes space for other opportunities and insights. It broadens awareness, and at the same time attends to details.

“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.” Rumi, Persian poet and Sufi mystic

There are ways of accessing this kind of patience without needing to practice bonsai;

1. Attend to patience. Dopamine is the hormone that is released when we achieve something, giving us that little shot of euphoria and a general sense of wellbeing. In our uber-convenient world, this sense of achievement is easy to access, and we’re becoming hooked on our dopamine releases.

There are other hormones that provide a similar sense of wellbeing and that are released in more sustainable ways. The event (as opposed to the action) of fully intentionally having a cup of tea in an undistracted manner, from boiling the kettle, to steeping the tea, to pouring the cup, to savouring the tea, releases serotonin, and oxytocin too, if the event is shared with another.

Attentive patience looks like interrupting the cycle of instant gratification, and rather replacing that kind of gratification with more intention around activities, like savouring a cuppa, rather than swilling it down between meetings.

Attentive patience looks like lingering in the conversation, rather than rushing to a conclusion, ticking off the agenda’s purpose and celebrating “giving us back more time in our day.” Odds are that the post-conversation conversation is actually the real conversation — the one that we really needed to have.

2. Be patient with attentiveness. Attention is our most valuable currency. We refer to our attention in terms of currency — we talk about the paying of attention. Out attention holds value.

As such, our attention is under constant demand, and wanders from demand to demand. We’re constantly scanning for the that thing that is more important/exciting/concerning that the thing we’re engaged in any moment.

It’s a natural hard-wiring, but a hard-wiring designed for a more primal version of ourselves. In the modern environment, our scanning function undermines our ability to attend in the moment.

Being patient with our attention looks like recognising when wondering occurs, or when attentions conflate, accepting that without judgement, and intentionally making a choice as to whether the attention needs to return, or whether that which has grabbed the attention is actually worthy of our attention in that moment.

3. Be attentively patient. The key word here is ‘be’. Knowing about attentive patience is one thing, being attentively patient is another. This is the practice of bonsai, without the tree. This is actually developing an active kind of patience, where being patient isn’t simply doing nothing.

Attentive patience recognises and celebrates longitudinal growth. Attentive patience sees and intervenes where course-correction is required. Attentive patience sees the value in small actions and habits that are part of intentional whole — the actions on their own are seemingly meaningless, but when combined with other complimentary actions they are key to the overall.

Attentive patience sees the value of the whole system, and protects that value, not allowing any one of the parts of the system to become out-of-balance, undervalued, or over emphasised.

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I’d hate for anyone reading this to get the impression that I have any of this nailed. I most definitely do not. I’m aware that I can come across as both very impatient and at the same time very passive.

That said, the rabbit warren that I’ve navigated since passing that display outside the dairy in Invercargill has been necessary, and has helped give some definition to the concept of attentive patience.

Let the pruning begin.