Because your mind is not yet like the ocean; you are just a boat. As beginners, we need to stay away from challenging circumstances and protect ourselves with precepts.
Then during meditation, we need to be mindful and meditate on no-self in person and no-self in phenomena, to deal with afflictive obscurations and cognitive obscurations. These are the methods we currently use. This is inevitable, because your mind is not broad enough, you haven’t turned on great wisdom, and you don’t know how to deal with big waves. For enlightened Zen masters, their minds have become like the boundless ocean through practice. So even in great storms, they are fearless—no matter how big the storms, they return to their true nature. This is a high spiritual attainment, so we cannot compare ourselves to them. Don’t say, “I can also do it.” You may think you have a high spiritual attainment, but in reality, you are just a boat. Well, being a boat is already good; some people are just a small canoe, which is even more dangerous. Let your thoughts rise and settle. Don’t constrain it, grasp at it, feed it, or indulge it. Be patient. Don’t cling to it and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor invite them. Be like the ocean looking at its own waves, letting them come and go. Sometimes, you can visualize your mind as a blue sky, looking down at passing clouds and all illusions, including your emotions, thoughts, and distractions. This visualization method is pretty good. Our mind is like the boundless sky, looking down at everything and embracing whatever happens, whether on earth or in the sky. If you visualize your mind as the sky in this way, you will soon find that thoughts are like the wind; they come and go. Don’t “think” about thoughts, and don’t have any emotion or attachment to them. Instead, allow them to flow through the mind, while keep your mind free of afterthoughts. Some people who have heavy karmic obstacles, may daydream for a long time. When they wake up, half an hour may have already passed. You may have been lost in your thoughts for a long time before realizing, “I was caught up in daydreaming.” What’s more, some people may even be trapped in an emotion or a situation for days and cannot find a way out. In such cases, we need to apply antidotes. It’s because you are too narrow-minded, so even a tiny emotion will bother you for a long time. Instead of repenting, you are complaining and finding faults in others. Your karmic obstacles are so heavy. How can you progress in spiritual practice? So, “being patient” doesn’t work for you.