TNH - 11 - Wise Effort

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We continue our series of talks from the book, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh, and this morning I’ll talk about a key component of the Eightfold Path- Wise Effort.  We often talk about The Middle Way in Buddhism, finding the path between the extremes.  Wise Effort is often described as “not too tight and not too loose.”  How do we practice Wise Effort in everyday life?

First, it is helpful to understand that religion has a tendency to run in cycles.  Someone has a direct experience of awakening, seeing themselves and the world in a dramatically different way, an experience of that inter-connectness, of themselves with everything around them, as well as with a greater "energy" or some might say innate potential all around them.  This experience is often so powerful that others flock to them--like Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed--to study, learn and experience it themselves.  Then, the original person dies, and those left try to study, learn and practice as best they can.  Herein lies the problem--there is a tendency to hold on to the original direct experiencer’s experience, and work to preserve exactly what happened and what was said and what was done.  Slowly, the power of the direct experience gets less emphasis, and the power of the religious organization starts to dogmatize, concretize and use the teachings for gaining power over others.  Then, someone bucks the system, decides to go back to the direct experience, then reform arises and new enthusiasm, new teachings, leading eventually to new dogmatism and new power struggles.  Buddhism is no different.  There are many cycles of direct experience, rise of the organization, concretization of the experience, power struggle and decline of original purpose. 

The joy of this moment is that we are living in the time when Buddhism is being integrated into Western culture, and we are finding anew these amazing teachings.  We have this precious opportunity to have a direct experience of what the Buddha experienced, of what Jesus experienced, of what Mohamed and Moses experienced. The books, the Dharma talks, the practice are simply tools to support the direct experience. 

Wise effort teaches us how we can utilize these tools to experience awakening. Surprisingly, reading and practicing can also become obstacles.  For example, once anyone starts to practice meditation, it is a common occurrence that we inadvertently start to judge each meditation session as “oh, that was a good one!” or “that was awful—my mind just spun like a tornado the whole time—that was of no value!”  Awareness of what is happening in your mind and your body is very helpful, BUT judging each meditation session is NOT helpful.  Wise effort includes just continuing to practice whether the meditation feels blissful or boring or beautiful or painful.  An Indian man named Goenka, who founded the modern Vipassana movement would always say, “Continuity is the secret of success”, and “Start again”.

Goenka had this clear understanding that awakening is available here and now, in the midst of ordinary practice.  As we meditate and become aware of more present moments in life, we begin to awakened to the habits, judgments, labels, preferences, stories, rationalizations and everything else that may or may not be serving our greater good.  So, we can practice Wise Effort by continuing to meditate and be fully present, even when we don’t feel like it, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when, ESPECIALLY WHEN, we are having a strong emotion or thought or story.  That’s when the power of the practice really gets turbo-charged.  

I have a visual aid—this vase.  It seems that many of us often think of ourselves as individual silos of stuff, stuff collected from a lifetime of experiences.  What’s in your vase?  Probably some good stuff, some bad stuff, boring stuff and joyful stuff and painful stuff.  This Buddhist practice is about clearly seeing it all, everything that we are holding onto and think of as “Who We Are”.  Most importantly, this practice is about clearly seeing that we are NOT all this stuff in the vase.  Look inside, can you locate where exactly that story is you’ve been telling yourself about who you are and what kind of person you are?  Where are the stories about your family and your upbringing and what's right about you and what's wrong about you?  Where are those bad habits and judgments that often cause so much suffering?  

Through this practice, we can become aware that we often assume our vase is solid, separate and permanent, when that is simply not true.  The Buddha had a direct experience of this Truth.  The vase is just an illusion that we hold on to.  We are permeable, porous living beings with cells that are being born anew and dying in each second. We have this incredible ability to see clearly our stories, then to let fall away those stories that are no longer serving us.   

We can even create new stories that might be more helpful to this practice of awakening.  Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful, simple “story” that we could tell ourselves each day: 

“Waking up this morning, I smile.

Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.

I vow to live fully in each moment as best I can

And to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 

These are words that he suggests, but I encourage you to come up with your own words.  What words of encouragement could you re-iterate to yourself regularly to remember to practice being present? Goenka said to himself, “Continuity is the secret of success.”  And it was!  And is!  He also said, “Start again.”  This simple phrase encourages us to simply start again, at the beginning of each meditation session, at the beginning of each morning, even at the beginning of each moment.  No matter how distracted or confused or frustrated or angry or anxious we might feel, we can start again with the practice of directly experiencing this moment, beyond old habits, judgments and stories.  Just start again and again, fresh and anew.  See through the vase full of “stuff” to the essence of aliveness that you are.

Nagarjuna wrote: 

“Clinging is to insist on being someone, not to cling is to be free to be no one”.  

In being no one, we are free to have the direct experience of simply being awake.

Eightfold Path - Wise Effort

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We are continuing our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das, and this morning I want to talk about another key component of the Eightfold Path- Wise Effort.  Let’s start with the amazing fact that, because you are sitting in this room (or reading this blog), you are an innovator.  You are doing something a bit strange.  Of all the people in the United States, only about 10% try to meditate, and the number of people who have converted to Buddhism in the U.S. is a measly .5% of the population.  When you reflect on what we are trying to accomplish here, it is unusual within the context of American culture.  Someone said that we Americans live in arguably the free-est country in the world and in history, and yet, ironically, most people are trying to be like everyone else.   It is with great bravery that you show up to some event called a Buddhist meditation.  It can seem a bit weird at times, and perhaps a little confusing.  Sometimes, it might seem that all we are trying to do is to sit quietly, but it’s important to understand that meditation is not the goal.  Our goal is to wake up and to be alive fully and completely in each moment of each day.

The good news is that even though we are doing something a bit weird, it’s well tested.  There have been others before you, for 2500 years, who have been willing to be a little weird, and who found that these teachings transformed their lives.  I’m grateful that you are here and willing to be a little weird with me.

Sometimes, it can be a daunting task to think about what is our purpose in life.  It might seem that we need to create something big in order to be remembered.  However, I offer that each and every one of us has a unique purpose and power within us to make our mark on the world in our own special way.  I was thinking about this guy that I used to work with.  I spent many years working in a large corporation, and there was a guy in the mailroom named Alvin.  Alvin was the happiest person I’ve ever met.  He never wanted to be promoted, he never had any issues with his co-workers.  He was really nothing special, just a clerk in the mailroom. Yet, it’s interesting that, of the 3,000 people that worked in that building, everyone knew and loved Alvin.   Everyone looked forward to that time during the day when Alvin was going to stop by each person’s desk and drop off the mail.  I guess it seems strange to have anyone dropping mail off at each desk in this day and age.  But, twenty years ago, Alvin did his job with flair.  I still remember the day when Alvin was ready to retire, and in this huge building filled with “important” people, like Vice Presidents and such, people who felt themselves to be quite important, everyone turned out for Alvin’s retirement party.  I still remember the sense that, with Alvin retiring, something was going to be missing.  We weren’t going to be able to look forward to Alvin coming by every day, with this incredible smiling and big heart, always with a sense of caring and devotion to his job and to each and every person who he met. 

I share this story about Alvin because Alvin wasn’t special, no more special than you are or I am.  Yet, each of us has exactly what Alvin had—this incredible opportunity in each moment of every day to show up in an authentic and kind and caring way.   The importance of Wise Effort is to teach us to motivate ourselves to wake up and be loving and kind—this is the path to relieve suffering—our own suffering and others as well.  When the going gets tough, and it seems like it would be easier to go back to sleep, to go back into the rut of our old unskillful ways of being, we need to make an effort to stay on this new path.   When it seems like it might be easier to follow the path that most people are walking, we need to find that inner strength that will enable us to bring out our inner Alvin, that innate strength and power within us, and to find our unique and powerful purpose--the reason why we are here on this planet in this moment.  

In the book, Lama Surya Das breaks down Wise Effort into four aspects, as recorded in the Pali Canon long ago:

1.      RESTRAINT:  The effort to prevent unskillful thoughts and actions -- especially craving, aversion and ignorance -- from arising.  Restraint is not something in our culture that is usually encouraged or admired, but making an effort to have some restraint in our life can transform our experience.  Issues will always come up—frustrations, traumas and tragedies, we may crave things, we get angry or try to avoid difficult decisions.  Instead of going down that old road that we know doesn’t work very well, we can find the inner strength to restrain ourselves, AND RETRAIN ourselves to follow this new skillful way of living, to give ourselves the gift of transformation.   

2.      RENUNCIATION:  The effort to extinguish unskillful thoughts and actions that already have arisen.  Renunciation doesn’t have to be about going into a cave and never coming out.  It is about how we surrender to this new process in our everyday lives.   Renunciation is probably an even less desired word in our culture—to renounce, to give up, to surrender.  We can be willing to make the effort to give up those old unskillful ways that we know are no longer working for us, and we can be willing to surrender to new skillful ways of being and doing.  This idea of surrender is so powerful, but it seems to go against our cultural bias for competition, and never giving up, and going it alone.  However, I suggest that the act of surrender can be one of the most powerful practices to awakening.  One of the exercises I enjoy very much is doing prostrations, bowing down completely, surrendering to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.  Some people might think that is really weird—that someone would be willing surrender themselves fully to this idea of the three Jewels, and lie down on the floor, face down, in front of a statue of a guy called The Buddha.  How strange it might seem to completely surrender oneself to the process.  My own experience has been that when I am lying on floor, surrendering everything, it often feels like deep bliss, being more alive in such a profound way.  I no longer have to fight my demons by myself. I can surrender to this process that has worked for 2500 years.  I can be willing to give it a try.  We have an opportunity in each moment to renounce our old unskillful ways of doing and being and surrender to this new process of awareness and transformation.

3.      CULTIVATION:  The effort to cultivate skillful qualities – the six perfections of Generosity, Ethics, Patience, Enthusiastic Effort, Concentration and Wisdom. Cultivation is finding the power within us to cultivate these wonderful qualities, by focusing on them, practicing them, imaging feeling them, visualizing these pure loving qualities.  Who wouldn’t want to have the joy of feeling more wise?  We can cultivate the way we want to show up in life.  We can think about how Alvin showed up.  I am quite sure, without a doubt, that Alvin was not a Buddhist, and he may have never heard anything about Buddhism.  And yet, he was such a great Buddha!  He showed up with loving-kindness and compassion and joy and wisdom, every single day.  I learned a lot about Buddhism from Alvin.

4.      PRESERVATION:  The effort to strengthen the skillful qualities that have already arisen.  We make an effort to strengthen the good, the skillful qualities, that we are already demonstrating.  Many of us are often our own worst critic.  If someone else said to us what we say to ourselves, we would slap them silly.  With Wise Effort, we have an opportunity to be a little kinder to ourselves, to realize that we  have done good things in our lives, that we have been loving and we have been kind.  We can have that wish and commitment to recognize that within ourselves and be willing to cultivate these qualities further.  Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said that “We are far more Buddha-like than we know.” With Wise Effort, there is an opportunity to find the unique and powerful purpose that is within each and every one of us. 

The last part about wise effort is effortlessness.  This is one of the paradoxes in the teachings of Buddhism.  We are going to show up and make a strong effort to be and do things differently, AND we are also going to surrender to the process.  We make the effort, then we let go of the result.  We make the effort, then we rest in the natural perfection of each moment.  This paradoxical teaching can be one of the most powerful processes to transform lives. 

The Buddha said, and the Dalai Lama quotes regularly, “There is no way to happiness and peace.  Happiness and peace is the way.”   Oh happy day!  We get a chance in every moment of every day to make the effort to wake up and then surrender to the natural perfection of being.