Setting Intention For The New Year

In this Dharma talk, Matthew explores Buddhist notions of intention and explores ways of embodying aspirations in everyday life.

This talk was shared at San Jose Insight Meditation on December 31st, 2025.

Transcript

Well,

Here it is.

New Year's Eve.

It's good to see so many people deciding to not party and come sit quietly with each other for the evening,

Though I suppose some of you could be en route to some other type of party after this.

I can't really think of the last time that I stayed up until midnight to do a countdown to New Year's.

I mean,

The last one I remember,

I may have done it sometime in the last many years,

But the last one I remember was actually in prison.

And we had this ritual in prison of staying up until midnight,

And then as soon as the New Year came in,

We would take our calendars and we'd rip them apart.

Now,

There's so many different reasons for doing this.

Some of it would have been resentment,

Something like,

Thank God it's finally over,

Good riddance.

I think some people did it with a sense of relief or accomplishment,

Something along the lines of like,

Yes,

Another one down or closer to home,

Something like that.

I think generally speaking,

Though,

The attitude behind a lot of this calendar ripping was some type of hatred of time itself.

A lot of people,

When they're sentenced to jail or prison,

They see their whole purpose in life as killing time,

As finding ways of making the time go as fast as humanly possible.

And I engaged that way a little bit during my first prison term,

But my second prison term was different.

My second prison term was different.

I had an attorney both of my times going to prison and the same one,

And he represented me when I was facing life in prison.

And he came to visit me once in the county jail,

And things weren't looking good for me at the time,

And he seemed really somber.

He came in,

He had told me he had just had a heart attack,

And then he wasn't sure why he survived such a serious heart attack,

And he thought that maybe that his reason for being here was to save me,

Was to keep me from doing life in prison.

He didn't know,

Though,

And he had something to share with me.

He was a lot more contemplative on this particular occasion.

We didn't talk legal stuff very much during this visit,

And he said,

Matt,

I've got something I want to tell you.

You know,

I'm going to do everything in my power to save you,

To prevent you from doing the rest of your life in prison,

But this isn't like the last time around.

You aren't going home anytime soon.

I would guess that at minimum,

You're not going to be leaving this jail or prison for at least a decade,

If not longer.

And he kind of waved his hands around,

Like indicating the carceral setting,

And said,

This is your home now.

And however many years you're in here,

How you come out on the back end of this is dependent upon the choices you make right now,

Like who do you want to be?

This is your home.

This is your life.

And I'm not sure if these words would have struck me in the way that they ended up striking me if Steve hadn't left that day and suffered another heart attack a few days later and died.

And as often happens when people close to us pass away,

We remember their final words,

Maybe even kind of elevate them in the way we might elevate a Messiah or a prophet.

We give this kind of magical quality to their words,

And I certainly did.

And so I began to ask myself,

Like,

What can I do here?

Because if my goal is to kill time,

And I'm here for as long as I may be,

Then I'm really just killing myself.

And of course,

I did not get life in prison.

I ended up getting 14 years.

And I started to set intentions,

But they were small and superficial in the beginning,

But I think they were useful.

You know,

I decided I wanted to learn how to weld.

So I told myself,

When I get to prison,

I'm going to get on a list to become a welder or join a vocational program,

And I did.

And I told myself,

I'm going to finish college.

And I told myself,

I'm going to exercise and I'm going to get buff.

And I told myself that I'm going to read every book I ever wanted to read,

But I had never found the time or the motivation to read before,

And I did those things.

But as I started to do those things,

Other intentions started to make their way in.

I started sitting in a sangha.

I started to practice the dharma.

I was meditating and,

You know,

Other things were on my radar,

Like recovery from addiction,

Healing wounds,

Like digging deeper into why I was where I was.

I started to be motivated by ideas of peace and happiness despite where I was living.

And that's like kind of small intentions,

Superficial intentions started to get layered in amongst what I could think of as aspirations.

One thing that was a constant part of my practice and part of my greater aspirations while I was in prison is how can I be the same person,

A wholesome person,

A harmless person,

Despite my contexts?

How can I live with integrity?

And so we talk about intention a lot in Buddhism.

And there's a common understanding of intention.

And then there's the Buddhist understanding.

And the Buddhist understanding has this ethical quality that isn't necessarily always there when we talk about intention colloquially.

And what made the Buddha's teaching unique with regards to intention,

With regards to karma or karma,

Was that the fruit of action,

The fruit of karma is dependent upon the intention that was present when the action took place.

And now action here,

I'm using loosely.

This can be thoughts as well.

And so action plus intention equals fruit.

Action plus intention equals our future.

And these actions with intentions that lead to fruit are what we might typically think of as a micro intention.

They're like little intentions,

Almost like spontaneous and autopilot intentions.

Someone cuts us off from the freeway,

We drive a little bit more aggressively,

We give the middle finger,

We say something to them our head,

Or we say something to them actually.

And the intention there,

The anger or the resentment or the aversion,

Whatever's kind of like built into that action is what conditions the mind for the future.

And we call these intentions chetana.

And these are the intentions that bear our karmic fruit for the future.

These are the intentions that build our future.

And they're also the intentions that are the hardest to change because they're so spontaneous,

Because they're such products of habit.

And then we have these bigger intentions.

And the word for these is adhitana,

Which I think technically means foundations,

But it can also be thought of as aspirational intentions.

And adhitana is one of the paramis,

One of the ten perfections that we practice along the path towards awakening.

And traditionally,

The four great foundations,

The four great aspirations of a dharma practice are wisdom,

Truth,

Generosity,

And peace.

And of course,

We also encounter the word intention as the second to the eightfold path,

Sama-sankhapa.

Sankhapa is the word that's being translated as intention there,

But it's sometimes translated as thought as well.

And again,

These are more aspirational.

In the Itthivuttaka,

The Buddha says,

These three kinds of wholesome thoughts remove blindness and produce vision,

Knowledge,

And the growth of wisdom.

They do not lead to vexation and are conducive instead to nibbana.

What are these three?

A thought of renunciation.

A thought of friendliness.

And a thought of harmlessness.

Renunciation,

Friendliness,

And harmlessness,

Or traditionally said renunciation,

Non-ill will,

And harmlessness.

Now,

Of course,

Renunciation can mean to give up sensual pleasures,

But I think is better framed as to relinquish clinging to sensual pleasures,

Which includes mental sensuality.

So we can think of renunciation as a willingness or the intention to let go.

We can think of non-ill will as friendliness,

And we can think of harmlessness as helpfulness and care and compassion.

Now,

Some distinction is sometimes difficult to make between non-ill will and harmlessness,

So it's probably useful to offer this example,

Which is that sometimes we may be angry but not cause harm,

And sometimes we can cause harm without anger.

Sometimes we can cause harm through carelessness.

And so harmlessness and non-ill will are separated,

However slim the boundary between the two might sometimes be.

And so we can have these big aspirations in Buddhism for wisdom and truth and generosity and peace,

For freedom from clinging,

For friendliness,

For care and compassion and harmlessness.

And those are great.

Big aspirations are great,

But the problem is typically how do we put them into practice?

Because ultimately having a great aspiration doesn't necessarily have a karmic impact on our life because the true impact karmically in our life is tied to those micro-intentions that arise spontaneously,

Particularly when we're not being mindful.

And so we must figure out ways of bridging.

We must figure out ways of bridging the gap that exists for all of us between our cetana,

Our micro-intentions,

And our bigger aspirations.

And of course we,

In a way,

Must begin with these big aspirations because they're kind of what shape our path forward.

So what is your greatest aspiration?

Why are you here?

If this is your home,

What are you meant to do here?

These are worthy questions.

And of course,

I think that the way of doing this is by setting these larger intentions,

Inquiring into these larger aspirations,

And then setting small,

Specific commitments that embody them.

Call it a resolution if you want.

And so what I'm going to talk about for the next few minutes and what I'm hoping everybody can engage with tonight is ways of inquiring,

Ways of thinking about our greater aspirations,

And ways of whittling them down into smaller commitments that might begin to shape the way that our moment-to-moment intentions arise.

And so that first spectrum I've already alluded to is the way that we're going to do this.

Is big and small intentions,

That we have to set the big intention,

That we have to hone in on our greater aspirations,

But to recognize that those great aspirations don't necessarily have an impact karmically on our life until they arise in the moment.

And another way of thinking about intentions,

The way of inquiring into them,

Is to think of them in terms of being restraint or being cultivation.

There's not a hard line or a hard boundary between these,

But restraint might show itself in taking the five precepts towards the five precepts.

Towards non-harming,

Non-violence,

Towards speaking truth,

Towards non-harmful sexuality,

Towards non-stealing,

Towards non-intoxication,

Refraining from particular behaviors or actions.

So there's what we can think of as ways of cultivating wise and onward-leading intentions with restraint.

But then there's also the opposite of restraint,

Which is cultivation.

And so if one wishes to be harmless to avoid harm,

One can cultivate metta,

Loving-kindness.

That can happen in formal practice.

It can happen through intentional actions.

If one wishes to cultivate a mind of letting go,

One can practice letting go.

One can practice relinquishing,

Like actively practice relinquishing.

And that leads to kind of this third spectrum.

The first is big and small intentions.

The second is restraint versus cultivation.

And I shouldn't use the word versus.

They're not counter to one another.

They nourish one another.

And this third area of inquiring is in what I like to think of as intentions for action and action for intentions.

The general,

I guess,

Colloquial way of framing this is faking it till you make it.

Now,

I draw that from recovery programs,

But I think it's useful here.

And what I mean by faking it to making it is at least bringing this understanding to the practice that sometimes you have to do something in order to arouse an intention.

That we can't expect the intention for goodwill to exist before acting with goodwill.

That we can't expect the intention for,

Say,

Renunciation to exist before acting with renunciation.

Here's an example that probably most people can understand.

Practicing mindfulness,

Developing mindfulness.

Most people,

When they first begin practicing mindfulness,

Don't know how to be mindful.

You don't sit on the cushion your first time an expert in mindfulness.

You don't sit on the cushion with a particular skillset with mindfulness.

But once one begins to practice,

Mindfulness begins to arise.

And I think lots of things work this way.

Generosity works this way.

Sometimes we can tell ourselves to be generous,

Even if we're not feeling generous,

Even if we don't have intentions to be generous.

We don't have intentions for generosity,

Even if our intentions for being generous might have some flavor of selfishness built into them.

And then we act generously and we may then experience the fruit that come with generosity,

Often a mind of letting go,

Often a mind of renunciation.

And having experienced that fruit,

One is thus inclined to act that way more often in the future.

And so sometimes we can act our way into intending.

Now,

Of course,

There's a little bit of an intention that comes before that,

Right?

You have to intend to act yourself into intending.

And of course,

This is the circular nature of dependent origination,

But the initial intent for acting one's way into intending may simply be a willingness to try it out.

So perhaps an aspiration that one could set tonight,

If one chose to do it,

Would be to establish the willingness to try renunciation out,

A willingness to try certain ethical principles out.

And so we're gonna break up into some groups tonight.

And I'm gonna ask folks to consider greater aspirations and individual practices one might give a try in the coming year to better embody those aspirations.

And sometimes this involves a little bit of life reveal.

Some assessment.

Now,

This doesn't have to happen with judgment,

Just as a matter of fact.

We can look to where we've made personal growth with regards to aspirations,

And we can look to where we've fallen short.

In the new year,

However arbitrary it is,

Is a good time,

A good symbolic time to do such a thing.

And so we can ask ourself in what ways do we cling?

In what ways do we get attached?

In what ways might I be more generous?

And what might I relinquish?

In what ways do I harbor resentment?

Where does anger and anger and anger and anger often arise for me?

And how might I cultivate and demonstrate love more fully?

In what ways do I cause harm knowingly?

Or through carelessness?

In what ways might I be more benefit to others?

And so these are just suggestions for inquiry.

And it's what I invite you to do tonight as we enter the new year.

To reflect on where we are thus far on our path,

To reflect on what our aspirations are,

And to pick one or two,

Something to work on.

And these aren't vows.

These are just commitments for practice.

So,

Yeah,

Let's try this out.