Dedication, Determination, And Vision

This track touches on the overlooked aspect of being mindful of practicing dedication and determination in the things we do in this life experience and the invaluable effects it can have in our own fulfillment.

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Transcript

Tonight I would like to talk about an aspect of spiritual practice,

Which we often underestimate or even overlook or forget.

It's our dedication to the values and aims of our practice.

It's a certain determination and strength of purpose,

Who also implies vision and a clear sense of direction in what we're doing.

That's the range of meanings covered by the Pali word,

Atitana.

When we wish to undertake a long journey to a far distant land,

Perhaps,

A land of great beauty where people experience extraordinary freedom,

We've been told,

We need a number of prerequisites.

We need a vehicle,

A car,

A boat,

An airplane.

We also need a good map,

Just to be clear in terms of our itinerary,

Our destination.

We need to determine the travel dates.

Finally,

We need an unswerving perseverance carrying out all the parts of the trip.

All of this is quite easy in the case of excursions,

Maybe holiday trips.

A lot more demanding in the case of serious expeditions.

In terms of our practice,

It's obviously very important to understand how to meditate properly.

Also,

We need to strengthen our capacity to develop mindfulness,

Collectedness,

Insight and equanimity,

And to deepen generosity and compassion.

We need methods,

Means and ways.

At times we're so absorbed in all of this that we forget to look at where we really want to go.

Sometimes we find cruising around the block once or twice so demanding that we forget that we're on a long journey on an expedition even.

In other words,

Determination,

Strength of purpose and vision are equally important aspects of our practice as are formal meditation and its application in daily life.

This quality of Adi Tana in Buddhist tradition is seen as one of the so-called paramitas or inner perfections.

Perfection not so much in the sense of something we need to make perfect in ourselves,

But more in the sense of an innate quality within us that we need to fully rediscover perhaps.

It is said that the Buddha practiced each of those paramitas for thousands of lifetimes.

What this may be saying to us maybe is the timeless qualities,

The aspects of our own innate Buddha nature,

Qualities such as resolve,

Dedication,

Determination,

Vision.

This quality of determination and dedication could be described as the heart's capacity to stick to a course we have chosen,

To values that are true to us,

To honesty within ourselves in terms of our deepest purpose.

My Tibetan teacher Geshe Raptan,

Who was Christina's teacher too,

He had spent many years studying,

Practicing in a big monastery near Lhasa in Tibet.

He had a wonderful teacher and beloved guru through whose teachings and blessings he had received tremendous benefit in terms of his Dharma practice.

Now his teacher at some point left the monastery and went back to this home region far in the east of Tibet to teach and care for his people there.

That's the region he originally came from.

Geshe Raptan soon realized that he wanted to follow his teacher there.

But how to get there?

He had no money,

He had no support,

He actually didn't even have proper shoes to walk,

And the journey was going to be a three-month trip on foot.

And he decided to go.

He found a friend who would go with him.

And they walked on foot through the vast and empty and desolate wilderness of Tibet for three months with the heat,

The cold,

Begging their way.

And there aren't too many villages along the way.

Threatened by highwaymen,

By tigers,

Until finally he could join up with his teacher again.

He had one and only one purpose in his life,

To train himself in spiritual practice,

In Dharma practice,

In the way he found the best way possible for him,

So as to be of greatest benefit for many.

There's that sense of aritana,

Of that dedication,

The way he did things.

There's another outstanding teacher I had the opportunity to meet when practicing in Massachusetts at the Insight Meditation Society.

His name was Tangfulu Sayadaw,

A very wonderful old monk.

He's been the most still and profoundly calm and relaxed person I've ever met,

As far as I was able to tell.

Even to look at his hands,

The way his hands were,

Or he held them,

Or he didn't hold them,

The way they rested maybe,

There came this sense of this incredibly deep inner peace.

Already in his young years he took the forest ascetic vows.

Being really determined to be awake,

He decided not to lie down to sleep,

Or ever to lie down.

One of the vows he took,

Not going to lie down anymore.

He'd walk,

Stand,

Or sit.

He didn't lie down for years.

People say for 30 years he didn't,

Who knows.

Amazing determination and dedication to the practice of awakening,

And you don't have to do that.

Kind of strong sense of purpose and vision.

They're impressive stories,

And we could say they happened back in the old days in Asia.

And yet they're just as relevant for us today.

Aritana means we're willing to put our energy into what we deeply value in life.

It means that we bring dedication to our spiritual practice,

To our work,

To our relationships,

To caring for our families,

For our children,

Whatever it is that is important for us.

And in many ways that's also what we do here on retreat.

We're with the breath,

The mind wanders away,

We bring it back again.

It goes again,

Perhaps hundreds of times,

Maybe in one sitting.

And we don't give up.

We get up again and keep on doing it,

As the American sports star Vince Lombardi said.

What matters is not that you fall down.

What matters is that you get up.

Over and over again we come back to the moment,

To this moment.

Come back to the movement of the body,

Come back to the foot touching the earth,

The hand holding a spoon or a cup or opening a door.

Meditation retreat,

It takes a lot of dedication to going through the ups and downs of our different energy levels at different times of the day,

Perhaps.

Going through the changes of our feelings and emotions,

From joy to boredom,

From loneliness to feeling deeply connected back to loneliness,

Perhaps.

Just like with the weather.

It's our dedication that makes this into something of great value.

And we commit ourselves again and again,

Every day,

Every moment.

We commit ourselves sitting,

So to speak,

In the midst of it all,

In the midst of the joy and the sorrow,

Even when it seems meaningless or hopeless at times.

The Christian monk Thomas Merton said,

True prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.

The spirit of Adhikthana.

All this doesn't mean that we now begin striving.

Meditation is not about struggling to get somewhere,

To make things different from what they are.

Rather it's a very full commitment to be with what is,

Over and over again,

To connect with it,

To feel it deeply,

To see it with clarity,

Right now and right now.

Another function of Adhikthana has to do with the decision and determination to stick to a certain commitment,

Or perhaps vows or precepts.

We may decide to follow certain ethical guidelines as we do it here at Gaia House.

We may do this in our life altogether.

Like we make a statement to ourselves,

I am determined not to purposely kill or harm any living being,

Or I am determined not to take what does not belong to me,

Or I am determined not to lie,

But to speak the truth only,

To decide for that.

It's also a very powerful force.

And it's very different from thinking,

OK,

I'll try my best somehow,

Whenever the situation comes up I'll see.

It's different.

We decide beforehand,

As clearly as we can.

When we have made the decision beforehand and are quite determined to stick to it,

That will act as a strong supportive power once we are in the midst of a challenging situation.

It's a force that will then be with us,

Which won't be there if we decide to see how we're doing when we're in the midst of it without deciding beforehand.

Commitment to certain wholesome ways of action is a great protection for ourselves,

A great protection for others concerned.

It's said to build up positive karma or to build up wholesome tendencies within us,

Even when we're not in a situation when we're challenged.

Just that clarity.

Here also I like to put in a word of caution.

It's helpful to be committed.

It doesn't mean that we never fail.

It doesn't mean we never make mistakes.

It never means that we won't break a precept.

But rather than getting into guilt and conflict,

We see the mistake very clearly,

We regret it and get up once more like Vince Lombardi and start anew.

This kind of aritana or commitment can also mean,

For example,

We decide to do a daily session of metta meditation,

Perhaps when we live here or sometime in our life,

And we decide we'll do that for the next four weeks.

Then we do it for the next four weeks,

Not just for three weeks.

That's an important thing.

Deciding for things like that,

I find it very helpful to do them for a time.

It clearly defines time,

A time that I know I can do that.

Not a lot more than I'm sure that I can do it.

It could be different things.

It could be I decide,

Let's say,

For the next two months to always give when I'm asked for something.

That's an interesting one.

You could decide for the next two hours,

So maybe in the silence nobody's going to ask you something.

You should try for the next week and see what happens on Saturday,

Sunday,

Monday.

Or in terms of right effort and perseverance in our practice.

In our meditation here or in our daily life,

Again,

Aritana can be very powerful.

Here's a short text on Valmiki from a Hindu legend on the author of the Ramayana,

Who lived a long time ago at the dawn of history.

It's a myth,

An archetypal description of determination and enthusiastic perseverance.

As a young man,

Valmiki searched through the world seeking open friendship,

Happiness and hope.

And finding none of this,

He went alone into the empty forest where no man lived.

The spot near where the Tamasa River flows into the Ganga.

There he sat for years without moving,

So still that white ants built an anthill over him.

There Valmiki sat inside the anthill for thousands of years with only his eyes looking out,

Trying to find the true.

His hands folded,

His mind bent on contemplation.

Impressive,

Isn't it?

Again,

You don't have to do it.

There's a slightly different aspect of aritana which I would like to look at now.

It's,

Maybe we could say,

The determination combined with the vision.

The vision of the spiritual journey and of the goal.

The vision of what's possible for the human heart and mind.

My late Tibetan teacher,

Nyosho Kandrampuche,

Often said,

Spiritual practice and meditation has three important parts to it.

The parts are called what's good in the beginning,

What's good in the middle,

And what's good at the end.

Good at the beginning is the motivation of great compassion for all beings.

We have to do it out of care,

Not just for our own well-being,

But for the welfare of many.

Good in the middle is the main practice of insight meditation,

Of the wisdom of non-grabbing,

The wisdom of non-clinging,

Non-identification.

And it's the sharing and dedicating of all the positive qualities,

Of all the good energies,

You may say,

That we have created.

The Tsoktsen Master Longchenpa calls these three,

The heart,

That's the motivation,

The eye,

That's the wisdom part,

And the life force,

The dedication of true practice.

And my teacher Nyosho Kandrampuche would insist,

To attain full enlightenment,

Nothing more than these three is necessary,

But less would be incomplete.

So when we generate the motivation of great compassion,

Or what's called bodhicitta,

Which is what is good at the beginning,

It means that we resolve not only to practice because it's good for ourselves,

But for the benefit of life altogether.

That's what the motivation is all about.

We have to make the decision,

The determination to practice until we're fully enlightened in order to be of greatest benefit for the greatest number of beings,

Regardless of how much and how long this may take.

Bodhicitta is really a fantastic vision with respect to our practice,

With respect to the path to liberation for all that lives.

We can think,

Oh,

You know,

How long does that take?

Maybe lifetimes.

We can think,

Oh,

But we don't even know if there are different lives.

And we can have good reasons why this is kind of silly nowadays.

Or we can look at that kind of motivation and see its power and the vastness,

The openness that it brings to our way of being and go for that.

It's a vision that creates a powerful and imperturbable basis for steadiness and perseverance in our practice.

Work of a lifetime,

Work many lifetimes.

We don't know,

Because we have to wide and vast perspective.

And it gives us a long enduring mind.

Indian bodhisattva and poet Shanti Deva writes,

That's an expression of this motivation.

For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain,

Until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.

We have that perspective.

If we can keep our small mind from jumping in and saying,

Wait a minute,

That's impossible,

I can't do that,

Nobody can do that.

Who knows,

Who knows really?

Maybe we're all doing this together since quite a while,

Might well be.

And it doesn't matter.

We don't do it since a few millennia,

We're suddenly doing it together for three days and that's quite the time together.

Bodhicitta and I think Aritana,

And Aritana in general,

To disregard the narrow heart and the small petty mind and go for the good.

Go for the best that's there in the depth of our heart,

As good as we're able to.

So why not make bodhicitta our motivation and practice?

Not because we should,

But because it's the most generous,

It's the most open and often the most joyful attitude a human heart can be in.

Even if the sun rises in the west,

The bodhisattva,

The being committed to freedom,

Has only one way,

A famous text says.

Just as important as the motivation,

As what's good in the beginning,

Is the sharing,

The dedication of merit,

The dedication of the energy of our wholesome actions that we have generated while practicing.

At the conclusion of our practice,

Of our day,

Of our sitting,

Of our day,

Of our retreat,

We don't add up to see how much we've earned.

But we pass it on,

Up,

Pass it on right away,

Share it,

Give it away.

Tibetans,

They often use quite materialistic examples to illustrate things.

Can you say for example here,

When we create good karma from doing all the wholesome actions we do,

For example,

In this practice of practicing wakefulness,

Attentiveness,

Sensitivity,

Openness of heart,

Kindness,

Compassion,

Equanimity,

Patience.

When we do this,

We normally use it up again as pleasant experiences arise in this life,

Or in the Buddhist view,

As rebirth in happy realms.

They say it's just like with money that we put on our bank account in order to buy something nice with it later on.

We earn some money,

We put it there and we'll buy something nice.

This sharing or dedicating of the positive energy,

That is as if we were to stick a label onto the wholesome energies and qualities we've created,

A label that's saying,

Not for immediate use,

Can only be used for the purpose of full enlightenment.

So it won't be used up next time we're having fun.

It's kept so that everybody gets some benefit from it,

Not just I or me.

It's like we open an impersonal bank account or we just found that this is a trust or a foundation,

Where the money can only be used according to the defined purpose.

Like there's a statement in the charter of the trust or of the foundation and then everything can only be used in that way.

That's what we do with the dedication.

This is dedicated to liberation,

To enlightenment and to the welfare of all beings.

And again,

It's the strength and the clarity of Aritana,

This resolve,

This intention that gives power to our inner orientation.

Now we know exactly where that is going to.

There's a strong,

Clear direction.

In a way we could almost say we bring a visionary or almost prophetic element into our practice.

We say,

May it be thus.

We don't know if it's going to be like that,

But may it.

Just like that day,

Ian's back in history when the Buddha,

When our Buddha,

The Siddhartha Gautama,

In one of his previous lives,

Met the Dipankara Buddha,

The Buddha of that age,

Long,

Long ago.

At that time already our Buddha was a great and realized meditator,

Ascetic and yogi.

When he saw this Dipankara Buddha,

The appearance and the way of being of this Buddha impressed and moved him so deeply that he immediately felt he wanted to do something for him.

But he didn't know what.

He didn't have things he could give,

But he wanted to do something.

So when they came walking to a place on the road that was very dirty,

Very muddy,

Our Buddha threw himself down at that spot for this Dipankara Buddha to step on him so he wouldn't make his feet dirty.

That's what he thought he could offer.

Now,

The Dipankara Buddha,

Seeing this,

He stopped,

And he made everybody stop,

And he said,

That no one puts his foot on that man.

In so many centuries,

Or millennia,

At such and such a place,

Under such and such a name,

Under such and such circumstances,

This person will attain the full enlightenment of the Buddha,

And he will be of invaluable benefit for countless centuries for numberless beings.

And that's exactly how it happened.

And it still happens.

The same teachings from those days that are incredibly useful and powerful and beneficial to this day,

To us here now.

There's that kind of visionary prophetic power of Aritana.

Whether we take these stories literally or as legends or archetypes,

Doesn't really matter.

The fact remains,

Clear and strong intention has great power.

Let's see how we can use this power for our practice,

For our life.

And of course with the resolve of the motivation or the dedication,

Of course with the determination in terms of our conduct,

We don't choose and decide once and for all.

It's not enough.

We couldn't do that.

Rather,

It's also a practice,

Too.

We decide again,

And then we forget a little,

And we decide again.

We clarify,

And we clarify again.

And that brings us more and more strength.

Maybe like with a stone cutter.

It hits the stone countless times.

A thousand blows,

Nothing happens.

The thousand and first blow,

It falls apart.

And all the blows were equally important.

The first,

The 89th,

As much as the last one.

There's yet another application of Aritana I want to mention.

Last one.

It can also be a kind of resolution or calling up of positive mind state or heart qualities.

Classically,

At a certain point in the practice of the Samatha meditation,

The meditation of calm abiding or collectedness and absorption,

Aritana is used to call up certain mental qualities or mental factors or also states of absorption.

And here it's qualities of mind that are part of states of deep concentration.

Once they are developed,

One can practice saying,

May this and this factor arise,

May,

Let's say,

Joyful interest arise,

Or may one pointedness arise,

May deep calm arise.

When these qualities or states have been sufficiently cultivated,

They arise when they're called up.

And the same with even deeper states of concentration.

It obviously,

It only works at the point where the calling up is realistic.

Otherwise,

It's only wishful thinking.

But in fact,

We can use this kind of calling up in many situations in our practice.

When we do the metta meditation,

We say,

May I be happy,

May I be healthy,

May I live with ease,

Or may you be happy,

May you be well,

May you live with ease.

And of course,

It's not that the person then is going to be happy just because I'm saying it or because I'm wishing it to that person.

But it's cultivating the good intention of kindness.

And we try to make it as genuine as possible in saying the phrases each time we just try to mean it.

And sometimes we succeed and we can really say it convincingly.

Sometimes it's more mechanical,

But we try.

It's the intention that is developed.

And we do it,

We try it,

We repeat it hundreds,

Thousands of times.

After a thousand or twenty thousand or fifty thousand times,

We say it and we're filled with kindness.

Rumi calls this setting our heart on goals.

Intending the good,

Or kind of resolution,

Can also work in daily life.

If we're familiar and well acquainted,

For example,

With the inner attitude of kindness,

Metta,

We can say to ourselves,

May love and kindness arise in me.

And we remember how it is because we have practiced it,

We have been there again and again.

And it'll much more easily be accessible.

It's not that it's not there and then suddenly comes out of the blue,

It's part of who we are and having connected with that place in our heart.

We call it up and there's the connection again.

Or we use the familiar metta phrase that we use here now,

May you be happy.

And the familiar attitude of metta arises.

We play with it and mostly play with it by practicing it a lot.

We can attain,

Realize,

Make possible more than we ever thought we could.

We have a lot more power than we think in the good as well as in the bad sense.

We must choose and decide for the helpful,

For the wholesome forces again and again.

We call them up,

Then we fill them with life.

Then ultimately everything is possible,

Even attaining Buddhahood for the welfare of all of life.

I'd like to close with what's called the intention of the Bodhisattva.

And here again it's not about the heavy burden we should shoulder,

But about a vast vision of what may be possible.

Living beings are numberless.

I'll help to liberate them all.

In the conflict and obstacles are endless.

I'll overcome them all.

The possible insights are limitless.

I'll attain them all.

The way of the Buddha is unsurpassable.

I'll walk it up to the end.

I'd like to sit quietly for a moment.

Reviews

Deep bows 🙏

Thank you very much 🙏

Beautiful guidance, back to the roots - for the development of motivation, direction, and vision. All said in well chosen words.
I highly recommend this talk. - Danke, Fred!

Insightful and full of wisdom
with gratitude 💚🙏💫

I am grateful for your superb talk and I will listen to this often.

Namaste