Hello everyone and welcome to The Wake-Up Call.
It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake-Up Call 438.
In the places that scare you.
Yeah,
Pema Chodron is very briefly at the end of the book running through the six paramitas or perfections of mind.
So generosity,
Ethics or harmony,
Patience,
Which we explored those three over the last three weeks,
And then also joyful effort,
Meditation,
And wisdom.
So let's talk today about joyful effort,
Which in Pali the word is virya.
And virya is generally referencing formal practice,
I would say,
Bringing joyful energy to our meditation,
Not letting the slothful body or the sleepy mind get the better of us.
But I also feel like it is referencing the practice of living our lives.
So virya is the practice of being joyful and aspirational without a goal.
So the practice of present moment-to-moment awareness or loving awareness with courage,
With grace,
And with joy.
And this is,
I guess,
Opposed to practicing with a goal of,
For example,
Becoming more mindful,
Or becoming less anxious,
Or becoming kinder,
Or getting enlightened.
Pema explains virya as being like practicing like little children learning to walk with eagerness but without a goal.
And I remember when my daughter began walking,
You know,
She'd been pulling herself up over and over and over,
And then finally she walked.
And she had so much joy,
You know,
Her little face was entirely lit up.
And she definitely had no goal,
Right?
So we are the same,
Or we can be the same.
We are always right here with the potential to take that step to light up,
To allow the natural luminosity of our minds and hearts to light up a room.
And I don't always remember to do this.
And that's another reason why practice is so important.
For me,
Virya,
Joyful practice,
It arises on its own,
But it also comes from the recollection of that luminosity.
Pema reminds us that remembering our own luminosity and then practicing with it in the form of joyful effort,
Which she also calls enthusiasm,
It's not a matter of luck.
It's not like one person is fortunate enough to be born with a luminous mind or the ability to recollect it and another isn't.
It's a matter of practice.
And she names the practice specifically as the threefold purity.
No big deal about the doer,
No big deal about the action,
No big deal about the result.
So first one is practice is not about me.
It's not,
It's not an I-me- mine kind of thing.
It's not that,
Yeah,
I'm so great and I deserve applause.
It's a training,
This persistent conditioning and reconditioning of the mind.
I can say I feel better because I practice,
But that's a byproduct.
In the West and in the law,
We talk a lot about mindfulness as a well-being tool and that's not wrong.
Practicing does,
By pretty much all reports,
Increase our well-being,
But it's not why we practice.
Even though so many mindfulness cover pages,
I guess you could say promote well-being,
And that's not false advertising.
It's really not about ourselves.
I got to sit with Joseph Goldstein on Tuesday in this tiny group of about a dozen of us,
Which was really amazing.
And one thing he said,
Among many things that I'll be sitting with for a long time and looking back at those notes,
Is that immediately when he started practicing some 60 years ago,
He knew he wasn't practicing for himself.
He knew right away.
He'd heard hardly any teachings,
He'd hardly sat at all,
And he knew right away it wasn't about him.
And in case you don't know who Joseph Goldstein is,
He's probably our senior practitioner in the Theravadan tradition,
So that's insight meditation.
So he knew right away it wasn't about him.
No big deal about the doer.
No big deal about the action.
I can sit every day,
All day,
And still it's nothing to write home about.
Does anybody remember writing home?
I've had these startling experiences on retreat,
And when I report them to a teacher,
They invariably say the same thing.
That's interesting.
Keep practicing.
So no big deal about the action.
And no big deal about the result.
We're not trying to get anywhere because there's nowhere to get to.
Walking with eagerness,
But without a goal.
We are pointing somewhere,
Though,
And that's good to remember.
We're pointing at recollecting our own mind's luminosity,
And luminosity of everyone else's mind,
And the freedom that recollection brings.
So we are pointing somewhere.
The purpose of practicing threefold purity,
According to Pema,
Is to dissolve the barriers and open the heart.
And so now this brings us to the heart of virya.
I don't know about you,
But when I'm feeling frustrated,
Or angry,
Or impatient,
Or greedy,
Or hopeless,
Any of the afflictions,
Any unwholesome states,
My body and mind are clenched,
And that's a barrier to joy.
Because of that clenchedness and barrier it imposes,
I can't summon joyful effort.
I can summon other kinds of effort.
I can summon angry effort.
I can summon resentful effort.
I can summon impatient effort,
Or just have to get this done effort.
I can get plenty done.
But the things that get done end up being tinged by those unwholesome states.
And what's more is there's a good chance I'll remember my efforts through those filters.
So sure,
I'm highly trained just as everybody else here is,
Right?
So we can get things done no matter what.
But the mind and heart are clenched.
They're not infused with virya.
They're not infused with enthusiasm.
They're not infused with love.
When I can remember it isn't about me that practices moment to moment,
And that the next moment depends on leading with love too,
Not just this one,
But the next one,
Then virya is happening.
But I would also say that this is when things get tricky.
Somewhere along the line in life,
In law,
In life,
I don't know.
Enthusiasm seems like it got a bum rap,
Right?
It became uncool to be enthusiastic.
Like I see virya alive and well and flourishing in my six-year-old granddaughter,
But I already see it ebbing in my 16-year-old nephew.
And it's not that my nephew isn't joyful and doesn't have a deeply loving heart.
He definitely does.
I once had a student who summed up loving kindness practice in one phrase,
Showcase your love.
But there's this way in which the world discourages that or teaches us that that's not cool and that the world can be unkind when we do it.
So the question is,
What if we could investigate the effect of showcasing our love,
The effect of our joyful effort,
Of a kind of effort floated by love?
I just feel like we might discover that the more we do that,
The safer it is.
I mean,
We'd have to remember how intricately interconnected we are,
How much we depend on one another.
But I mean,
We have to remember that anyway,
Or we're really headed in the wrong direction.
So maybe it doesn't feel cool to bring virya into a courtroom or conference room or a classroom yet.
Can we shift that?
Can we bring virya into our next argument?
What if our next complaint were written with joyful effort?
How would it read?
I'm just playing here.
But I guess I want to invite you to play too,
Either by imagining or even by trying to write your next complaint or just your next memo,
You know,
As a virya-infused experiment and see how it goes.
Because I don't know,
Maybe it could turn the whole conflict around.
All right,
So let's sit.
So finding your posture for right now,
Whatever posture would,
Yeah,
Maybe enable some of that recollection of the luminosity of your own mind and heart to come through.
Maybe it's sitting up straighter,
Taking a few deeper breaths.
Maybe it's allowing the awareness to flow down through the body from the top of the head all the way down to the toes and just noticing where there's clenching and letting go,
Part by part,
Place by place.
Place by place.
You know,
When the mind wanders away from this exploration of what might be clenched,
You can just notice,
Is it wandering towards planning,
Thinking,
Recollecting something other than its own luminosity?
And coming back to the present moment,
What's available right here and right now?
What peace,
What joy,
What,
Yeah,
Love,
What love is available right here?
And can you point the attention or invite the attention to reside in that luminosity,
In that love and let it,
Let it radiate throughout the body?
For me,
It's always the more I can relax,
The more opportunity there is for this love,
Loving-kindness meta to show up and to kind of infuse the body-mind.
It's already there,
But it tends to retreat.
Yeah,
Making space for it to expand.
And then just this invitation to inquire,
How can I bring this with me into my day?
This joyful effort,
This enthusiasm,
Born out of luminosity of my own heart and mind.
Thanks everyone for being on the wake-up call today.
It's really sweet to see you.
Take good care and I'll see you next Thursday.
