I'd like to begin with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi.
I claim to be no more than the average person with less than average ability.
I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
So this week we're exploring effort in practice and effort in relationship.
Effort is the root of our practice.
It's the root of being able to see clearly.
It takes a little bit of effort to know our minds.
Without effort we spend our meditation period kind of lost in our thinking or deeply rooted in our habit patterns.
Without that coming back or just noticing,
Oh thinking,
Oh thinking a lot,
Oh planning,
Oh planning a lot.
We're just in our habits.
Understanding wise effort is important because if wrongly applied it can be confused with ambition.
Effort can be confused with expectation.
And over-efforting,
Really trying hard,
When we're in that mode it can lead to agitation and tension,
More restlessness.
And too little effort,
When we're just sitting for 30 minutes and maybe we just fall asleep or we're just lost in our plans.
Little effort,
We can get really lazy and disappointed.
It leads to doubt in the practice.
You know,
Kind of the way that it would look in our practice is like,
What's the purpose of this?
Why am I even doing this?
So I want to offer some practice tools for applying effort in your life,
In your practice,
In your relationships.
And it really starts with our small habits and how we begin to work with them.
You know,
It can be as simple as how we drive our car or approach our day.
How we engage with other people or how we prepare food.
What we're practicing in all of those situations is making what we're doing more conscious.
Being aware and approaching everything with just a little bit more attention,
With more care and ultimately with more kindness.
Because if you've been in an avoidant pattern in your life or on autopilot or perhaps hyper-vigilant and you start to see that in your practice or in your life or in your activities,
What may happen is you'll experience that as unpleasant.
You know,
The unpleasantness of seeing a habit pattern.
Sometimes we see ourselves and disdain for what we see emerges.
So bringing care to what we see,
It's really humbling and it also builds our tolerance.
Sometimes we have to learn to be tolerant with parts of ourselves before we can bring them closer and care about them.
When we have more tolerance for our four bowls,
We tend to be more tolerant with others.
There's this kind of understanding when we get humbled by our own minds and our own patterns that we're all just in this together,
Kind of doing the best that we can.
So the meaning of wise effort simply is to see clearly,
To be aware.
And it's hard sometimes to just apply a little bit of effort just to see.
Like,
Oh,
This meditation,
I was just thinking the whole time.
And maybe once I came back to my breath or,
Oh,
This meditation,
I just went to sleep because it's early in the morning and I just needed a nap.
And just to start to see and say,
Oh,
Okay.
Okay,
That's what happened.
I'll be here now.
I'll be here now.
That happened and now I'm here.
It's hard because we don't want to see sometimes.
It's sort of like saying,
Okay,
I'll be here now,
But what happens when you're here now?
What do you have to be with?
Like,
Oh,
This anxiety or this pain or this boredom.
Oh,
I have to be with this fear or this anxiousness or this loneliness.
Sometimes it's like,
Oh,
I have to be with this pleasure,
This joy,
This beautiful sunset,
This amazing food that I'm tasting or this horrible experience.
Or I have to be with people being born or people dying or be with losing your keys or your phone or be with getting a speeding ticket,
All these things.
So because we live here in this moment with what's happening,
There's this opening to the full catastrophe.
And we don't want to.
We don't want to do that.
Wise effort is seeing clearly that this world is crazed,
Just crazed with the political unrest and the polarization and the global warming and all the ways in which culturally we avoid.
There's so much suffering.
And oftentimes we forget.
We forget how incredibly fortunate we are that we can see.
We forget about the sorrow and the struggle of the world.
But we have this ability in our practice to wake up and look at ourselves and be conscious of it,
To not be asleep.
One understanding of wise effort is that we are wholeheartedly engaged in our life.
And we're completely receptive.
So there's this engagement and we're open to what experiences,
What's happening.
I think what happens sometimes is the association with the word effort is kind of to strain or to be engaged in trying to fix something or to do something in a way that carries a lot of attachments.
It's just kind of like work.
And so part of this discernment is to understand effort as skillful or unskillful.
You know,
If you're using guided imagery,
For example,
Like I often suggest like the breath is like the ocean and sort of like the imagery is of the waves rising and falling.
You know,
This is a skillful practice to help the body and the breath attune and relax.
But after some point,
That metaphor,
That imagery,
You just have to let that go and just be with this rising and falling,
Not with the metaphor.
So this is kind of the way in which practitioners develop skills and it's skillful.
You know,
The Buddha relates meditation practice to activities that are similar.
It's like one of the analogies he uses is learning to play a musical instrument or learning a craft.
And part of learning to play an instrument,
If any of you play an instrument or you have some sort of art that you do,
Is repetition.
A skill is learned through repetition over and over again.
And it's true with our meditation practice also.
When we learn to practice,
Meditate,
All we have to do is just be with the content of what's here in the mind,
In the body,
Whatever's here,
Whatever your experience.
You know,
We're seeing it.
Oh,
Look at that worry.
Oh,
Look at that planning.
And then the skill of coming back to that three-breath journey,
You know,
Just breathing,
Taking three breaths or one breath,
Coming back,
Letting go,
Coming back.
We're developing the skill of not holding on to our thoughts,
Not holding on to ideas,
Not holding on to the feelings that arise,
The emotions that come,
But seeing them as they come.
Oh,
Thinking.
Oh,
Planning.
Oh,
Feeling.
Developing skills of not reacting,
But seeing.
And we begin again and again in this really simple way,
In this relaxed way.
Every time we come back to the breath,
We're starting again.
We're developing receptivity.
We're developing allowing without straining,
Without wanting or trying to attain something.
We're just here with this experience of breathing.
And this applies to all the circumstances of our life,
Really.
We're developing the skill to really be present for what we're doing.
Probably one of the best tools we have,
Like the best practices you have,
To replicate the experience of being on retreat,
Is to bring the Dharma,
This practice,
Into your daily life.
And that is by doing one thing at a time.
By doing one thing at a time is probably the best tool we have.
When we're at the sink washing dishes,
We're just washing dishes.
When we're sweeping the floor,
We're not thinking about the plans for the day.
When we're folding laundry,
We're not listening to a podcast.
When we're cooking dinner,
We're just cooking dinner.
When we're working in the yard,
We're just working in the yard.
Pulling weeds,
Just pulling weeds.
One thing at a time.
And this idea of just doing one thing at a time,
Doing what you're doing and just being present for that.
When we learn to do one thing without straining or hesitation or complaint,
This slow repetition allows for some settledness and some enjoyment.
And in this way,
Coming back to that one thing is becoming free of the ruminating mind.
So we want to develop a mind which is skillful and practices that help support a spacious,
Skillful presence.
And the art of skillful engagement is really in the activity of the moment.
Learning how to do that wisely takes repetition.
It takes repetition.
And when we start to experience it,
It's really the greatest delight of this practice.
So thank you for your consideration.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
