So yesterday I spoke a little bit about meaning and meaninglessness and sort of that relationship to poetry.
Bit of a stretch but I think the Dharma is a form of poetry sometimes.
And today I'm going to pivot a little bit and explore the purpose for which you're practicing.
This path is full of paradoxical ideas and so it's good to look at both.
Having a sense of purpose and intention or a goal can be very helpful but it can also be a hindrance.
So learning and practice to understand the nature of having a purpose and how to work with it,
When to engage with it and in an active way and use it as a reference and when to drop it.
So it's really looking at what's useful.
So for example if your purpose is you're interested in freedom from suffering,
Freedom from clinging,
Then it's more useful to pay attention to your clinging than it is to pay attention to sensations in your little toes or in your hands.
Or maybe it's useful to pay attention to your belief systems because your belief systems often subconsciously are operating in the background and may be fueled by clinging and attachment.
And if what you're interested in is not clinging then rather than being mindful of the trees and the river or nature which is a beautiful thing to do but it's not productive at looking directly at the beliefs and the clinging that you have.
If you have a sense of purpose that purpose it kind of casts light across your life.
It helps you make decisions about things you want to do.
How to practice,
What to focus on and then to do things to support your sense of purpose.
And sometimes the purpose is not very clear to people but it's an intuitive sense and it can be hard to articulate.
I think that's what I was trying to express yesterday with the way in which meaning becomes thinner over time with practice.
Being is more valuable than becoming over time.
And I know from my own experience that nothing is more important for me than to practice.
And I don't have a real clear sense to why.
I just intuitively know that this was something I was doing like from the very beginning.
And there are other times I have a clear sense of purpose to look directly at the way in which my beliefs influence my clinging.
And it's important to know when to drop that sense of purpose when it's no longer serving.
You know it's sort of like we set the direction of practice but once that direction is set you kind of have to get out of the way.
We don't want to think about that purpose anymore because then it's easy to fall into holding onto it as an object as a goal and then that gets a bit agitating.
So there's this finessing on how to drop it as well.
I think one of the dangers with a sense of purpose is that we can spend a lot of time trying to fix everything and tinker with our life.
And we can create a lot of expectations and goals around what we'd like to have.
Or there could be the story that I'm not living up to the goals that I have.
I'm not doing well enough.
This practice is not happening fast enough.
So then there can be a lot of ego connected to this goal.
It's my goal.
How are other people seeing me?
And then it becomes all about me.
And some of our goals can be really short term like okay my goal is to sit twice a day for a month and see what happens.
And sometimes it can be a lifetime goal that we establish for ourselves.
There can be a goal for a particular week like this week.
Let me be as mindful as I can while I'm driving.
And then you kind of explore that and see what that's like and try to organize your driving so that you can be really mindful.
Or you can do that around food.
This week I'm going to be really mindful around eating.
And that's where you cultivate and you develop.
So these small senses of purpose can be useful.
Or there can be a lifetime purpose like trying to come from a place of compassion.
Engaging with the world in a compassionate way may be a high priority for you.
And so then you set that purpose and investigate what supports this.
What manifests this?
What allows me to live like this?
Or noticing how much that's not where you're coming from.
Sometimes the difficulties or problems we have around with our goals or our purpose are the very places where we grow and where we learn.
Some people are afraid if they have goals.
There's the fear that they might not meet them.
Or maybe they've been burned by a past purpose.
So instead they avoid it.
They avoid setting any sort of compass of the heart.
That it may be more useful instead of avoiding just to understand what was off before when I set this purpose for myself.
Is there a different way of doing it this time?
So I encourage you to spend a little time considering maybe what brought you here to practice.
Is there a sense of purpose that you might have?
What was the intent when you started?
And also is there a time and a place to be without goals,
Without purpose?
It's an interesting area to explore and I encourage you to spend some time considering your relationship to goals and purpose,
Your relationship to intention and see where that leads.
Thank you for your consideration.
