I needed to retrieve from the airport a sweatshirt I left at security a few weeks ago, so I took a bus and the light rail out there and back. It was a leisurely, stress-free meander to do a simple task. And it got me thinking.
In the world of Buddhist cosmology there is a principle termed Right Effort. Part of Right Effort is to know when no effort at all is required. I have come to wonder if most of our lives fall into the realm of not requiring our effort. So often we take the idea of Right Effort to mean that we have not been working hard enough on this project of self-improvement. We can point to the evidence: I am not a whole lot kinder, more patient, more caring, more generous than ever, so it must be that the project is not going very well and I had better redouble my efforts to make my self a Better Person. That is the goal, right? To make myself a Better Person? To be a force for good in the world? To at least do my small part to aleviate the suffering of others?
Well, I think the answer is almost certainly Yes and No. Frustratingly, that is the most common answer in this line of inquiry, I'm afraid. Yes and No.
Here's the thing: the source of suffering is quite clearly this whole effort to create a solid self, an unchangeable avatar of the ego. This is an edifice so clearly built on shifting sand that nothing but the maximal effort even keeps it from tipping over entirely. I know how odd that sounds from the point of view of everyday, solid life, but it is nonetheless true. I got into a conversation with some coworkers about uncertainty the other day and everyone's responses reinforced for me that we all go from moment to moment wondering what our next step should be. Oh, sure, we know we have to take out the garbage and wash some clothes, but the big questions, the What Am I Doing With My Life? and Why Am I Here?; we have no idea what to make of those. So we stumble along from day to day in indecision, assuming that eventually it will all become clear. Then we get old and wonder what happened. That's the average life.
So what if the purpose of us being here is not the figuring out but the stumbling along? What if we simply come to accept that, embrace it, become totally aware of it as our present moment reality, without judgment or the desire for more or less? What would that be like? Would it be like freedom? What if we acknowledged that there is no self and therefore a self-improvement regimen is at best a sick joke? (A selfless man walked into a bar...stop me if you've heard this one...).
But does this, then, lead to an impulse to say, What the Hell and do whatever we damn well please? Well, no. This is the crux of Wise Effort. Once we come to the realization that all of this self-improvement activity being performed in the name of eventually achieving a perfection that will finally bring us happiness once we have reached all of our goals is nonsense, if only because we never seem to get to any of those goals (or most of them, anyway) and even if we do they don't supply the happiness we thought they would, once we realize that all of this efforting is pointless, the temptation is to just let go of everything, have an orgy, eat, drink and be merry, eat the entire banana cream pie, stoke up that joint and drink a six pack (or something like that. Choose your addiction). The problem is that the happiness these bring is at best fleeting and doesn't even approach true joy.
If we are unprepared, what kicks in if we indulge is the tape that says that You Musn't Do That because that would be Self-Indulgent which would be Bad. Can't you just hear that tape? In my head it's not scolding so much as it is simply, maddeningly incessant. I can't seem to escape it. But that's a tape with no one pushing the play button (and certainly no one manning the stop or pause). It's just a tape. Then we're into the eternal struggle between our impulses and our guilt trips. Oy, vey. What a mess.
So, if you are following me here, if you are keeping score, here is where we've gotten to: we have no self, therefore self-improvement is silly. One option is to head off into the world of self-indulgence and hedonism. Another is to have that impulse and then counter it with guilt. Yet another option, the worst yet, is to give in to the impulses and then play the tapes. Like reading the love letters after the relationship has gone south. Painful. Futile. Brutal.
OK. All sounds pretty hopeless, eh? At this point we should remind ourselves that this is not so very different from where the Buddha found himself. He lived the life of a hedonistic, sheltered rich boy, then realized there was more to life and sought the line of severe self-improvement. He found both entirely lacking in the substance he was seeking. What's an incipient Buddha to do?
What this Buddha did was to find the Middle Way, which is to say, Right Effort. It was not his idea that he should become a better person, nor that he should become anything in particular. In fact, it was his idea to stop the whole process of Becoming and simply Be. The story goes that just after his enlightenment one of the first people to encounter him could tell there was something pretty special about him and asked, "Are you a god?" No, said the Buddha. "Are you a saint?" No, said the Buddha. "Are you a deva, an arahant, a magician, a king?" No, said the Buddha. "Well, then, what are you?" I am awake.
This is what we must strive for, it seems to me, is an awakeness, an awareness in each and every moment. Of course, we can't achieve that totality, not being buddhas (yet), but we can work toward it. The precepts the Buddha taught, the instructions to act in certain moral, ethical ways can be mistaken for the Buddha's Commandments, but all these suggestions are his discovery of what stands in the way of your awareness. If you are immoral, unethical, angry, abusive, sly, sneaking, dishonest, or harmful, how could you ever overcome the feelings that arise from those to be aware? Who would want to be awake to that cesspool, anyway?
As for me, I find myself so very busy with everything I have promised to do, all of my obligations and employments, all of which are undertaken to, in one way or another, give me a sense of lasting security or pleasure that I find very little time to simply Be. Just Be. It's not that hard. Remember the instruction Ram Dass liked to give? Be Here Now. That's it. There is nothing more to the instruction manual. But it's pretty damn hard to do. Every current of modern life pulls us away from the present moment. We are constantly practicing to be other than present, which is why it is so important for us to do the counter-practice, which is meditation. Meditation, of itself, is a fairly pointless exercise (hey, I know, let's take an hour and watch our breath and do nothing else!). It is one of the most valuable things we can do is because it trains us in that single-pointed focus necessary to stay in this present moment and not be anywhere else. When we can practice that more and more in our daily lives, we are headed right where the Buddha got to, which is to awakeness, awareness, pure peace and joy, Nirvana. Don't let anyone fool you with their fancy sudden enlightenment stories; oh, I'm sure that happened and still happens for a few. But if we are on a path in that direction then what matters is the realization that the more we trudge on that path the closer to freedom we get. In other words, Nirvana need not be a sudden awareness, we can get there by degrees. And the roads that lead there are common and well-marked.
There are other aspects to Right Effort, including studying the words of the Buddha and the thousands of wise people who wrote (and continue to write) commentaries on his teachings in order to counteract our misperceptions about what we are doing in this practice. But this effort to be awake and aware is the end point of all of this. Accept no substitutes.
In the world of Buddhist cosmology there is a principle termed Right Effort. Part of Right Effort is to know when no effort at all is required. I have come to wonder if most of our lives fall into the realm of not requiring our effort. So often we take the idea of Right Effort to mean that we have not been working hard enough on this project of self-improvement. We can point to the evidence: I am not a whole lot kinder, more patient, more caring, more generous than ever, so it must be that the project is not going very well and I had better redouble my efforts to make my self a Better Person. That is the goal, right? To make myself a Better Person? To be a force for good in the world? To at least do my small part to aleviate the suffering of others?
Well, I think the answer is almost certainly Yes and No. Frustratingly, that is the most common answer in this line of inquiry, I'm afraid. Yes and No.
Here's the thing: the source of suffering is quite clearly this whole effort to create a solid self, an unchangeable avatar of the ego. This is an edifice so clearly built on shifting sand that nothing but the maximal effort even keeps it from tipping over entirely. I know how odd that sounds from the point of view of everyday, solid life, but it is nonetheless true. I got into a conversation with some coworkers about uncertainty the other day and everyone's responses reinforced for me that we all go from moment to moment wondering what our next step should be. Oh, sure, we know we have to take out the garbage and wash some clothes, but the big questions, the What Am I Doing With My Life? and Why Am I Here?; we have no idea what to make of those. So we stumble along from day to day in indecision, assuming that eventually it will all become clear. Then we get old and wonder what happened. That's the average life.
So what if the purpose of us being here is not the figuring out but the stumbling along? What if we simply come to accept that, embrace it, become totally aware of it as our present moment reality, without judgment or the desire for more or less? What would that be like? Would it be like freedom? What if we acknowledged that there is no self and therefore a self-improvement regimen is at best a sick joke? (A selfless man walked into a bar...stop me if you've heard this one...).
But does this, then, lead to an impulse to say, What the Hell and do whatever we damn well please? Well, no. This is the crux of Wise Effort. Once we come to the realization that all of this self-improvement activity being performed in the name of eventually achieving a perfection that will finally bring us happiness once we have reached all of our goals is nonsense, if only because we never seem to get to any of those goals (or most of them, anyway) and even if we do they don't supply the happiness we thought they would, once we realize that all of this efforting is pointless, the temptation is to just let go of everything, have an orgy, eat, drink and be merry, eat the entire banana cream pie, stoke up that joint and drink a six pack (or something like that. Choose your addiction). The problem is that the happiness these bring is at best fleeting and doesn't even approach true joy.
If we are unprepared, what kicks in if we indulge is the tape that says that You Musn't Do That because that would be Self-Indulgent which would be Bad. Can't you just hear that tape? In my head it's not scolding so much as it is simply, maddeningly incessant. I can't seem to escape it. But that's a tape with no one pushing the play button (and certainly no one manning the stop or pause). It's just a tape. Then we're into the eternal struggle between our impulses and our guilt trips. Oy, vey. What a mess.
So, if you are following me here, if you are keeping score, here is where we've gotten to: we have no self, therefore self-improvement is silly. One option is to head off into the world of self-indulgence and hedonism. Another is to have that impulse and then counter it with guilt. Yet another option, the worst yet, is to give in to the impulses and then play the tapes. Like reading the love letters after the relationship has gone south. Painful. Futile. Brutal.
OK. All sounds pretty hopeless, eh? At this point we should remind ourselves that this is not so very different from where the Buddha found himself. He lived the life of a hedonistic, sheltered rich boy, then realized there was more to life and sought the line of severe self-improvement. He found both entirely lacking in the substance he was seeking. What's an incipient Buddha to do?
What this Buddha did was to find the Middle Way, which is to say, Right Effort. It was not his idea that he should become a better person, nor that he should become anything in particular. In fact, it was his idea to stop the whole process of Becoming and simply Be. The story goes that just after his enlightenment one of the first people to encounter him could tell there was something pretty special about him and asked, "Are you a god?" No, said the Buddha. "Are you a saint?" No, said the Buddha. "Are you a deva, an arahant, a magician, a king?" No, said the Buddha. "Well, then, what are you?" I am awake.
This is what we must strive for, it seems to me, is an awakeness, an awareness in each and every moment. Of course, we can't achieve that totality, not being buddhas (yet), but we can work toward it. The precepts the Buddha taught, the instructions to act in certain moral, ethical ways can be mistaken for the Buddha's Commandments, but all these suggestions are his discovery of what stands in the way of your awareness. If you are immoral, unethical, angry, abusive, sly, sneaking, dishonest, or harmful, how could you ever overcome the feelings that arise from those to be aware? Who would want to be awake to that cesspool, anyway?
As for me, I find myself so very busy with everything I have promised to do, all of my obligations and employments, all of which are undertaken to, in one way or another, give me a sense of lasting security or pleasure that I find very little time to simply Be. Just Be. It's not that hard. Remember the instruction Ram Dass liked to give? Be Here Now. That's it. There is nothing more to the instruction manual. But it's pretty damn hard to do. Every current of modern life pulls us away from the present moment. We are constantly practicing to be other than present, which is why it is so important for us to do the counter-practice, which is meditation. Meditation, of itself, is a fairly pointless exercise (hey, I know, let's take an hour and watch our breath and do nothing else!). It is one of the most valuable things we can do is because it trains us in that single-pointed focus necessary to stay in this present moment and not be anywhere else. When we can practice that more and more in our daily lives, we are headed right where the Buddha got to, which is to awakeness, awareness, pure peace and joy, Nirvana. Don't let anyone fool you with their fancy sudden enlightenment stories; oh, I'm sure that happened and still happens for a few. But if we are on a path in that direction then what matters is the realization that the more we trudge on that path the closer to freedom we get. In other words, Nirvana need not be a sudden awareness, we can get there by degrees. And the roads that lead there are common and well-marked.
There are other aspects to Right Effort, including studying the words of the Buddha and the thousands of wise people who wrote (and continue to write) commentaries on his teachings in order to counteract our misperceptions about what we are doing in this practice. But this effort to be awake and aware is the end point of all of this. Accept no substitutes.
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