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How Can We Sustain Our Effort

Good evening, welcome. Welcome, it's good to see you all this December Day evening.

Before I forget, I want to make an announcement that we won't have a meeting next Monday. It's pretty unusual for IMC to be closed, but we will not be open next Monday. So it just adds up about that. It's on the calendar too, but we don't always look at the calendar, right? So we won't have a meeting here next Monday.

So I've been gone for a number of weeks, and partly the reason why I wasn't here is because I was at IMS in Massachusetts, the Insight Meditation Society^[1]. It's part of the teaching team for the last part of the three-month retreat.

The way it's set up is that you can do the first six weeks, you can do the second six weeks, or you can do twelve weeks, all of it. And this year, more than half did all three months, and they didn't do the three-month retreat last year, I think, or the year before.

So I've done a number of three-month retreats. And now, in my role there as a teacher, I recognized in some of the participants, some of the yogis as we call them, something that tripped me up, and I saw a lot of people getting tripped up about the same thing. I want to talk a little bit about this.

Maybe I'll start by saying it's perfectly natural that if a person is going to go on a three-month retreat—right, this is a big deal to rearrange your life, to essentially drop out of society for a number of months—is not a small feat. It's not a trivial matter. It's usually something that gets planned years in advance so that everything can be taken care of. And something like this, the three-month retreat is always in the fall. Every year at IMS it has been for the last forty-five years. So it's something that you can plan years in advance.

But when a person goes, it's not uncommon to have these secret, niggling little thoughts in the back of their mind that maybe they're not aware of, but this idea of, "Well, if anything's gonna happen with my practice, it's gotta be here. I gotta make it happen. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do a three-month retreat again in my life, and I gotta make it happen," whatever it is, right? And we have different ideas about what that is. So there's this way in which we show up with this determination, this sense of, "Okay, I'm gonna go for broke." Not recognizing, not knowing, because we don't talk about it so much, but this subtle type of—I'm like grimacing when I'm thinking about this—making a fist, clenching my teeth kind of thought is exactly what makes what they want to happen not happen.

Whatever it is, right? We all have different ideas what the goal of practice is. But there's this way in which there's this straining, this bearing down, this gritting your teeth, that turns out not really to be the way forward.

For me, my first time I was in a three-month retreat, I had this crazy idea that I should never go outside. I just felt like that was the thing to do. And IMS is organized so that you can do that, because it's cold there, right? This is New England, so it's cold there in the fall. It starts in September and ends in December, and by the time it ends, the highs are only in the twenties or something there. All the buildings are connected, so you can go from the dorms to the dining hall to the meditation hall without ever going outside. I got a little weird, just staying inside all that time. This kind of mindful walking and eating and sitting, and there's something that just... my world just got really small, and I got really tight. And in my role as a teacher here just this past few weeks, I've seen people doing the same thing.

So for me, it showed up—this idea of "gotta make it happen" showed up in this kind of things getting really small and tight. And that's how you could see it as an observer, just watching what Diana was doing. But in the mind was this sense of, "Get out of my way, I gotta get concentrated," or something like this. So there was this quiet aversion to everything being pushed away. There was this quiet sense of, "Whatever I'm doing, it's not enough, it's not good enough," or something like this. I just got a little weird. And the teachers were like, "Diana, can you back off a little bit?" And I was like, "What do those teachers know? They already have something. I don't know what it is they have, but I don't have it. I have to work." Yeah, come to find out this turns out not to be so rare, to have this idea. So I just thought I would talk about this a little bit.

This idea of how do we have this sustained practice? This energy of showing up again and again and again without tension, without tightness, without a sense of bearing down and gritting our teeth. How do we do that? Because to be sure, this practice does require that we put forth energy, that we put forth effort, right? We can't just be passive.

If we are—I mean, there might be a way in which there are some people who think that as long as I have some heartfelt rituals or commitment or something like that, then something will shift. But those usually aren't the people that come to IMC, because we don't have very many rituals, and those aren't the type of people that go on long retreat practice. So this talk is more towards those people who are really pushing. We're in Silicon Valley, there's a lot of really smart, accomplished people here. So the type of pushing or perseverance that helps in our professional life, helps in our education, is not the same type of thing that's going to help in our meditation life.

And that's really hard to understand. Like, we have this one way of accomplishing things, becoming successful, attaining, achieving in so many different ways in our lives. And it turns out that that works until it doesn't. It works a little bit, until only so far. But if you really want this practice to take you further, that same thing that helped you in other areas of your life is not really going to help with meditation.

So that's one extreme, really the "grin and bear it," and I'm going to talk about that. But there is also, of course, this other extreme of just complete passivity. Just reading some good Dharma books that make us feel good, listening to some Dharma talks that make us feel good, and then don't do anything until we read the next book or listen to the next Dharma talk.

But there's this way that we have to put forth a little bit of energy. Because if we don't, our life will unfold according to our habits. Our life will unfold according to our neuroses. Our life will unfold according to kind of like evolution has programmed us to be pursuing pleasure, right? Getting genes into the next generation is about food and sex and pleasurable things. Evolution wasn't about helping us to feel happy or satisfied or find freedom or have a good life; it was all about pleasure. So it takes effort. It definitely takes effort if we want something a little bit different than that. Chances are we've been pursuing all these pleasures and found it's not as satisfying as we had hoped it would be.

And maybe I'll say something else. So we have our habits, neuroses, evolution, but also just our culture. It's quite something, right, how our culture really wants us to pay attention to screens as much as possible, right? We've kind of created a culture that thinks it's the absolute worst thing we could ever do is be bored. And instead, we need to be entertained, or we need to be consumed, or we need to be outraged, or something like that. So it does take effort to turn away from all these pressures that we experience.

So how can we do this? Have some sustained effort in a way that's without tension, without tightness, without tipping over into something that's not so helpful?

One way is, maybe I'll recognize that this word "energy" shows up in a lot of Buddhist lists. Energy, or we can tie together effort. The Pali words aren't exactly the same, but they're pointing to the same thing. And I'll say that energy, it's in the Seven Factors of Awakening^[2]; it's the third out of seven. It's in the pāramīs^[3], the ten perfections; it's the fifth of the ten. It's in the Five Faculties^[4]; it's the second out of the five. It's in the Eightfold Path^[5]; it's the sixth out of the eight.

So something that we notice if we look at that, not only is it in a lot of lists, and it's in more lists (I'm just mentioning the most well-known ones), what we'll notice is energy is in the middle of these lists. So one way that we might think of practice—like ten-thousand-foot view, thirty-thousand-foot view—we might think of practice as having an orientation, a direction we want to go, and then using energy as a way to help us get to greater freedom, greater ease.

And these lists end with things like concentration, equanimity, or wisdom, and they start with things like faith, view, generosity—kind of like this movement of connecting with others and letting go. So energy is integral to our practice, but it's not the case that just more energy is better. It's not the end of the practice, and it's not the beginning. So just this recognition that as human beings, we have limited energy, right? We're not machines. And so it's not a case of just more, more, and more, kind of like doggedly pursuing something with all the energy that we have. Instead, it's to use energy in a wise direction and in a balanced way.

And I could do a whole other Dharma talk on just how to keep balance. But what I want to focus on a little bit is, how can we have this steadfastness, have this perseverance without getting too tight?

Part of it is this recognition that our energy levels change. They change in seasons of our life, they change in times of our life, they change during the day. So just to recognize that, of course, energy levels that we all have are not always the same. And maybe to work with that, and to honor that, and to respect that, as opposed to insisting that our energy be different, or thinking that this practice is asking us to have tremendous amounts of energy. It's not. It's asking us to work with the energy that we have. It's asking us to be who we are with the life that we have.

So not only are there seasons and times that our energy changes, but we can also notice how we're not quite like a battery or a fuel tank or something like this, where there's just this steady diminishing of energy as the day goes on. I know for me, this idea of a battery, when I was a kid, I didn't think about batteries too much. But these days, it's like, "Oh, does my laptop have enough power? Does my phone have enough power?" We seem like we're often tuned into this idea, "What's the percentage on the battery?" And it's kind of natural to think, "Oh, humans are like that too."

But we're not. For example, this happened to me some time ago: I was going to a public space to hear a Dharma talk. I was visiting some friends, and we went together to this place. So it's not anywhere here in California, but the teacher was—I don't know what it was exactly, but I could not stay awake. It was one of these things where I didn't want to embarrass my friends, and it's like, "Okay, okay, okay, I've gotta pay attention to this," and the room was kind of hot. You know, there's lots of excuses I could formulate, but my energy was like, "Oh my gosh, when is this going to end?" Maybe you've had this experience. Maybe with me, right? Sometimes my energy when I'm talking is not always high, maybe it's a little aside. Here's a true confession: I have been giving a Dharma talk and I remember thinking to myself, "This is so boring. I'm bored. These poor people, they're bored. Like, when is this gonna be over? What can I do?" You know? So just this recognition, it happens.

Right, so here I am listening to a Dharma talk, feeling like I really have no energy, trying to stay awake. As it happens, the Dharma talk did end. "Like, oh, okay, where are we gonna go to dinner? Oh yeah, let's think about this." All of a sudden, the energy comes up, and, "Let's go here. No, I don't want to go there. What about this? I've never tried this, I've never been there." And the energy comes up, right? So what often is happening in the mind that is affecting the energy level is something for us to just be aware of. Because often we might think, "I don't have enough energy," but maybe it's true, but maybe it's not true also. And so for us to just be open to that possibility.

What are some ways that we can practice with sustaining our energy with some resolve, some determination, some commitment, some loyalty, some devotion (we might use this kind of language) to our practice?

One is the practice needs to be meaningful for us. Sometimes we can get into this habit: "I listen to Dharma talks on this day, because that's what I do." Or "I meditate at this time because that's what I do." This is fantastic, but is there a way that we can also connect to a way in which it's meaningful for us? Because without this meaningfulness, it can start to feel like drudgery, or dryness, or like, "Okay, here it is, it's the morning, I'm supposed to meditate, and we do it," but there isn't this juice to it. It becomes like a chore or something we're supposed to do.

So is there a way that we can connect to what we love about the practice? What is something juicy about the practice? Is there something that we care about or something that's important for us? This brings energy to our lives, things that are important to us, meaningful for us. So it's helpful to really think, what is meaningful about this practice? As opposed to, "This is what I'm supposed to do," or "I'm doing this in order that this will happen." Can we connect to it in a way that feels alive?

And for some people, it is a little bit of devotion. I know somebody (I've mentioned this before) who does mettā practice at the beginning of every sit, and they chant. Sometimes it's silent, sometimes it's in their head doing the mettā, because it's uplifting and kind of opens the heart in some kind of way.

So maybe some chanting is meaningful. We don't do a lot of chanting probably here at IMC; we do it maybe twice a year, and it's not really something that we do here. But if this is something you're interested in, the Abhayagiri^[6] website has a chant book and recordings of the monastics doing some chanting, including the mettā chant, which is something that I myself have found really meaningful. I found it heart-opening. I made a little recording on my CD player to chant it over and over and over again, and I just put that in my car, and that's how I memorized it, just hearing it over and over again.

This may not speak to you. Is there something about, I don't know, like the Buddha? Some time we had Paṭācārā^[7] here, this idea of these people that found some freedom in their practice, and they just through pure generosity, pure care for others, shared it with others. Somehow I feel touched by that. This feeling that there was the Buddha, and also Paṭācārā, a woman, this recognized teacher, that just shared it. So this is one way to connect to some meaningfulness.

But also is there a way that there can be this heartfulness? For me also, I'll say that I heard a talk—this was years ago actually, at one of these three-month retreats—where one of the teachers, at the beginning of the three months, said, "What would it be like if you dedicated—or maybe dedicated feels too strong of a word, but opened up the idea—that your practice helps others?" Recognizing that on a retreat that long, and it's hard right, there are days, weeks, maybe months when it's hard to get to the cushion. But this recognition, "Okay, my sitting here maybe helps the person next to me, the person behind me." Just knowing that somebody else is meditating is helpful.

So I just started to say at the beginning of my sits, "May this sit be for the benefit of all beings." And for me, that was meaningful. This may feel a little too airy-fairy, woo-woo for some people. It may feel too like, "I don't know, that just doesn't make any sense to me." You don't have to do it. But here's just an invitation to touch into what is something that would support you and make it meaningful, and maybe with some heartfeltness. Make it the way in which there can be some enthusiasm or some joyfulness to this, as opposed to some drudgery.

So there's also a way that we might think about practice as—I know I've said this expression a number of times, and I sincerely believe this: finding our way to have sustained effort without tension, without tightness, without drudgery, without this sense of bearing down, is an art. I would say this is an art, and we only find it by getting out of balance sometimes.

And this is the art of practice really, because sometimes it takes more energy and sometimes it takes less energy. But what if we were to consider this practice as kind of like an art? And what I mean by that is... Sometimes I don't like to talk about myself so much, but I'm giving just examples hopefully so that you all can find your own way. Here's another story of something that Diana does: I like to play with paper. It's kind of like a craft, and I like to make things with paper. This is just something that I do on my own, it's something that's fun. It started as something that my mom and I would do. Now I do it, I make cards for people or I make little things. I just love doing this.

And part of what I love about it is I'll have these pieces of paper that I'm kind of creating, and I'll look at it and like, "Um, no, that's not quite right. That's a little bit out of balance. It needs to have something there. It's a little bit too heavy here." Playing, putting things here, and like, "Oh, now this looks good, but now that doesn't." So I'm gonna put this in, and you know, the scrap that I threw away into the trash, actually this might be just what's needed, and I put it here. It's fun, I just like to do that.

What if practice were like that? "Oh, I'm just looking at this, this feels a little tight. Can there be a little bit of softening?" And part of what is fun about this crafting that I do with paper is it's okay whatever it is. I'm just giving myself over to it, and there's a little playfulness, exploration without this idea that it has to be perfect or that it has to be one particular way. So what would it be like to consider our practice like that? Like a sit as having some playfulness, and this is like an art, we're creating something, we're exploring, we're experimenting.

The downside of this is that we tinker. We do nothing but tinker for our entire practice, and that's not helpful either. But is there a way to think of it like the art of practice? Part of the art is some playfulness, some exploration, some experimentation.

Something else that is helpful to have this sustained practice without this tightness or tension is to recognize or believe that our actions have consequences. Of course we believe that, right? I mean, when I say that, you'll say, "Well, of course they do." But there's also a way in which we might think it doesn't really matter if I use my meditation time fantasizing the whole time (which we want to do, of course we want to do). Or it doesn't matter if I'm rehearsing that way that person hurt my feelings and now I'm going to get back to them. There's a way in which we might think that it doesn't matter what we're doing.

But it does, of course it does. The way that we spend our energy has an impact on us. It affects our moods, it affects the energy level in the body, it affects our habits, which impact our lives. So it makes a difference how we act and how we think.

And what a difference our life is if we're willing to put a little bit of effort towards doing some skillfulness, recognizing that things that are unskillful, unhelpful, unwholesome do have an impact. But can we recognize it without getting judgmental about ourselves, just recognizing that it's important to act skillfully, to think skillfully, as best we can? As best we can.

There's a way in which we might think, "Oh, it doesn't really matter." It does matter. These minor small things, what's happening in our head nobody else knows about, we might think that they're not important. But it does make a difference.

And there's this way—here's another Diana story—there was a time when I was really into yoga, and I couldn't explain to you why I liked yoga. I was a research scientist at the time, and I thought yoga was this weird thing. Somehow I felt better when I did it, so I kept on doing it. And I had no aspirations. It was kind of like a secret thing, I didn't want to tell my other scientist friends that I was doing this weird thing. So I had no aspirations that I was going to be a great yogi, that I could do any poses better or anything like that. I just noticed that I felt a little bit more connected to myself and to my life when I was doing this.

Without meaning to, with zero intention, I just got better at these yoga poses, right, because I was just doing them more often. I just started to notice like, "Oh, oh yeah. I didn't used to be able to balance that way, but now I can." So it's just this recognition that we can learn things even without this tension of wanting to. All of us have learned things in the past, of course, right? We've learned to tie our shoes, we learned to cook, we learned to knit, we learned to play tennis, whatever. But all those things, we weren't able to do them the first time. We had to just apply a little bit of persistent effort and we could do it.

So maybe there's a little bit more I could say here, but I think maybe I'll do a few more talks on this idea. And I want to leave or end today with talking about squirrels. I've mentioned this in a talk before, maybe I'll just mention some of you might know that there's this internet YouTuber person named Mark Rober. He's an engineer here in Silicon Valley. He used to work at NASA, used to work at Apple, I think he has the most YouTube views of any other human, and he teaches about engineering. I just love this kind of geeky stuff, but he makes it a lot of fun.

Some of you might have seen this, that he noticed that squirrels were stealing the bird feed out of the bird feeder in his backyard. So he thought, "Well, maybe I'm going to try to engineer the bird feeder to make it so that the squirrels won't get it." To make a long story short, he ends up creating this eight-part ninja obstacle course for squirrels. And it's so cute, and the squirrels figure out a way to do it. It's amazing how they jump over, fly around, all this kind of stuff to get to the bird feeder, right? I can recommend it, he's now gone to part three of the ninja obstacle courses.

So there's also this poem, the squirrel determination, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. This poem is called Again, Again. I want to think that Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has seen these YouTube videos, she might have. This poem was written at the end of 2020, still in the pandemic. And the poem goes like this:

On a day when the world asks too much of me and I don't know how to give it, I think of the squirrels at the feeder. When I was a girl, dad hung the feeder on a squirrel-proof wire. Dad set the feeder on a squirrel-proof pole. Squirrels found a way. Surely there's some squirrel in me, some chattering tenacity, some bushy-tailed resolve. If I can't be courageous and brave, then let me at least be stubborn. Surely inside this aching heart is a scamperer willing to try again, to try again, to meet disappointment and failure and exhaustion and try again. Again.

Squirrels found a way. I'm not sure that I would use the word stubborn, but she's talking about kind of like this tenacity and determination. And I like this kind of way, like squirrels, right? They find a way. So maybe it's not straightforward or linear, but they just find a way.

So maybe there's a way that we can find a way with our practice. Keep on coming back in a playful way. Squirrels are a little bit playful, or with some heartfulness. I don't know if squirrels have heartfulness, but can we connect with this playfulness, a sense of maybe it's a little bit of an art, or some heartfulness, or exploration, or experimentation, or some attitudes like that to help support us on this journey?

So I think with that I'll open it up to see if there are any questions or comments about this idea of persistence, or sustained effort without tension or getting some tightness.

Q&A

Yogi: Maybe in addition to finding that balance between effort and relaxedness, there's also the idea of just, if you can, which is hard for me, getting into a rhythm. A rhythm of daily practice.

Diana: Yes. A rhythm can be really supportive, but also there can be a way in which sometimes rhythm gets a little bit dry too. So the point is, can we have some... I like this word juiciness, but I don't know if that's a good word or not, because there's a way in which we can kind of get stuck, we're just doing the same thing again and again. So a rhythm is fantastic if it works, and until it doesn't work, does that make sense?

Yogi: Oh yeah. And maybe an interestedness.

Diana: Yes, thank you.

Yogi: Like all this stuff going on in my mind and body, maybe it's not always good news, but it's who I am and it means, hey, I'm alive. It's interesting in an edifying way.

Diana: Yes, absolutely. And investigation, right, is one of the awakening factors, and it's one of the enlivening awakening factors just as you said. Yep, some curiosity. Like, "Wow, what is this?" This is kind of a way that we could be with our experience. Yeah.

Yogi: I need to remember all these points because I'm a hard case. It's hard for me to get into a sustained daily practice. So all these little tips I need to remember.

Diana: You're not the only one. Right, it's not natural I think for us to have a regular meditation practice. It definitely takes effort. Yeah, thank you.

Yogi: Can you talk a little bit about on a three-month retreat, is the schedule pace the same as like a three-week retreat, but just longer?

Diana: Essentially, yeah. The sits tend to be a little bit longer. There's more one-hour sits, but that you can do a one-hour sit right after you've been sitting for a while, yeah. So it's the same thing from the same type of schedules. It's walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit, walk, sit.

Yogi: Do any of you stay at the retreat center? You don't leave the retreat center and come back? Like you may not go outside, but if some people go outside, do they go outside and go away and come back, or no?

Diana: IMS in particular is located a little bit in the middle of nowhere, but it's also in the middle of woods, and there's all kinds of hiking trails. So people would go outside, and sometimes that's a recommendation to move the body, get the blood pumping, and go out and see some beautiful things that can uplift the heart and mind. So yeah, most people go outside.

Yogi: Is it anticipated that people go to those longer retreats with a stated purpose? I know sometimes that IRC they ask what your goal is.

Diana: The expectation is that you would be practicing like how we practice here. So Vipassana^[8] and insight. So there's less of your having to have a specific goal. IRC does this more to kind of just give people the opportunity to reflect on what they're doing so that they don't waste their time in some kind of way. But a three-month retreat is long enough that, you know, there'll be times whether you'll be feeling motivated and great, and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, what am I doing here? This is so long, get me out of here." And then it comes back up. And so there's these natural rhythms that happen. So I think people arrive maybe with one idea, but while you're in week seven, week eight, you have different ideas than the first time.

Yogi: When you set that length of a retreat, did you have any apprehension about it? Apprehension like, "How can I do this?" I just am afraid that I would go nuts at some point.

Diana: You know, I can't remember. This was now quite some time ago, so I can't remember the first retreat. But I'm sure I did, right? It's not a normal thing to do, right? So of course I must have been. And then after that, once I realized what it's like... And to be sure, being on retreat for that long a duration, the mind can touch places that you can't access on shorter retreats or in daily life. So it definitely is a different experience.

Yogi: So the effort that you're making actually changes day to day or week to week during the retreat, right?

Diana: So one thing I'll say, a retreat container definitely supports, right? The bell rings, so you go to the hall. But because it's like sometimes difficulties arise, things that are hard, like emotions are coming up or memories are coming up that are difficult, and it takes energy to stay, not get up and run out screaming kind of thing. I'm exaggerating, but you know, sometimes it feels like that. This is what happens on long retreats, of course stuff comes up, of course. And sometimes it feels like, "Wow, this is like, I never want to leave." And sometimes you're like, "Get me out of here, what was I thinking?" So yeah, I guess the energy changes as that kind of experience changes. You're welcome.

Okay, so here we are at the top of the hour. So thank you all for your kind attention, and we'll see you in the new year. Can you believe that? It's going to be January 2nd, I think it said, Monday, that we'll be here next. So deep bows, deep bows. Thank you.