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Guided Meditation: Relaxed Effort

Hello everyone, welcome to this beginning of the week meditation. I want to begin with a little saying—a cliché that I like to say, but to say it for the purpose of this meditation. And that is: Buddhist practice, mindfulness practice, does not work if you don't do it.

This simple idea that we have to do it is actually at the heart of what's necessary to engage, to think about, and to be involved in. But what I'd like to propose today is, as you're meditating, from time to time you'll notice you're not practicing. You're lost in thought, or you've drifted away, or fallen asleep. When that happens, you can not just gear up and tighten up and really "do the practice," but rather appreciate that recognizing that you weren't doing it—recognizing you're not doing it—that is mindfulness. You're actually doing it when you're recognizing you're not doing it.

Why is that useful to see it this way? That simple recognition hopefully relaxes the first initial seeing of "Oh, I'm not doing it." That is kind of clear, but relaxed. It's not forceful; there's no strain, there's no tension, hopefully, in that simple recognition: "Oh, I'm not doing it." Rather than buckling up, gearing up to do the practice, build on that. Continue in that kind of ease, that kind of simplicity, to begin again with your breathing. Maybe inviting your breath back in.

There's something about this relaxed, but then diligent, attention. Diligent doesn't mean straining, but it means that we keep doing it. It is a relaxed awareness of the present, where the effort is made to keep that relaxed awareness as continuous as possible. We know it's not possible to really stay completely continuous. So when the continuity has been interrupted, you'll have an opportunity again to recognize, "Oh, I'm not doing the practice." And so it begins again.

So, establishing yourself in a meditation posture that supports both alertness and relaxation, gently closing your eyes. Really relax your body. Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Feeling whatever tension there is in the body as you inhale, relaxing whatever can be relaxed in the body as you exhale.

Letting your breathing return to normal. With a normal breath, on the inhale, feel your thinking mind, and on the exhale, see if you can calm the thinking mind. Let it settle. And then settling into your breathing. Noticing if there are any ways in which your breathing is tense or held, or if there's a resistance to either breathing in or breathing out. If there is, can you lighten up? Ease up any tension associated with breathing.

And then settling into mindfulness of breathing as if you're going to do it for the long haul. Each breath is a breath to be aware of in a relaxed, diligent way. If your mind wanders off and you're not doing the practice, when you eventually realize that, appreciate the simplicity of that realization—the earliest inklings of it. If it's relaxed, let that be the basis for relaxed awareness that begins again with the breathing.

How are you doing the practice? Might you be doing the practice half-heartedly, with your attention divided between kind of being present for the breathing, but mostly involved in thinking? If there's an awareness of breathing, appreciate that, and then put more attention into that focus on breathing.

If you can identify relaxed awareness of breathing—relaxed mindfulness—add to that the effort for it to be continuous. Effort where you don't lose the relaxed quality, but there is a heightened attention to hanging in there with it, staying with it, and being settled on it.

And then, gently, almost savor the fullness of breathing. Breathe in slowly and deeply. A long inhale to reconnect more fully with your body. A long exhale to settle your body in preparation for ending the meditation.

Take a long, deep inhale to feel your heart center, to feel whatever capacity you have for tenderness, warmth, kindness, or love—for yourself, for others, for the world. Letting your breathing return to normal.

Bringing to mind the world that you'll go back to or enter into as you finish the meditation, and to wish that world well. Appreciate how wonderful it would be if people were safe and happy. If their lives could be peaceful, safe, free, unburdened, and with no oppression. Wishing that, and extending that wish, that your life can contribute to a better world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Right Effort (1 of 5) Avoiding the Unwholesome

Hello everyone. Today we'll begin a new five-part series, and this week it will be on Right Effort^[1]. I gave the talk yesterday morning on this topic, so some of this will be repeating it. But I've been appreciating lately, quite a bit, a renewed understanding of Right Effort—a greater appreciation for it and the importance of it.

For some of us, the word "effort" was probably something we didn't care for. For me, at one point, it was something I didn't care for or worse, because I interpreted effort as being a strain. It felt like you have to apply more effort than is needed. I'm a person who enjoys doing a lot of things. I do physical work I enjoy doing, and mental work I enjoy doing. The doing of it I don't think of as effort, or at least I didn't use to. The word effort, to me, meant you do it, but then you do it with more force, which causes a strain or makes you tired. So historically, I didn't have much of a relationship to this—the sixth factor of the Eightfold Path^[2]—because the word "effort" was being used.

I valued it when I heard a teacher talk about Right Effort being "right engagement." Then I had a better feeling for it: this is how you engage, what you engage in. Sometimes it's called a "right endeavor." I interpret that to mean "right activity." So what's the right activity? Right Effort has to do with the mind: what's the right mental activity that we're involved in when we do meditation? These alternatives to effort—engagement, endeavoring, activity—kind of protect me from straining or making forceful effort.

But I'll use the term Right Effort. Perhaps this series should come along with a big warning that says, "Warning: these teachings might cause over-efforting." Hopefully, with that warning, we don't interpret it that way. But there is something in the Buddha's teachings on Right Effort that is very determined, very clear, like, "This is what we do." That clarity and emphatic nature of the teachings should be understood as an intentionality, a resolve, and even a commitment to staying present. I love the word commitment because apparently it comes from a Latin root meaning to hand or to touch. So commitment is to touch something, to stay in touch. Commitment is staying in touch with your breathing, making that commitment to stay there with the experience.

In the teachings of Right Effort, there are four right efforts. Many years ago, I heard about a meditation practitioner who heard these teachings and came up with an example. She said, "I kayak in the open ocean in Alaska, and this is exactly the effort we have to make when we're up there." She listed it like this: when you're kayaking in the ocean, stay out of danger. That's the first effort: make the effort to stay out of danger. The second is, if you're in danger, get out of the danger. The third effort for a kayaker in potentially dangerous situations is to learn good kayaking skills. And the fourth effort is to maintain them, keep them going.

In Buddhist terminology, the "danger" is unwholesome states of mind. Unwholesome activities of the mind are, in and of themselves, afflictive. We don't always see that they're afflictive. For example, resentment really hurts the resenter probably more than the person we are resentful towards, but we don't see that because we're so focused on the object of resentment. In mindfulness practice, we turn the attention around 180 degrees, and we start seeing and feeling the cost: "Oh, this is actually painful for me." The unwholesome is always hurting the person who has it, but we don't often know that it's afflictive. That's what the kayaker called being in danger. So avoid being in danger; avoid unwholesome states of mind.

The second is, if unwholesome states of mind arise, let go of them. The language is to abandon them, and I'll talk more about that tomorrow. The third is the skill part: learn skills and evoke wholesome states of mind. You know, generosity, goodness, mindfulness, equanimity, patience—there's a whole slew of things that we can call upon, develop, and strengthen. The paramis^[3]—the ten paramis, for example—or the Seven Factors of Awakening^[4]. So develop them, bring them on, evoke them, learn those skills.

And then maintain them. But actually, when we talk about this fourth Right Effort, it's more than just maintaining them; it's to expand them, grow them, and help them flourish within us. So avoid, abandon, evoke, and maintain. These are the four endeavors, engagements, and activities we're doing with the mind.

It requires mindfulness. It requires the mindfulness of really recognizing what's going on in the mind. It also requires skill—one of the wholesome mental qualities, the wisdom to see the difference between mental states, activities, and thoughts that are afflictive to ourselves, that somehow undermine or debilitate us, and those which benefit us.

This includes being able to navigate the strong lawyers in the mind, the strong debate champions in the mind that have the ability to argue the case for why we should be resentful. "The person deserves me to be resentful," or to be angry, spiteful, or greedy to have more of something. We can get kind of enamored in this world of the unwholesome, so we don't see and feel how detrimental it is to ourselves.

People who don't know that there's a much better alternative in the wholesome side of it all—including better ways to take care of ourselves and protect ourselves—will often feel like it's justified or required to continue down the route of the unwholesome. But it's not required. In fact, for some people, it takes a long time to appreciate how much they're undermining themselves. They're at a dead end that doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes we have to redo the same unwholesome behavior many, many times for it to finally dawn on us^[5]: "This is not really working," or "not working well enough," or "not working in a way that's helpful."

The first effort is to avoid having unwholesome states of mind arise. Whether that's greed, hate, and delusion^[6], envy, conceit, covetousness, contempt, cynicism, or maybe insolence—it includes all kinds of things. How do we avoid them? First, as we become more mindful of ourselves and what's happening, really staying in touch with ourselves, we start recognizing when unwholesome states of mind are present or not. With this heightened sensitivity to seeing when stressful states arise, we can then let go of them (which is the second effort). But we also start recognizing behavioral things that we do that might be the condition for these unwholesome states to arise.

If someone's addicted to something on the web—certain kinds of drives—then maybe stay away from websites that support that addiction; otherwise, it gets stronger and stronger and you get pulled into its vortex. It can be something as simple as walking down a street that has a lot of stores on it. If you start thinking about all the things you want to buy, and then you find yourself in a store buying things, and you tend to buy things too much or impulsively, then maybe don't walk down that street. If you know you have that tendency, take the long way around the block.

If there are certain people with whom you find increasingly unwholesome states arising when you're with them, then be very careful how you are with that person. Maybe always show up well-rested, well-fed, well-hydrated. Show up in a good state of mind so you can withstand the example or the atmosphere of someone who is always angry, which might get you angry. Or limit how much time you spend with them. If you notice that spending half an hour or an hour with the person is okay, but more than that gets you grumpy, and once you're grumpy things start going downhill—be careful. Monitor yourself at the input, what you do, and the behavior you have.

Make sure you get enough sleep. Be sure you do the basic healthy things for yourself, like exercise, whatever it takes so that you are protecting yourself from the arising of unwholesome states of mind. I might also say one of those things is to meditate. Meditation is a protective means. Meditating every day really can protect you from getting swept away, caught up, or steeped in unwholesome states of mind.

So on one hand, there's mindfulness, and then there's the Right Effort to avoid unwholesome states arising. That avoidance involves using your intelligence. It does involve thinking it out, planning, considering, and reflecting: "How is it that these unwholesome states arise in me? What behaviors and what context does this happen in? And what can I do to change my behavior, to change how I live, what I do to protect myself?"

A wise Dharma life is one that actually reflects, in a good, healthy, beneficial way, on the kind of behavior we're doing and what can be changed behaviorally. If we're only relying on mindfulness without changing our behavior, we're probably not giving ourselves the full opportunity of what this practice can do.

Over this next day, consider this first Right Effort: the effort to avoid the arising of unwholesome, unskillful, unbeneficial states of mind and mental activities. See and plan ahead. Think about the rest of the day for a few minutes. What do you think would be a good way to go about your day to optimize that avoidance? What are the contexts and conditions that bring it about, and what can you change behaviorally so that today there's less chance for unwholesome states to arise?

It might be as simple as, if you're going someplace, giving yourself extra time to get there. Then there's a much less chance that you'll feel hurried or angry at the traffic, because the extra time builds in that kind of ease to the whole endeavor. Giving yourself lots of time to do what you have to do is one way to practice this avoidance.

Thank you, and tomorrow we'll do the second factor of Right Effort. Thank you.