Joyful Effort

So I feel it's fairly obvious that this practice, these practices, this path takes effort. To me, that's clear. It takes effort to not turn over and go back to sleep when the bell goes in the morning, to get up, to make it to each sitting, to make it to the walking, to walk back and forth, to sit through each sitting, to stay, to sustain that through the day, to meet what comes (the difficulties, the challenges), to encourage what's lovely -- all that. Effort is involved in this, in this practice and in this path. And that's a little bit what I want to explore tonight, this whole question of effort. How can we help that to not be a drudge, the effort, not a drudge, not a strain, not coming from 'should' and pressure? How can we transform and work skilfully with the effort, so that there's wisdom informing the effort, and that the effort has a sense of balance, balance in the effort? When there's wisdom there, and balance there, the possibility is, rather than a kind of grim or drudgeful effort, the effort actually becomes quite joyful. There's joy in the effort. Or at least that's a possibility.

Like a lot of things in the Dharma, the question of effort, it actually ends up touching on a lot of other aspects. You sort of pull at one thing in the Dharma, and you find it's connected to just about everything else, starts rattling. So it touches on a lot. And there are also, we could say, different aspects of effort, different dimensions and things that make up this one word, 'effort.' And I want to go into those. Even if we reflect for a second, in English, there are many words that we might use: effort, determination, exertion, perseverance, persistence, etc. And the same is true of Sanskrit and Pali and Tibetan, the sort of classic Buddhist languages.

But tonight, if it's not too ridiculous -- which it may be -- I want to actually address many of those aspects, sort of to give a kind of broad picture. We talk about what's involved here in the different aspects of effort. The whole question of aspiration and aspirations, the whole question of goals, and our attitudes to goals, and our attitudes to effort, all that brings in the question of the self and the self-judge and the self-view. That's also a very central element. And the Buddha talked about Right Effort. What's that? And questions of energy, perseverance, etc. And then also, hopefully, the question of tuning the effort on a more micro level in the practice, playing with that quality of effort.

So all of those qualities, and more, actually end up feeding each other. They feed each other. All those qualities end up helping each other in creating a healthy and balanced and wise and joyful effort. Since a talk has to move linearly in time, I have to sort of go through it in a path. Please remember, as I'm talking, if something feels a little bit like it's beyond your reach or something right now, it's fed by other factors. So we always have a way in to feed the whole pie. Makes sense? Yeah?

Okay, so let's start. I'm going to start big, and hopefully end up smaller with the nuts and bolts. Aspiration: to me, it's such a central issue for us as human beings, but certainly for us as practitioners. So central, so important, so needing of our loving attention and our loving questioning. In life, and certainly in practice, for the practice, for the effort to be sustaining, to be juicy, to be healthy, my effort needs to be meaningful for me, deeply meaningful. It has to really mean something. That sense of the meaningfulness of our practice, fortunately, can grow. If I think back, years ago, when I started, I had a very -- first of all, very vague sense of what I was getting into and what practice was about, but also quite a narrow sense. And as time goes on and as the practice develops, hopefully, that sense of the meaning of what we're doing, and the meaningfulness of what we're doing, just grows and grows and grows and expands. So it needs to be meaningful. Without that sense of deep meaning for us, for this heart, it runs dry. It runs into a brick wall. So what does that mean?

The energy that I expend in life -- or let's ask a question: have you noticed that when you expend energy, when it's in line, aligned with what you deeply love, with what I deeply love, when it's in the direction of what I'm deeply devoted to, what I really, really, most deeply care about, what I really most believe in, have you noticed that energy becomes available, that one finds the resources? This is really, really important. And so the kind of conclusion from that, or a conclusion from that is, it's really important for us to ask the question: what is it that I'm really devoted to? What is it that I really want to align myself with? And what do I deeply, deeply love in this life? That's a really important question. And to feel, to feel one's sense of exertion, one's sense of effort, one's sense of stretching oneself in life, to actually feel it, to dwell in the sense that it's aligned, deeply, with our sense of what we're devoted to. And one can actually feel that. That's almost a palpable physical sense. [7:06]

Sometimes we hear about effort, and you hear stories of these sort of extreme efforts that practitioners go through, and we can have the impression of effort being something hard, something steel-like, something pressured or kind of tough. But actually, I think that heartfulness is the key to wise and balanced and joyful effort -- heartfulness. How much is the heart really soft and touched? How much is our effort rooted in a sense of deep heartfulness, of deep longing, of deep care, a deep sense of what we care about? Heartfulness is at the core of what we give our energy to and how we give that energy. And when we ask that question, "What's most important to us? What do I deeply, deeply care about? What do I want to devote my brief life to?", when one asks that question -- I think I touched on this in the opening talk -- if I go deeply enough in that question, I have faith that a human being comes to, "It's not just about me." And this sense of what we're devoted to, it will include wanting to serve, wanting to serve others, wanting to give of oneself, wanting to offer something. And that comes into what's fuelling and firing our whole effort. [8:33]

So in the Tibetan tradition, the word most commonly used is brtson 'grus. I have no idea if I'm pronouncing it right. But I looked this up, and it apparently is quite difficult to translate, because it incorporates -- people try translating it like 'joyous perseverance' or 'enthusiastic application,' something like that. It includes, it implies this balance of both joy and sort of sustaining effort. That's one of the things that feeds that, is this sense of the depth of rootedness, that we are in the heart's direction, in the heart's most cherished direction. So there's a -- I think it's a Mahāyāna text called the Abhisamuccaya, and it defines effort, in a way, as 'to have a mind that genuinely delights in virtue.' It's an interesting definition of effort. So, first piece to do with aspiration: the sense of really aligning oneself deeply, one's heart's desire.

And the second piece has perhaps to do with faith. Because if I feel like I'm expending this effort, but I don't really have a sense that much is possible for me, what I put in is going to be very limited. So again, to check: is there a limit on my sense of what's possible for me? Or how am I limiting that, and why am I limiting that? These are actually big questions. I don't have time to go into this too much. We could spend a whole talk just on that. What do I feel is possible for me? Or we could ask a sort of parallel question: do I at least, then, see, is it clear to me, crystal clear, that it's important how I act and think, it's important that I act and think skilfully, because I can see the connections? I need to take care of how I speak with people. I need to take care that there's kindness there, and honesty, and goodwill, because I see that if I don't, it has consequences -- and not just in what they think of me. So faith, we could say, is a heart movement. But there's also a sense of clarity about what might be possible, but also what's important to cultivate.

So all this very easily, then, begins to touch on the whole question of goals. That's a very loaded issue in spiritual work and in the Dharma world. The Buddha's unequivocal about this. He's quite clear about this. And he admits -- there are some wonderful suttas where he admits, if you have a goal, if your goal is awakening, if your goal is some realization on the path, there's going to be dissatisfaction before you reach that goal. There's bound to be dissatisfaction. But that doesn't imply that one should throw out the sense of goals. For him, it doesn't imply that at all. If we do that, we're kind of doing ourselves a disservice, and maybe doing the world a disservice, maybe doing others, the planet, a disservice. We're selling ourselves short. It's one way to try and get rid of that dissatisfaction of not being where we want to be, but it is not the most skilful way of ridding ourselves of that dissatisfaction.

The skilful way is actually to keep that fire burning, and then see, "What do I need to do?" And actually go step by step towards that goal until one reaches the goal. Then when one reaches the goal, dissatisfaction becomes a sense of peace, a sense of fulfilment. This came up, I think, in the initial question and answer period: what are we moving towards, and renunciation, and all that. If it's not really a worthy goal, there won't be that sense of peace. It will just lead to a sense of emptiness and lack of fulfilment and ongoing hunger if it's not a proper goal. So again, it behoves us to ask: what exactly am I directing myself towards? What are my aspirations? What kind of happiness, what depth or what quality of happiness am I going for in this life? What do I want most deeply to offer to the world, to give? What does my heart want to give?

Asking those questions, I feel, very much is actually a kindness to ourself. It's honouring something very, very deep inside ourselves. It's a kindness to ourself, as is practice, as I said in the opening talk. Practice is a kindness to ourself, and seeing it as that, seeing that whole questioning and that whole aligning as that. The Buddha said the anguish -- strong word -- the anguish at having a sense of where we want to be, and not being there yet spiritually, is better than the pleasure that comes from sense pleasures. So it's better to have that pain than it is to have that pleasure. Why? Because it can serve as a motivator. It can serve as something that keeps moving us onwards -- onwards towards awakening, towards realization. [14:21]

This, to me, it's quite a charged area for us, I think, as human beings. What's our relationship to deep desire, to my heart's deepest longing? Sometimes we're very reluctant to go near that question. We're shy of it. All kinds of reasons -- sometimes we think we don't deserve to even ask it. What's my relationship? We fear going near it, because we fear, "If I touch that, I can only be disappointed. Or I will be completely out of balance or something." What's my relationship with my deep desire?

One of my teachers stresses this quite a lot, and he said, "Make sure that determination stays nurtured, for that's what will see you through." So really making sure, in these different ways, that sense of determination stays buoyant. In the texts, in the Buddhist texts, come from 2,500 years, all the way to more recently, almost without exception, when they talk about effort, it's pretty strong. Strong language is used. It's a pretty strong message that's put out there. Now, this is tricky for us nowadays. I'll go into this. But generally that's what one finds if one opens the texts. One finds pretty strong and direct language around the use of effort.

Gampopa was one of the great, great Tibetan teachers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. And this is just an example. He said: "Time-wasting," being the opposite of effort, he said, "is threefold: one is from idleness, one is underestimating one's capacity, and the third is involvement with lowly pursuits."^[1] [laughter] That last one he doesn't fill out too much. He just says things like amassing wealth and competing with others, and that's sort of -- you can obviously fill out some other stuff.

On the first one, idleness -- interesting, strong language again. Here's the Buddha. He's talking to a group of monks: "Monks, understanding will dim. Your mental faculties will dim. Life will be cut off. The creative power of life will be cast away. Even the Teacher's doctrine [even the Dharma, even the teachings] will be destroyed for certain. Why is it that you do not practise with diligence and unflinching discipline?"^[2] That's very sort of characteristic. And you know, we have that skeleton in there [at Gaia House]. That's partly -- one of the reasons it's in there. [laughter] I know you knew that.

Gampopa again: "One should cast off wasting time through idleness as one would throw off a snake that had slithered into one's lap." But the one I'm most interested in, of those three, is the second one, right now, for this talk: underestimating one's capacity. How endemic that is in our culture, I feel, in relationship to this kind of work, and the Dharma. And so it's said, typically, and again, this is from the texts, from Gampopa's text: "How could a lesser person like myself ever achieve enlightenment, even if I made great efforts?" He says, "That question should be turned around into, 'Why should someone like myself, who was born as a human being, after all, not attain awakening, since I am able to recognize what is beneficial and what is of harm?'" So that's quite interesting. What does it depend on? It depends on being able to recognize what is beneficial and what is of harm. And somehow, we think it depends on other things. That's what it comes down to, apparently: being able to recognize what is beneficial and what is of harm. And if I follow that thread, if I follow that way of looking at things, if I follow that questioning, it'll take me.

So earlier I said, everything feeds everything else. So part of this question -- "How could I possibly do it?" -- also has to do with what I hopefully will get onto later, about the sort of, let's call it the ergonomics of practice. In other words, am I putting forth effort on a moment-to-moment level in a way that feels sustainable and is skilful? Am I doing it in a way that's actually nourishing the whole practice? Or am I tying myself up in knots? I'll come to that. But that level affects how we feel on a bigger level, of course. And it goes both ways.

But what happens, unfortunately, for -- not everyone, but so many people nowadays, and particularly in the West, is that the whole question of effort, and the whole question of goals, and the whole question of aspiration very easily becomes burdened with self-view -- self-view and self-measurement and self-criticism and self-judgment. That that way of seeing and way of measuring gets so wrapped up in the whole question, the person can't even see up from down, or forward from backwards -- can't even see themselves properly.

And so this whole structure of the inner critic -- ideally one would talk for three hours, and spend two hours of it on the inner critic, because it's really important. I actually just gave a retreat last week, and we talked about the inner critic quite a lot. So I'm not going to talk too much about it tonight, but I know that there are -- I know Christina has a very good talk on it, and I've got one as well. There are talks that you can order about that. I don't want to go into it too much tonight, but that structure gets its roots and its tentacles in everything. And everything gets seen through that. Everything becomes about me, and how I measure up, or "Do I measure up? Am I good enough?" Everything, everything, everything -- even watching one's breath, one's interactions with others. And it's like a creeper on a tree that will pull the whole thing down. [20:54] So I guess all I want to say tonight about that is, to acknowledge what a huge force it is, and how much it needs addressing. But in a way, I want to actually reach other things, so I'm going to put that aside.

Sometimes it's worth seeing practice as a skill. And the Buddha used that word quite a lot: kusala. It has a couple of different meanings. One of the meanings is skill. Seeing it as skill or skills, and reflecting, in the past, if I've ever learnt any skills, like, for instance, playing a musical instrument or some sport, or even tying one's shoelaces, actually, is a skill. Now, we've learnt a lot of skills -- learnt to type, learnt to do this, learnt to do that, learnt to write, learnt to whatever, pottery -- many, many skills. And reflect on how we learnt skills. It's quite important, remembering back: what was it that enabled that? If there's too much inner critic, it can't happen. And what happens? When we learn skills, we make mistakes. We make mistakes all the time. But the crucial thing that makes a difference is, am I using the mistake to beat myself up, to sabotage the whole process, and things grind to a halt, or am I learning from my mistakes? And so, again, if you've ever learnt a musical instrument or something like that, or a particular craft or art -- make a lot of mistakes. The question is, am I seeing: "Oh, okay, so I should do it this way and not that way"? Practice is the same, in terms of the craft of practice.

Relationship to mistakes. The Buddha, it's one of the sort of seemingly unremarkable things the Buddha did, but actually, the more you go into it, the more you see it's a total stroke of genius, that he shifted the emphasis away from self and self-essences and self-assessment and all that, or finding a self, or any of that, to just, "What actions lead to suffering, and what actions lead away from suffering?" In other words, "What's helpful in terms of actions, and what's not helpful?", rather than making conclusions about myself. It doesn't sound very glamorous. It makes all the difference in the world. Huge. And that was the primary lens, you could say, of his radical kind of breakthrough in seeing, in an approach to the spiritual path: seeing things in terms of actions that are helpful or not, rather than seeing things in terms of self and essences. [23:37]

One of the words for 'effort' in Pali is viriya. That's related to a word in Sanskrit called vīra. I'm not sure if it's the same word in Pali. Vīra: hero. It means 'hero.' Or I guess in the feminine it would be 'heroine.' So partly, I mean, mostly, it's worth just taking the self out of all this, and just looking in terms of actions and results, and letting the self go. But sometimes, actually, there is a place for a kind of helpful self-view in the sort of motivation of effort. So what would it be to see oneself as a hero, a Dharma hero, a Dharma heroine? Dharma Man! [laughter] Dharma, you know, whatever. What would that be? I think that's quite skilful, without going overboard. As the Buddha said, "One should make effort, but not exalt oneself and disparage others." So it's not about self and other. There's something very skilful here, recasting our own story, retelling our own narrative. Cast oneself as a hero -- I think it's very beautiful.

And coming back to what I said earlier, can I be a hero for others? That's probably something that's going to be much more useful: I'm a hero for others. Again, I'm not just doing this for myself. Recently, I had the privilege, really, of hearing Joanna Macy talk just last week, a couple of times, locally. And very interesting -- one of the times, she said, when she has meetings, and sort of at the beginning (small meeting, large meeting), she asks people to introduce themselves. And she says, "Say your name, but also tell us who you're here on behalf of, what group of either people or beings or aspect of the biosphere or whatever you're here representing, for the benefit of." So immediately, the sense of someone's being there is enlarged. It's not just me.

Again, in the Mahāyāna texts, they say, the thing that gives our effort power -- power, and that's what we want; we want our efforts to be powerful, to be effective -- is dedication to others, dedicating our efforts to others. That's what makes it powerful. So again, very strong language in the tradition. I'll read you something from a very well-known Mahāyāna text called the Bodhisattvabhūmi. And it's talking about this, talking about the attitude of armour-like diligence -- 'diligence' being another word for 'effort.' It says, "If, in order to liberate one single being from suffering, I have to abide nowhere else but in hell for a thousand cosmic ages, this fills me with joy." [laughter] *"*It does not matter how much or how little time it takes, or how much or how little suffering it involves. Such an attitude is the bodhisattva's armour-like diligence." Strong language, but this goes back to what I said before: the meaningfulness of practice for ourselves can expand to the point where we begin taking that kind of seriously.

There's another text -- I'm not exactly sure -- again, from a Mahāyāna text, and it goes into the details more. So this is diligence in accomplishing the welfare of others. [27:26] This brings it much more down to earth. It's just a list of eleven things. But listen. And rather than something that seems astronomically unreachable, listen to this, because it's what most of you are already engaged in, most of us are already engaged in:

(1) Supporting those who are doing meaningful and worthwhile activities.

(2) Dispelling the suffering of those who are suffering. (So I'm reading through quite quickly, but hopefully the heart can also resonate as they go by.)

(3) Teaching those who lack skill how to cope effectively.

(4) Showing the methods to those who don't know them.

(5) Recollecting others' kindness, and then repaying it.

(6) Protecting others from fears. (Beautiful.)

(7) Giving necessities to those who do not have them.

(8) To bring a practice community together, and to engage them in that which corresponds to their mentality, to make them happy through talking about the finest of qualities, of inner qualities.

(9) Properly correcting someone who is doing wrong. (That's an interesting one.)

(10) To inspire them -- inspiring people.

(11) And lastly, to make them long for the good and wholesome.

So it's actually not that far away from what runs through our lives. It's not that far. Maybe we think, "Oh, that one, I don't really, or this one," you know, whatever. And then that can be expanded. There's a possibility of just expanding it, of growing it almost endlessly. And am I drawn to expanding that? So you think about a parent -- parents for their babies, for their children, willing, for the welfare of the child, for the life of the baby, to go through sleepless nights, to forego, perhaps, certain comforts, or certain pleasures, or a certain nice mealtime, whatever, certain travel, this or that. And that same attitude can be extended. What am I perhaps willing to forego, willing to give up, willing to sacrifice for the welfare of those that I don't even know, that I'm not related to?

So as I say that, I'm asking -- I ask myself that too. I'm asking all of us. So what am I prepared to sacrifice? This is, for me, it's a central question. We think about, okay, the parents make that sacrifice for their children. If they didn't, probably the human species wouldn't have survived. Now, planetarily, we're perhaps in a situation where, if we don't ask the second question -- "What am I willing to give up for people I don't know, for people I'm not related to? What am I willing to sacrifice?" -- maybe the human species won't survive.

What am I willing to give up? Good night's sleep? Good food? Comfort? Flying somewhere for a holiday? Bit more interest on a bank account than another one -- we're not quite sure where they invest their money? What am I willing to sacrifice?

So, difficult questions. And you know, sometimes we hear this, and the sense of being asked to sacrifice something, and something inside says, "No, too much." And something inside might be, might be saying, "Yes, yes." Something inside hears and it goes, it touches something very deep. We want to, actually. [31:24]

If I come into this retreat, and it's just about me -- me and my practice, me and my process, or me and my therapy process, whatever it is -- so easy that it becomes tight. So easy that it excludes a certain range, a certain depth and fullness of joy from that. And so easy for the person shuffling next to us, or coughing, or sneezing, or whatever it is to be an irritation, to be an obstacle to my practice. And we don't see the 'we,' and the togetherness, and how I might be here, just as importantly, to support everyone here -- just as importantly. It's an expanding of the view. So it's a question: how can I keep expanding it? Am I interested in keeping expanding it? And then another whole beauty comes into the whole question of effort. A whole other level of beauty comes into what we're doing here. And a sense of what I'm putting forth is informed by that beauty, is infused with that beauty. [32:38]

Once, the Buddha was telling -- not sure who he was talking to. I think he was talking to Sāriputta, his sort of right-hand man. And he said, "The secret of my awakening was that I did not rest content with any attainment of concentration or insight or mindfulness or anything, until I had reached a place of no more possible attainment. That was the secret: I didn't rest content."

And they talk about, in the tradition, talk about the diligence, or the effort -- the diligence of insatiability, not being satiated, not having enough, and in a very healthy way. I quote: "Striving after virtue in a way that knows no satisfaction until enlightenment is reached, and that is not satisfied with leading a relatively good life." Again, strong language. Strong teaching. This aspiration, for some people, it's right there from the start. It's right there from the start. It's very clear. I don't know the proportion -- maybe for most, it comes gradually, very gradually. As I said, it just expands. Or at a certain point, we get a sense. Something shifts. But if I'm practising well, then I don't stop satisfied with anything. The fruits of whatever I've got lead naturally to the next sense of, "Ooh, that was nice. What's next?" Or, "There's a bit more peace now. There's a bit more relief from suffering. Maybe what else is possible?"

The Buddha talked about -- when he talked about what is Right Effort, he asked, "What's Right Effort?" And he said there are four aspects to Right Effort. And it's to do with the development of skilful or wholesome or helpful qualities of heart and mind, so things like mindfulness, equanimity, generosity, loving-kindness, compassion, etc., those things, versus their opposites: distraction, stinginess, ill-will, etc. And the four Right Efforts are:

(1) Putting effort in, working for the non-arising in the future of unskilful, unwholesome, unhelpful mental and states of heart, of being.

(2) The abandoning -- second one -- abandoning of unskilful states that have already arisen.

(3) Third one: working for the arising in the future of skilful, wholesome, helpful, and beautiful qualities.

(4) And the fourth one: when there are already beautiful qualities there, working for their maintenance, for their increase, and for their culmination.

So this is from the Buddha, about this: "If, on self-examination, a practitioner knows: 'I usually remain covetous, with thoughts of ill-will, overcome by sloth and drowsiness, restless, uncertain, angry, with soiled thoughts, with my body agitated, lazy, or uncollected,' then he or she should put forth extra desire [note that word, 'desire'], effort, diligence, endeavour, undivided attention and alertness for the abandoning of those very same unskilful qualities, just as when a person whose turban or head was on fire would put forth extra desire, effort, diligence, endeavour" da-da-da-da, etc. [laughs] "But if, on examination, a practitioner knows: 'I usually remain uncovetous, without thoughts of ill-will, free of sloth and drowsiness, not restless, gone beyond uncertainty, not angry, with unsoiled thoughts, with my body unagitated, with persistence aroused, and collected,' then his or her duty is to make an effort in establishing, or in tuning, those very same skilful qualities to a higher degree for liberation."^[3]

So there is this balance in practice. For example, something like concentration: we notice, in a day, concentration, "I feel more concentrated. I feel less concentrated." It's not that we're just kind of watching that: "Oh, yeah, right, it's impermanent. I know that. They talk about that in the teachings. Everything's impermanent. And therefore it's unsatisfactory. So let it go. Just watch that." [laughter] Not that simple! Not that simple. Actually, Right Concentration has its place in the eightfold path. And he says, "Develop it, cultivate it, because it's a tool, and we need to take care of our tools, like a good workman takes care of their tools." [37:25]

These four Right Efforts, sometimes they're kind of four separate things. Other times, they're one, kind of four aspects of the same movement. For instance, abandoning what is unskilful by focusing on the development of the skilful -- sometimes, just developing mindfulness will actually dispel a lot of unskilful qualities, so nothing more we have to do than that. Or sometimes in the abandoning of something unskilful like ill-will, naturally what takes its place is mindfulness or loving-kindness or wisdom, naturally.

The Buddha talks about working to starve hindrances and to nourish their opposites, what's called the factors of awakening -- starving and nourishing. To starve a hindrance is to nourish the opposite factors. And to nourish the good factors is to starve the hindrance. So we can always approach things many different directions.

Sometimes I just need to watch something. I've got some aversion going on. I've got some restlessness going. I just need to watch it, and the very watching it allows it to decrease. But sometimes that's not the case, and you've probably noticed that already. So just the mindfulness isn't enough, and I have to bring something else in.

I also have to be -- how to put this? -- the antidotes that we bring, if we're bringing something different in, have to themselves be skilful in the way we're bringing them in. So for example, if there's aversion there, it may well not be that aversion to the aversion gets rid of it. As the Buddha very famously said -- beautiful, beautiful words: "Hatred never ceases through hatred. Only through non-hatred [or love] is it brought to an end. This is an ancient [and eternal] law."^[4] There has to be skill in our responses, kind of an understanding of the causes and effects involved.

So those four Right Efforts, kind of working gradually to dispel, to quieten the unskilful, and to nurture the skilful, actually brings joy. Why? Because generosity, loving-kindness, equanimity, mindfulness, concentration, etc., are happy and peace-inducing qualities. They themselves are qualities that bring happiness and peace. A state of heart of generosity is a happy heart. A heart of mettā is a happy heart. So as I'm cultivating, joy comes naturally. And it adds to the whole sense of joy in the effort.

We've used of a couple of words already on this retreat. I think John used them the other day: 'persistence' or 'perseverance,' two good English words. That's another translation for viriya, and this can be on the macro and the micro level. Again, one of my teachers, Ajaan Ṭhānissaro, also known as Ajaan Geoff -- this is on a macro level. So over the days, over the weeks, over the years, even:

The path of practice is not a smooth [straight] line on a graph. It has its ups and downs. It has its drama. As you learn in any writing class, one of the basic principles of story construction is that a story has to have setbacks in order to be interesting, in order to be realistic. In the same way, the story of your practice of the Dhamma is bound to have setbacks -- the difference being that you're not reading it, you're living it, and many times you'd rather not experience the interesting setbacks. [And he goes -- it's sort of very characteristic of him -- he goes:] But keep reminding yourself of why you're here. You're here for true happiness, genuine happiness, a happiness that won't let you down, a happiness that's going to be worth all the ups and downs that go into finding it.^[5]

So certainly, if I look back -- well, actually, if we just take the story of the Buddha, and his search, and the classical sort of mythological story, he would have said, "I took some wrong turns." You know, the whole asceticism thing. It was just, that wasn't the way. It was clear. He tried it. He really gave himself to it. And it was clear: it wasn't the way. For myself, I feel, looking back over, you know, the twenty-four, twenty-five years of practice, definitely took some wrong turns. I felt like I learnt a lot, but they clearly were not leading to liberation. And definitely has its ups and downs, and its setbacks, and all of that. I'm sure Christina and John would say the same.

On a more micro level, sometimes, we're on retreat, and tiredness comes up. We feel tired. People on this retreat have been very good about coming to almost everything, but sometimes people don't. And they feel like, "I should rest more." And of course, if there's illness, or if there's really real lack of sleep, then one needs to rest. But sometimes, "I need to rest more, so I'll miss the morning sitting, and I'll the miss the late-night sitting. And I'll miss a few in between." [laughter] And one's with the teacup, on the way upstairs, when everyone else is going downstairs, dying for the lying down and everything. But what one doesn't realize, sometimes, in what we call 'resting,' oftentimes, the mindfulness is not being nurtured. And the mind is, so to speak, unguarded. And the unguarded mind, for most people, unless that mind is really quite trained, usually finds itself snaking, finding its passage into what? Unfortunately, unskilful mind states and unskilful thoughts. And those bring the energy down and bring the joy down. Can be. [43:38]

Tiredness is very interesting as a phenomenon. Usually, when there's tiredness, there's aversion to tiredness. We don't like feeling tired, especially if we feel we need to be up. We don't like it. Often we don't notice the aversion. This is extremely important, extremely interesting, not just on retreat, but in our life generally. So I feel tired, and it can feel like the whole body is just exhausted, and the whole mind is, ugh, it's just a complete, total experience of tiredness. But actually, if I really find the experience -- so how do I know I'm tired? What's telling me? What are the internal cues that I'm tired? Oftentimes a person looks in -- I've seen this in myself, and I've seen this in retreatants as well -- looks in, and all they can find, when they really look and bring mindfulness to the experience, is a sort of dullness or pressure behind the eyes, which is unpleasant. And there's aversion to that. And the whole thing balloons and blossoms. And it feels like the whole system is engulfed in tiredness. When one traces it, there's something quite small there. But it's the aversion that's building it. So is it possible to bring a bare attention, actually find, what's the actual experience? And can I be with it, in a way, minus the aversion, and see that it's much, much more handleable? [45:02]

I had a teacher once, a very wonderful teacher. And sometimes he would say, "If you're tired, stay up." It's obviously completely counterintuitive. But there's something in that, because it has more to do, again, with the heart than we might at first recognize. We think tiredness is just tiredness. Often, it has a lot to do with the state of the heart. When the heart is closed, there can be tiredness much more easily. And oftentimes we don't see that. Sometimes staying up, and it's like almost encouraging the heart to open. We don't see that connection. When the heart is open, generally speaking, there's a buoyancy of energy. We can somehow extend ourselves. When the heart is closed, there's a tendency -- this is a factor of aversion -- tendency to want to turn off, to want to go to sleep, to turn the world off. And the whole energy sense comes down. All of this that I'm talking about has much more to do with the heart than is at first visible, obvious. [46:13]

Some of these suggestions that we make, if they land in the inner critic, going back to that, you know, we can forget it. It's not going anywhere with that. But recently, I taught a retreat, and around this night, around the third night, we usually gently kind of make a suggestion at the end of the last -- some of you know this -- at the end of the last sitting: "Well, you might want to check in," and John will be doing it tonight, and "might want to check in, see how you feel, and maybe stay up, etc., and extend yourself a little bit, or get up early." And a person came after I did that. A person came the next day and said, "I thought I was tired. I felt tired. But then I was just curious, and so I stayed up. And then I realized I actually wasn't tired. But I thought I was tired." And what happened in this case -- I'm not guaranteeing anything, but in this case, their whole meditation opened up to a whole different experience, and kind of touched a realm, and a sort of joy that they had never experienced before. I think the important thing is, am I willing to play my edges here? Am I willing to extend myself, and see what's healthy, and what my limits are? [47:31]

This word viriya is sometimes translated as 'courage,' which is a very nice sort of aspect of what's involved: courage. And to see that this practice, and this path, takes courage. Takes courage to show up for things that we'd rather not be with: emotions and bodily difficulties. Takes courage, too, you know, if you're going to stay up or get up early, to forego sleep. And to actually acknowledge that, and acknowledge that that courage is already happening. It's already happening. It's already there.

Recently, I was talking with someone who was very new and had been on retreat for a week. Very, very difficult experiences, and really quite a hard retreat for her. And a lot of anxiety and other things. She was saying, towards the end of it, she felt like giving herself a break. That was the feeling. And then the bell would go, and somehow she would just get up and go at the scheduled time, and she felt like it was because she knew inside that it was giving her strength. And she wanted to support that. It was almost like an organic movement. And she also didn't want to feed fear. She didn't want to feed fear, and certainly not fear of the practice.

Of course, sometimes we do need to rest. And one of the aspects of balanced effort is rest. So it's important. And sometimes we do need to take a break. I, in my early practice -- it's hard to describe; I mean, just ran into real, real difficulties. And it was kind of suggested -- I was very young, twenty-one, twenty-two -- and it was suggested that I stop for a while, which was helpful. I had a notion that the way out is through. And difficult as it was, and impossible as it seemed, as kind of chaotic as the whole thing was, challenging: "The way out is through. I just need to keep going. I just need to keep going." And maybe that wasn't quite appropriate. There was a lot of faith there, but maybe it wasn't quite appropriate. What I see in hindsight, actually, maybe I didn't need to stop. Maybe I needed to change something in the way I was practising. Something of the qualities that I was bringing to practice needed to change. So that's another aspect of effort: what qualities can be different? Sometimes it's just to do with the body, and invigorating the body: yoga, qigong, going for a brisk walk, etc. Don't underestimate how much that invigorates our system.

I just want to touch a little bit on the kind of nuts and bolts. We're getting down to the smaller level now, kind of tuning the practice, the sense of responsiveness and playfulness in the very sort of moment-to-moment of the practice. The Buddha has an analogy of a lute string he uses with a practitioner who was way, way too over-efforting, walking up and down so much that his soles of his feet were bleeding and he wasn't sleeping for days on end. He said it's like tuning a lute or a guitar or something. If you tune it too tight, the string just snaps. If you tune it too loose, it's unplayable. Another analogy is holding a little bird, and you want to hold it in your hands. If I hold it too tight, I squash it. If I hold it too loosely, it just flies away. Getting the sense of this balance. Sometimes, moment to moment, the tightness that can very easily creep into practice -- or the looseness, over-looseness -- is reflected in the body. So you notice the hands, if it's too loose, lose their tone -- you know, we were like this, and they lose their tone. Or a tightness creeps into the musculature -- can be very subtle. It's almost like you can have, if you're working with the breath, for instance, you can have a foreground of attention, and the background being the whole body, and just aware when a tightness comes in, and then just relaxing it. [51:29]

Again, working with the breath, can kind of have a sense of really probing the sense of the breath, and the experience of the breath, really going into it, sort of piercing it. Or metaphorically leaning back and receiving the breath. Awareness is receiving. They're different qualities of efforting. Sometimes we think pushing the attention into the object is what's going to be most helpful, what I need to do. Sometimes, it's almost like the attention is like a feather brushing, so delicate, so light, and that's actually much more fruitful. But one has to play with this and experiment with it.

I have a lot more little things, but I'm a little wary of time. I'll just say a couple. No, I'll say them tomorrow, because I think it's my turn to do the mettā tomorrow, so I'll introduce them in the mettā, because they're part of that.

So something to do with how we relate to when we're kind of told, "Focus on the breath," or "Pay attention to your breath" or something: it's very easy to make focusing the thing. And this often happens near the beginning of a retreat, like that's the be-all and end-all, and when I'm off the breath, or off the object, I'm failing. I'm not doing it right. But rather, can that whole view of practice actually open out, and be much more expansive, much more broad? And I see that when I'm not with the breath, it's actually an opportunity. Many opportunities are there. So when I'm not with the breath, and I realize, that's actually a moment of mindfulness. I know where the mind is. It's a good thing, okay? When I notice I'm not with the breath, and I feel impatient, can I just not feed that impatience? It's a moment of opportunity, of not doing that. Or the self-judgment kicks in -- can I not feed that?

So the opportunities, it's not just about staying with the breath. It's actually expanding and seeing a much bigger picture. I'm developing the muscle of the mind by coming back and coming back and coming back. And the very sense of strength of the mind gets stronger. I have to expand to this bigger view. If I don't, I squeeze the joy out of practice. It's too tight, and it will become dry. I squeeze the juice out of it. So sometimes at the beginning of a sitting, it's worth reminding that actually, in every moment, there's an opportunity. Those are not just words.

If all of this is there, everything that I've talked about so far in the talk, all these different pieces -- and remember, they feed each other, the nuts and bolts and the big picture, and all of that -- slowly, gradually, effort does become joyful. The very sense of what we put forth into the practice, there's joy. And by 'joy,' I don't mean necessarily like, you know, a yelp of "Whoopee!" when the morning bell goes off. [laughter] It can be quite quiet, the quality of joy. And they talk about, in the tradition, talking about, through that joy, it moves to what's called the effort of irreversibility. This is, I find, very beautiful. Again, definition: "A fullness of mental delight in engaging the practice, such that circumstances cannot divert one from engaging in virtuous activity." So you know, the body hurts, got some illness, not sleeping well, mind's doing this, nothing's cooperating, the outer circumstances are difficult, and yet still, because we're addressing all these pieces about what's nurturing a sense of wise, balanced, and joyful effort, there's still, somehow, one just keeps going. And it's coming from a deeper and more heartful place. Nothing can shake one.

Last little, tiny little piece. Śāntideva was one of the great Mahāyāna teachers in India in the eighth or ninth centuries. He talks about effort in one of his texts, and a very famous text. He says there are four aspects to really good effort, really balanced and wise effort: (1) clear aspiration, (2) confidence, (3) joy, and (4) rest. We've touched on all of that a little bit, and that brings effort to kind of its fruition, if those are taken care of. But this is interesting, because usually, with inner factors, when there's a causality going one way, all those factors lead to a good effort, usually the causality goes the other way as well. And you can pretty much bank on that. When causality goes one way, there's a mutual causality going the other way. It's a general thing. It's very worth checking out.

So could we turn this around and say, if there's deep, clear aspiration, if there's confidence, a sense of, "Something is possible for me," if there's effort, if I'm engaging in practice in that way, and if there's rest, maybe joy comes out of that. It's going both ways. I actually think, I see, and I see that that's true. So what this means, again, what it implies for us is, if we find, "Well, something's not quite right with the effort, or I'm not quite -- I could be doing more, I could be extending myself or something, or it's out of balance in some way," or if we just feel like the energy's not really suffusing the sense of the practice too much, check. Investigate. Play. Which of these factors is not there: the aspiration piece, the confidence piece, the joy piece, the rest piece? You know, any of the other stuff. So something is there that can nurture it.

None of this, and I hope this has landed okay, none of this has to do with pressure. It's not about pressure. It's not about, certainly, us putting you under pressure, or you pressuring yourself. It's not about 'should' either, and how often, again, with the inner critic, practice becomes a matter of 'should': "I should, I should, this should be better, I should be more, I should be doing more." It's not about that. It's not a matter of the inner critic -- just, it's okay, it can be there, but just not running the show.

Something here about the beauty of discovering our fullness, of manifesting our fullness, of putting forth our fullness. Something about stretching ourselves for what we love, what we deeply love. Something about giving ourselves completely, giving myself completely in life, wholeheartedly, and not holding back, not leaving anything back, just giving myself, emptying myself. That giving of myself completely brings joy. It brings a sense of fulfilment. If I give myself completely to what I really, really care about, it brings a sense of joy and fulfilment, whether we're new to practice, whether we're old to practice, whether it feels like it's going well at any time, or difficultly, or badly, whatever that means, at any time. If I give myself fully, there's joy in the very giving.