Meditations5 by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Author:Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu [Bhikkhu, Ṭhānissaro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddha, Buddhism, Dhamma Talks, Dhamma, Dharma, Meditation, Jhāna, Thai Forest Tradition, Theravāda
Publisher: Mettā Forest Monastery
Published: 2018-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

Joy in Effort

September 6, 2007

Often you hear that there are two ways of approaching meditation. One is to put in lots of neurotic, miserable effort. You stress and strain with your heart firmly set on the time someday in the far distant future when you’ll finally become awakened. The other approach is to realize that the Dhamma is all around you in the present moment. You just relax into the present moment and there you are.

Now, if those were the two only alternatives, the second would obviously be the only reasonable approach. But there are other alternatives as well. It’s possible to relax into the present and still be filled with delusion. It’s possible to enjoy putting effort into the practice, to thrive on challenges, to realize that there’s a mature way to relate to the goal of awakening, and actually get there. You realize that, yes, the experience of awakening is not here yet, it’s someplace in the future, but to get there you have to focus on here. And focusing on here is not just a matter of relaxing; there’s work to be done.

Ajaan Lee has a good analogy. He says the practice is like trying to get fresh water out of salt water. The fresh water is already there in the salt water, but just allowing the salt water to sit and relax for a long while is not going to get the salt to separate out. You have to distill it. The fire of your distillery is analogous to the effort that goes into the practice. If you don’t put in the effort, you’re never going to get fresh water out of the salt water. But the trick is learning how to sustain effort, so that you don’t give up when the going gets tough.

The best way to make it all the way there is to figure out how to enjoy the work here.

In other words, the effort in the meditation doesn’t always have to be miserable or neurotic, doesn’t always have to be a matter of stressing and straining. Sometimes it will require strong effort, sometimes very subtle effort. Right effort doesn’t mean middling effort all the time, you know. What makes the effort right is that it’s skillful, appropriate for right here, right now—and you’re up for the challenge.

In the Buddha’s description of right effort, you’re told to generate desire. And one of the best ways of generating desire is to learn how to enjoy the effort—in other words, to take joy in abandoning unskillful qualities and to take joy in developing skillful ones. This joy is one of the traditions of the noble ones. And it actually gets results.

The best way to develop this sort of joy is to regard the practice as a skill that challenges your ingenuity. One of the qualities I’ve noticed is common among all the forest ajaans—in spite of all their different personalities—is that they all like to use their ingenuity to figure things out. They’re not the

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