Our local US Senator has a quote from Edmund Burke, influential statesman, political thinker and a staunch supporter of the American Revolution, that he keeps on a sticky note near his computer screen. “Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.”
Buddhist teachers have another way of expressing a similar teaching in a story about a little boy who plants carrots. He is so eager for his carrots to grow that when the tender feathery shoots come up, he goes out every day and pulls up a shoot to see if it is a carrot yet. Some of you gardeners may argue that carrots need thinning anyway but the story makes a different point for our practice and for our lives. The carrot is growing under ground away from our prying eyes and fingers. At a certain point, the carrot will ripen - and there are signs that indicate that is so. The green top looks full and bushy, the carrots shoulders may crest above ground, there has been time for the carrot to grow and ripen. But for much of its growing cycle, we don’t really know what’s going on underground.
Our resistance to this administration's destructive efforts and our practice have this in common. We don’t know what effect our individual efforts will have. How does our attendance at this rally affect the tide of negative actions streaming out of Washington? How does this morning’s meditation affect our whole meditative development?
When we call a friend in trouble, did we say the right thing? Did it help? When we intervene in a wayward teen’s misadventures, did we help? Did they understand the lesson in the consequences?
I spent a few years studying and practicing chaplaincy in the Buddhist tradition as an intern in two New York City hospitals. Our teachers and mentors always told us that we wouldn’t always get to know the affect of our visits on a patients and their families. Sometimes it seemed obvious. Our presence and prayers and conversation might calm the patient and family, might help collect energies scattered by fear of a surgery into a unified sense of gratitude at the patient's survival. But other times our actions might reveal more about the condition of the patient than the family understood and we might leave a room in greater turmoil than we found it. But maybe that was a needed transition. We wouldn’t get to know that.
In a wider view, if we get tangled up in making sure the results are in conformance with our desires, we won't let the process unfold.
The wise action is to do the best we can, continue to do it, and let go of the results. The one thing we can be sure of is that our actions have an impact, have consequences - however small. So rechecking our motivation, and practicing patience and resolve and above all, kindness, we can endeavor to have the most positive impact possible.
Can you see the application of this idea to our practice? Sharon Salzberg once said that practicing metta was like filling a 50 gallon barrel with a teaspoon. If we keep checking the level of liquid in the barrel after every teaspoon, we will frustrate ourselves and waste a lot of time. And we won’t see a difference from teaspoon to teaspoon. But over time, there will be indications that our efforts are contributing to change in ourselves and how we live our lives.
One thing we learned from our exploration of the Seven Factors of Awakening is that each factor is a necessary condition for the next factor to arise. When mindfulness is present, investigation naturally follows - or even arises at the same time. Energy follows naturally as our curiosity reveals our experience more deeply. Joy arises followed by tranquillity, concentration and equanimity.
So just by sitting on the cushion every day or walking mindfully or listening to dharma talks, even telling friends about a talk we heard, all of these aspects of practice and study and sharing reinforce our own progress on the path of freedom from suffering. And this happens whether we will it to - as in will power - or not. This is the natural unfolding of the dharma, of practice. If we do the practice, the practice unfolds and reveals itself to us.
And sometimes that practice is hard. The path may become obscure. We feel our efforts are not accomplishing anything, not working. Then we need to remember the first two lessons of practice.
First you begin. And then you continue.
I’m including a poem by one of the early female practitioners of the Buddha’s path. The women monastics, as Ginger Rogers said about dancing with Fred Astaire, had to do everything the male monastics did but backwards and in high heels. They were not expected to progress along the path because they were women nor were they allowed to join the Buddha’s community. And even when they finally were allowed to leave household life and follow the Buddha, they ranked lower than the newest and youngest male monastic. Yet the fact that their poems survived and were translated and published a few years ago is testament to their resolve to practice regardless of the impediments and setbacks.
Seven Factors Poem
I was forever getting lost
until one day the Buddha told me:
To walk this path, you will need seven friends - Mindfulness, curiosity, courage, joy, calmness,
stillness and perspective.
For many year, these friends and I have traveled together.
Sometimes wandering in circles.
Sometimes taking the long way around.
There were days when I thought I couldn’t go on.
There were days when I thought I was finally beaten.
It’s scary to give all of yourself to just one thing.
What if you don’t make it?
Oh, my heart.
You don’t have to go it alone.
Train yourself To train
Just
A little
More gently.
from The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns
Perhaps we can see that this persistent resolve and letting go of results might be exactly what Edmund Burke was pointing to in his quotation, “Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.” And we can see why this is valuable advice that our senator sought for himself as he went into battle day after day with the forces of destruction.