Have you ever struggled with the question of how much effort to make in your practice? I’m imagining Goldilocks tiptoeing through the home of the three bears trying on chairs and bowls of porridge and beds to find the one that suits her.
Issues of home invasion aside: what is right effort and how much of it is enough?
One aspect of the Buddha’s roadmap to freedom from suffering called the Eight Fold Path, Right Effort is, according to the Lion’s Roar staff, “Endeavoring to give rise to skillful thoughts, words, and deeds and renouncing unskillful ones.”
This morning I had an effortful period in my meditation.
I sat through a guided meditation I had wanted to hear again and felt calm and concentrated - bringing awareness to the aspects the guidance indicated and noticing where my mind went when my mind wandered.
Then the guidance ended. My concentration fell apart almost immediately and my body aches began.
I had determined to sit for a certain time so I persisted. The noise in my head got louder and louder - pain in my back, discomfort from the cushion on my seat, restlessness, other things I “should” be doing. I was a little taken-aback that my concentration was so dependent on the guided meditation.
And I wondered if this escalation was going to increase my agitation out of the ballpark - into the “overwhelm” zone. Then I remembered long days on retreat waiting for the bell to ring, longing for the bell to ring, willing the bell to ring. I remembered that, sooner or later, I would find a way through those difficult moments - usually by turning towards them. Sometimes I would completely forget I was waiting for the bell to ring.
I began to sit back and watch the wall-to-wall welter of noise, agitation, desire to do something else. And at that moment I stopped trying to make it better, get my concentration back, improve my experience.
It immediately got interesting. I actually saw colors in it which I didn’t even remember until this writing - whites and light purples. And the entire field began to become less insistent. The effort was gone and I was simply being with the chaos of the mind without trying to figure it out. I could “see” the noise and “be” with it but I was no longer feeling increasing agitation. I was totally OK with it being there, doing whatever it was going to do. And I even experienced a little excitement at what was unfolding.
It was one of those revelatory moments. Setting my resolve, refusing to give in to the rising confusion and consternation, and letting go of trying to “fix it” or “make it better” led to a further insight into the passing nature of the difficulties mind throws up. Even the discomfort in my seat from sitting so long began to ebb.
I have a student who wrote me this morning that she was trying something different with the body scan, one of the guided practices she was working with.
She had been falling asleep pretty consistently whenever she did the body scan, but then she got determined and decided to find out what it would take to stay awake for the whole body scan. She tried different times of day and found if she did the body scan in the morning and kept her eyes open, she stayed awake for the entire practice. I had been worried that perhaps there was constriction around her “efforts” but when I read that, I felt such a sense of joy for her. Here was effort born of resolve AND curiosity. How absolutely wonderful!
These words from a song called Free and Easy by Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche came to me as I wrote this and seemed a good place to conclude:
"Don't believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like today's ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.
Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.
Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want, and nothing missing -
Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself!”