The Six Paramitas: Virya or Joyful Effort
The next paramita is the perfection of effort or virya paramita. So this is the question of enthusiastic energy. Does the idea make you feel exhausted? We never can accomplish anything if we don’t really try, if we don’t have some ongoing perseverance. On the spiritual path, the two qualities most needed are patience and perseverance. For instance many people when they sit down, they want to meditate and then after only two or three sessions, they say, “Oh, I can’t meditate. Too many thoughts.” And they give up – no patience, no perseverance. But nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished without diligence, without perseverance, without effort. Here in Australia you are going to be holding the Olympics. What each one of those athletes has gone through even just to be selected! They change their diet. They give up smoking. None of them probably take alcohol. They have very rigid diets. They get up early. They go to bed early. They train the whole day long. They are completely one-pointed. Everything is sacrificed. For what? To get a medal.
Now in Buddhism, laziness is defined in three ways. First is the laziness that means, “Oh, I am not going to get up half an hour earlier to meditate, I want that extra time in bed.” “Yes, I like to go to the Dharma centre, I like to meditate, but there is a really good movie on television, so sorry.” – that kind of laziness. Having lots of enthusiasm if it’s something that we really want to do but when it comes to doing meditation or any kind of serious reading, then suddenly, “Oh goodness, I am so tired. I’ll do my practice later when I have time” Suddenly, we remember what a late night we had the night before, and that’s the end of that. That kind of gross laziness from which we all suffer but which is obvious to recognise.
The second kind of laziness is the laziness of saying that we are unable to practice because we are so unworthy. The conviction that other people can practice, other people can get realisations, other people can meditate but me, I can’t do that, I am too stupid, I am too lazy, I always fail at everything I ever tried. I have tried to meditate and I couldn’t do it – too many thoughts! That is all laziness. The sense that we can’t do the practice because are not worthy or because we are always a failure or because we are too stupid – that is not regarded as humility, that is regarded as gross laziness. We are shirking. We all have Buddha nature, all we have to do is to discover it. So therefore it is not a question of higher or lower or being unworthy. Unworthy of what? We all have the potential of being enlightened, we all have this human birth, we all have some intelligence. It’s up to us.
The third kind of laziness is being busy with mundane activities so that, “Yes, I would like to meditate but I have to check my email first”, or even being caught up in Dharma activities which gives us no time for inner cultivation. Doesn’t matter what excuse we make to ourselves. If we find ourselves filling up our days, week after week, month after month, year after year with things to do, we never have time to go inside. However much we may be like rodents on a wheel, that’s still laziness. We are avoiding facing the real task. Our task here is first to realise our own innate Buddha nature and anything which takes us away from that is just an avoidance of what we should really be doing.
That’s why it’s so important that we use the events of the day as a way of cultivating an open heart and clarity of the mind, so that we don’t just use every event of the day –even events which outwardly look very good, like running Dharma centres and things like this– as an excuse for really facing what we are here for. A genuine spiritual aspirant is like a marathon runner, not like a short distance runner. It’s very easy in the beginning to have lots of enthusiasm. We see people bubbling over with enthusiasm, really keen, they throw themselves into all the practices, into all the activities, so bright and starry eyed and joyful. Then we see them 10 years down the road, still going. 15 years along the way, slowing down a bit. By the time they are 20 to 25 years down the line – ‘Wow, I used to be so enthusiastic but now somehow, I have lost my interest. How do I get enthusiastic again?” That is a difficult one.
This quality of perseverance — not just of the initial spurt of enthusiasm although that is important and invaluable, but the ability to keep going even when it is not exciting anymore, even when nothing much is happening inwardly. It looks like we just have to keep going and not give up. This is such an important quality. In old translations they sometimes used the word ‘manliness’ for the Sanskrit word virya. In Latin the word for a man” is vir. Sanskrit and Latin are connected and so those donnish scholars were thinking “man” as a way of carrying on with the task – get on with it! The muscular Christianity type of approach. There was a trend of muscular Christianity– I am not making it up! So they translated virya as determination, perseverance, effort, but probably most people felt tired just reading that and so then translators started calling it enthusiasm which sounded a bit more up beat. What it means is not just enthusiasm, but it is this question of carrying on, as I said, like a marathon runner. Marathon runners keep back a lot of their strength so that they can keep going; they don’t expend all their energy in the first thousand metres because they know they’ve got miles and miles to go yet. So they school their energy very carefully and keep on track and learn how to breathe properly and how to pace themselves so that they can just keep going.
And that’s what we’re talking about. It’s this quality of being able to keep the momentum going, day after day after month after year. The good news is that unlike the marathon runner once we really begin to see that daily life is our practice, and that everything we do and every encounter we have, is an opportunity for developing our inner qualities – our loving kindness, our understanding, our patience, our generosity, our openness of heart – as we begin to realise that every situation is for this and we begin to develop the quality of mindfulness or awareness, then what happens is that the momentum builds so that we are carried along. The days become more and more fulfilling, more and more interesting, more and more vivid. When that actually happens and if one feels that one is in the flow so to speak, then one is on the right track.
If the days continually, (everybody has better days and not such good days) but basically if the days go by feeling flat and boring, routine and dull, we haven’t got the point. Because if we take everything that we do as a way of cultivating the path, step by step and moment by moment, then how could it be dull? That gathers its own momentum as we begin to understand what to do and our responses become more and more skilful automatically. So this idea of perseverance isn’t panting fatigue. It isn’t something arduous. It’s something which is self-renewing moment to moment, once we begin to get on to the right track. Then we don’t have to generate the energy, it will generate itself because we are in balance. This is very important.
Although not strictly part of the paramitas, I would like to bring in here this whole question of how to incorporate spiritual practice into our daily lives. It’s essential to talk about this quality called mindfulness or awareness. What does it mean – mindfulness? Well the original word in Sanskrit which is smriti or in Tibetan drenpa – they both have the same meaning of ‘to remember’ and it is very close to the Catholic idea of ‘recollection’ or the idea of self-remembrance. It’s the quality of being here and now which usually is exactly where we are not. Normally, we are not even aware that we are here or we are half here and half somewhere else. It is extraordinary how unaware we are of our mind, truly extraordinary. Once we start training our minds, we see how totally out of control our minds actually are. One of the ways to learn it is to try to be here now. Think about the body, just be aware of the body. If we say, ‘Be aware of the body in this moment, just know it.’ Then in that moment, we can know it, we can feel it, not judging it but just knowing it. But when we think, “That’s easy. Look, I am aware of my body, I am being mindful, I know what this is all about.” –we have already lost it. Because then we are just thinking of being mindful, and we are not mindful anymore. So it’s tricky. This quality of being attentive to what we are doing in the moment is so important because the present moment is all we have; everything else is past, gone; our future has not yet come, or we are just mentally regurgitating the usual nonsense that we think about but which is not what is happening. The only thing that is happening is this present moment which is going so fast that we have almost lost it before it’s even here. It’s flowing, right? It wouldn’t matter if it happens that we aren’t present sometimes, but the fact is that most of our lives, we are not present. We are present for a few seconds and then we are off again. So therefore, our lives become very dull, very routine, very boring. Why? The French have an expression for being bored – je m’ennuie – which means literally ‘I bore myself’. Exactly. It’s nothing to do with what’s going on around us. Our minds bore us. So we are going to talk a little bit of how to be present, because this is so important and if we can learn how to develop some basic mindfulness, then that will enliven everything which we do during the day. So this is very important, don’t fall asleep.
To state it very simply, Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Vietnamese Zen master, talks about the two ways to wash the dishes. One is to wash the dishes to get clean dishes, and the other way is to wash dishes to wash dishes. Now normally when we wash dishes, that means when we do any activity, we do it because we want a result. We wash dishes because then we will have clean dishes and then we will go on to the next task. The actual task of washing the dishes is irrelevant. So when we are washing the dishes, we are thinking of anything. We are thinking of what we said this morning at breakfast—“he said this and I said this,” or we’re thinking of last night’s television, or we’re thinking, “Well, after this I’ll have some coffee and I’ll have to go to the supermarket and what do I need?” or we’re thinking about something we are going to do that evening, or we’re caught up in some fantasy world or whatever. The one thing we’re not thinking about is those dishes. Right? So then we’ve finished washing dishes and now have the clean dishes stacked up, we’ve got to drink our coffee and have a slice of chocolate cake. So we drink the coffee and the first sip of coffee we’re usually fairly conscious of, whether we like it or we don’t like it. By the second sip, we’re already kind of not really conscious of it. And by the third sip, we’re totally unaware that we’re drinking the coffee because we’re thinking of what we have to buy at the supermarket or “and then he said that to me and I said to him…” and then some memory from years ago just came back again. So when we eat the chocolate cake or something nice, then the first bite is yummy, second bite we’ve already lost interest, and by the third bite we are munching away and don’t even know.
Our whole life is led like that. Good things, bad things –we’re not here, we’re not present, we’re sleepwalking. We are sleepwalking. One of the meanings of the word Buddha, is to wake up. He is the Awakened One. He’s woken up from the dream of ignorance. The rest of us are still dreaming. Good dreams or nightmares. It’s all a dream, we’re somnambulists. We look very bright, but we’re asleep. Where are our minds? I sometimes really think it would be very interesting – horrible, but interesting – to have loud speakers attached to our minds, so everyone could hear our thoughts. Wouldn’t everybody want to know how to meditate quickly?! Because when we look inside and see what’s going on in our mind, chatter chatter chatter endlessly, and such trivia, it’s not even entertaining. If we really watch it, we’ll see how totally boring it is. The same old stale thoughts, opinions, memories constantly recycled. Also while we’re prattling away to ourselves, we have the radio or the television yapping in the background too. No silence. Mindfulness is about being silent. It’s about having a mind which is completely quiet and present with what is happening.
So the other way to wash dishes is to wash dishes to wash dishes. This way we still get clean dishes. When we wash the dishes, the most important thing in all the world that we could possibly be doing right now is to wash the dishes. Because it’s what we are doing. That’s what we’re doing, so that’s it. If we miss this, it’s gone. This is the moment. So, to have a mind which is alert and knowing, a mind which knows that it is washing the dishes and is conscious of the water and the hands and the dishes, just being present. That sense of presence, of knowing is the vital point because if we can really learn how to do that, then when we’ve washed the dishes, we’ve not only washed the dishes, we’ve washed our mind. We have a nice, clean and sparkling mind along with the dishes. It’s very easy. But the problem is we forget. As we said, the real meaning of mindfulness is to remember and the direct enemy is forgetfulness.
The inertia of our mind is so great. Sometimes people hear about mindfulness and they think “Well, this sounds good, let’s have a go.” So they really try to be present with what they’re doing, to hear themselves when they speak, to know what they’re thinking, to know how they’re moving, to really be here in the moment as much as possible. When we first start, it’s quite difficult to be present – mostly we’re just thinking about being present. But that’s all right. We proceed from where we are. People try to be present and then they say, “Well that was great, I really enjoyed today. I’ve been trying now for two or three days, and it’s really fun to be mindful. People are already saying I’m a much nicer person and I feel really good, this is great.” And we think “Oh yes, just wait.” And in six weeks time, we enquire how is the mindfulness coming along. “The mindfulness? … oops, forgot!” Forgot. Not because it wasn’t working. Not because it is impossibly difficult – it is actually reasonably easy. But the inertia and the laziness of our mind, the reluctance of our mind to be in the present. So this is a very important quality to cultivate.
The Buddha said that mindfulness was like salt in all the curries. In other words, it’s the thing which gives taste to everything we do. It brings everything alive, because it is like we’re doing it for the first time. The world becomes vivid and clear, everything comes into focus. Normally, it’s like we’re looking through a lens and it’s all blurred and out of focus and we’re cannot see clearly. Then when we adjust the lens everything becomes very sharp and clear. So it is with the mind. We adjust it and suddenly everything becomes very clear and vivid and newly washed, like those dishes, and not the stale old mind that we normally live with. This is a new mind. So this quality is very important in developing the spiritual qualities of our daily lives. It is something which we can all cultivate during the day and night.
Buddha divided mindfulness into four aspects: mindfulness on the body, mindfulness on the feelings, mindfulness on the mind itself, and in the Mahayana interpretation, mindfulness on external dharmas or phenomena. That means everything received through the five senses — sights, sounds, tastes, touch and smells.
So we start with what is most easy which is the body, because the body is the most tangible. The Tibetans usually emphasize mindfulness on the mind itself but that is quite difficult at this first stage since our minds are very fast flowing and turbulent and are very difficult to catch hold of. So maybe it is better to start with something fairly stable and solid like our bodies. The Buddha says we start by thinking “when I am standing, I know I am standing; when I am sitting, I know I am sitting; when I am lying down, I know I am lying down; when I am walking, I know I am walking.”
Just think about that. How often we are standing or sitting and we are not even conscious that we are standing or sitting because our minds are racing ahead; we don’t even know what our bodies are doing. This is something very simple to bring into the present — just to know we are sitting when we are sitting, and to experience how the body feels in the moment, this is bodily awareness. Then there is awareness of the breath because if we consciously breathe in and breathe out, it’s a way of becoming instantly centred. Because we cannot breathe in the past or the future, we can only breathe now. There are infinite opportunities throughout the day. In New Delhi at the red stop traffic lights they had written across them big white letters – ‘RELAX’. So great. We come to a red light, wonderful. Relax, breathing in, breathing out, feeling gratitude to the light for being red and giving us the opportunity to become centred again. If we ring somebody up and all we get is their interminable answering machine, great – breathe in, breathe out, get centred and by that time we are ready to give our message after the beep. Throughout the day, endless opportunities to come back into our centre, into our conscious being– brushing teeth, drinking, combing our hair, shaving, even smoking a cigarette, whatever. Use that moment, that simple action, know it in that moment. Don’t brush your teeth and think of a thousand other things. Just brush your teeth to brush your teeth and know. It’s all a training in being present. Because the present is all we have.
If we learn how to really use our day to develop this quality of mindfulness and awareness, then when we come to sit for meditation, there won’t be so much problem, since we have been training the mind during the day. We’re using the mind to help us, instead of it usually being nothing but a hindrance. Those of you who are serious about cultivating this practice should read books on the subject and if possible, attend meditation courses and enquire from those who have greater experience in this quality of mindfulness. Because it is a very important quality which has nothing to do with one’s spiritual orientation and everyone can use it. And during this most profound practice, nobody even knows we’re practicing! We can carry it with us everywhere under any circumstances, even sitting on the toilet. It doesn’t matter where — everywhere, every action, every thought and every word can be an object of our awareness, of our knowing. This is a very important quality to develop if we are serious. It helps us in everything. So this is not something to be taken so lightly.
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam