Energy & Effort; the 3rd Factor of Awakening, Part 1

Viriya is the Pali word for energy, and refers to a kind of unremitting energy that arises out of the development of stable and steadfast mindfulness along with the truth discerning wisdom of investigation. As Sati is that which facilitates and enables memory and thus mindfulness, Viriya is that which allows courage, effort, and perseverance to emerge. It is also described as the kind of energy that shores things up. This is such a practical image. Imagine building a structure of any kind; add a little here, a little there, pay particular attention to shoring up the weight bearing wall. We are continuously shoring up our practice and our daily lives, and they require energy, courage, persistence and effort to do so. This is Viriya.

I used to have a rowing coach who would scream “Put something on it!” when our rowing was slow or sloppy. Adding some courage and effort to the energy gave us a better chance of maintaining an even keel in choppy, uncertain water. Our lives are like that; choppy and uncertain. When we apply energy and effort, we are more likely to right our boats.

The Buddha taught that there are the Four Great Efforts that are supported by this kind of energy.

1.      To enhance and foster wholesome or skillful states that are already part of our makeup. As an example, when generous thoughts arise, develop them further and act on them.

2.      To not get entangled in unwholesome or unskillful states that have already surfaced in us. For instance, when an unkind judgment arises, we note it and gently move the mind away from it. Let it go.

3.      To encourage wholesome and skillful states to develop. To tap into our enormous power for goodness through cultivating awareness and wisdom.

4.      To avoid unskillful and unwholesome states not yet surfaced. If we know through experience that certain circumstances bring about unskillful action and unwholesome states, avoid those circumstances.[1]

Here are the Buddha’s direct instructions:

“Herein, the [practitioner] rouses his will to arouse [or] overcome wholesome [or] unwholesome states; and he makes effort, stirs up his energy, exerts his mind and strives.”[2]

Once the energy is stirred up and available, we need to harness it and use it wisely. This is where courage, effort, persistence and perseverance come in. I think of this as a kind of vow, an act of trust, and the commitment to practice as the continual act of vowing; a vow that leads us to live a skillful, peaceful, wise and compassionate life. 

In his book, Taking our Places; the Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up, Norman Fischer offers some beautiful and accessible ideas on vows, vowing, and how they relate to practice and our lives.

“Vows are energies. Vows are aspirations. They are larger than life. Endless sources of inspiration, vows differ from goals, which are limited in scope. Goals can be met. Vows can be practiced but never exactly completed, for they are essentially unfulfillable, and it is their very inexhaustibility that propels us forward, opens us up, shapes our desires and actions.”

…

“The journey is long, but there’s no rush. Each day starts from where we are – where else could it start from? There is no use wishing it were otherwise. There’s an old saying in Zen: if you fall down on the ground, it is the ground you use to get yourself up. The vow uses the ground of our present imperfection and doubt as purchase to establish itself ever more firmly. Each time we acknowledge our limitation and affirm our vow anyway, we strengthen it….To live a life of vowing is to offer ourselves completely to our lives, with nothing held back.”

               …

“Vowing is like walking toward the horizon:  you know where you are headed, you can see the destination brightly up ahead, and you keep on going toward it with enthusiasm even though you never arrive there.”

To commit to practice, to come back to the cushion over and over and over again, we need energy, courage, effort and persistence. The same holds true for our lives.

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[1] Adapted from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, 1987.

[2] Adapted from The Noble Eightfold Path; Way to the End of Suffering, Bhikku Bodhi, 1994.

Investigation; the 2nd Factor of Awakening

Investigation is the second Factor of Awakening, and is one of three arousing factors as it has the quality of enlivening the mind. The other two are Effort & Energy and Rapture & Joy. We’ll discuss those two next week.

It is important to remember that these factors unfold naturally in order; each is conditioned by the previous one. Well-established steady mindfulness is the ground out of which investigation grows.  With mindfulness, we become aware of what is present, and with investigation, we look into the nature of what we find, the truth of things, the dharma. Investigation requires bringing an open curiosity into our meditation practice seeded with kind, nonjudgmental awareness.

“Investigation of the dharma means not settling for second-hand knowledge or adopting someone else’s opinion. It says ‘I must see for myself what is true.’ What makes a buddha is the courage and willingness to look directly and honestly into the body, the heart, and the mind without relying on or settling for what others say is true. Over the years of meditation, it is this quality that keeps practice alive.”

                                          

                                      - Seeking the Heart of Wisdom,

                                        Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein

The Buddha was very clear on this point of finding out for oneself what is true, that blind faith cannot lead to full awareness into the truth of how things are. But it is through investigation for oneself into one’s own experience that insight and wisdom grow. Yet, the question remains. What is it that we learn from investigating our experiences? What is the truth discerning wisdom that arises? One of the core foundational teachings of the Buddha is that of The Three Characteristics of Experience.

1.      Everything is always changing. That which has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. Things come into being, stick around for a while, then change into something else or disappear entirely. This is the insight into impermanence, anicca in Pali.

2.      Life is challenging. For everyone. By its very nature, life is full of joy and sorrow, gain and loss, good health and sickness, ease and difficulty. When the mind is caught in the continual wishing for things to be other, or the grasping onto what is, anguish, fear, stress, or dissatisfaction develop. This is the insight into suffering, dukkha in Pali.

3.      Everything is dependent on everything else. Because of this, that. Nothing, by nature is made up of only itself. Any structure is made up of its component parts; the human body, a book, a tree, a flower, even water.  All are made up of parts that can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts, and ultimately it becomes impossible to locate an identifiable whole self or inherently solid object. This is the insight into interconnection, or more classically, not-self, anatta in Pali.

One of my teachers, Heather Sundberg, offers a delightfully simple and clear way of understanding the experience of the three characteristics. She says something like this, “Everything changes. Everything. When we hold on too tightly and push things away too hard, it hurts. And please, don’t take life so personally. It’s not personal. It’s just the manifestation of a whole bunch of conditions intersecting at any given moment in time.”

We learn for ourselves through direct experience that impermanence, suffering, and interconnection are universal, true for everyone everywhere. With practice and through investigation we cultivate the capacity to navigate our lives skillfully with wisdom, clarity, and discernment. And by knowing what’s what we can make wise choices.  With wise choices, we have more ease, with more ease we have less suffering, with less suffering, we are kinder, with more kindness, we experience more peace. This is a self-supporting cycle. Each is dependent upon and a reflection of the other.

Here is a meditation practice for working with investigation from another great teacher, Martine Batchelor, from her book, Let Go; A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits.

Questioning Meditation – “What is this? “

Settling in, assuming a comfortable posture, begin by tuning in to your breath. Breathing in, be aware of breathing in; breathing out, ask: “What is this?” When you ask “What is this?” you are opening yourself to the whole moment. You are not asking anything specific. This meditation is about questioning, not about answering. The questioning is open-ended. Feel the question in the body, the heart, and the mind.

Try not to look for any answers. No analysis, no speculation, just the internal gesture of inquiry. As you develop a sense of questioning and curiosity, try to remain stable and alert. Focus on the question within a wide-open awareness and allow yourself to be available to the moment fully. Continue with the questioning for as long as you like. When you’re ready, let it go and rest in the open space of inquiry. 

1st Factor of Awakening; Mindfulness

Mindfulness is deliberate non-judgmental present moment bare attention; awareness, presence of mind, collecting one’s thoughts, tidying up the mind for the purpose of wise understanding and appropriate response. It is the first of the Factors of Awakening because it is the fertile ground out of which the factors of investigation, energy, joy, calm, concentration, and equanimity develop and grow.  There are three distinct functions of mindfulness; 1) to see things clearly, carefully and factually, 2) to balance the mind, and 3) to develop insight and wisdom through the clear comprehension and understanding of what is skillful and wholesome, and what is unskillful and unwholesome.

First a little background. The word mindfulness is the generally accepted translation of the Pali word Sati. It is also commonly translated as memory, remembering or recollecting. In his extensive commentary Satipatthana; the Direct Path to Realization, Analayo, the highly respected contemporary German scholar elaborates.

“…sati relates to the ability of calling to mind what has been done or said long ago. A closer examination of this definition, however, reveals that sati is not really defined as memory, but as that which facilitates and enables memory. What this definition of sati points to is that, if sati is present, memory will be able to function well.”

Have you ever wandered around the house with increasing perplexity looking for your glasses or keys only to find that you’re wearing your glasses and the keys are in your pocket?  I have done both. When my mind is scattered, it spills over into my life. Simply stated, paying attention now makes information available later.

The Buddha’s instructions for contemplating the various Factors of Awakening are foundational and quite straightforward. You’ll likely recognize the pattern, as they are not different from his instructions for contemplating other aspects of mindfulness.

“If the mindfulness awakening factor is present in him, he knows ‘there is the mindfulness awakening factor in me;’ if the mindfulness awakening factor is not present in him, he knows ‘there is no mindfulness awakening factor in me.’”

Again the focus is to cultivate clear awareness in this moment, just the facts.  Knowing when the factor is present and knowing when the factor is not present. The brilliance of the Buddha’s instruction is that it does not require or ask for a judgment or opinion about whether or not any given factor is present, or what the quality of the factor may be. In fact, it is specifically not helpful to insert an opinion. Doing so leads to some level of reactivity, precisely what mindfulness is so adept at eliminating. This is a core aspect of mindfulness.

Here are a few poems from the Japanese Haiku master, Basho. They beautifully illustrate the point of simple unadorned awareness.

The old pond

A frog

Plop!

A green willow, 

Dripping down into the mud,
At low tide.  

Spring air --
Woven moon
And plum scent.

As mindfulness practice strengthens, a keen awareness of the body, the feelings, the thoughts and emotions, as well as an overall awareness of our experiences develops. The Buddha gave another incisive instruction for the cultivation of insight and wisdom into what is wholesome and skillful, and conversely, what is not wholesome or skillful. This instruction is a basic question that can be asked many times over: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?”  I have found this to be a foundational, provocative and illuminating question. When I sit with this, it takes me out of the immediacy of the story I’m caught in or struggling with. It sets my compass straight and accesses my deepest wisdom. Try it next time you’re caught, confused, unsure or struggling. You may find it quite helpful.

Another poem…

Being Here

Transcending down into

the ground of things is akin

to sweeping the leaves that cover

a path. There will always be more

leaves. And the heart of the journey,

the heart of our own awakening, is

to discover for ourselves that the

leaves are not the ground, and that

sweeping them aside will reveal a

path, and finally, that to fully live,

we must take the path and

continually sweep it.

-Mark Nepo

The Seven Factors of Awakening, an Introduction

“Someone once asked Lama Govinda how one could fit together the various traditions that represent [the] Buddha’s teaching. He replied that one can think of [the] Buddha’s dharma as a wonderful seed planted in the earth, out of which has blossomed a tree with deep roots, great branches, leaves, flowers and fruit. He said that sometimes a person might point to the roots and say that it is just here that we can find the real dharma, while someone else may say, ‘Oh, no, it’s in the flowers,’ and still another will say that it is to be found in the fruit. But of course, these different parts cannot really be separated; the roots sustain the tree in their own way, the leaves nourish their way, and the fruit depends on the roots and leaves and branches as well. The Seven Factors of Awakening are like the sap that runs through the Buddha’s tree,… nourishing all parts of it.”

    

 -from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom,

   Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield

The Buddha’s teaching on the Seven Factors of Awakening comes from the Satipatthana Sutta, and is part of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Dhammas. These factors are qualities of mind and heart that arise naturally as an outgrowth of meditation practice, though they are not limited to meditation alone. Over the coming weeks we’ll look at these factors individually. They include:

Mindfulness

Investigation

Energy & Effort

Rapture & Joy

Calm & Tranquility

Concentration

Equanimity

In the Sutta, the Buddha taught the Factors of Awakening after the Hindrances because they function as antidotes to the Hindrances. For example, doubt can be uprooted by applying investigation. Restlessness and worry are dissolved with concentration. This list of factors is divided into three categories which clearly describe their function; equalizing, arousing, and stabilizing. Mindfulness is the ground, the great equalizer, the soil out of which the other six grow. The arousing factors are investigation, energy & effort, and rapture & joy. The stabilizing factors are calm & tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. When developed and put into practice, these qualities loosen up the stuck mind which then inclines and guides it towards awakening. The awakened mind is one that sees clearly, is free of contention, and allows us to access our innate goodness for the purpose of living a skillful, peaceful, wise and compassionate life.  

I see these factors as an arc with mindfulness and equanimity at the base of the two legs, the others rising up and over from them. They unfold and develop in sequence quite beautifully and naturally. One leads to the next and each is dependent on the one that precedes it. Think of it this way; as we become aware of what is present, we investigate its nature. Investigation requires energy and effort, and once there is clarity and understanding, rapture and joy arise, the “ah-ha” moment. This is the top of the arc. As rapture and joy subside, calm and tranquility emerge, allowing the mind to rest. Out of a calm mind comes a concentrated mind, and out of this settled concentrated mind, equanimity develops.

“Neither mother nor father,

  Nor any other relative can do

  One as much good

  As one’s own well-directed mind.”            

                  

                  -The Buddha, from The Dhammapada, 

                    Gil Fronsdal, translator