Images for Right Effort

We’re all familiar with the image of the lute when it comes to right effort. If the strings of the lute are tuned too tightly, it’s not going to sound good. If they’re too loose, it’s not going to sound good. They have to be tuned just right. Then you can pick up your theme and make music that sounds good. This of course stands for the amount of effort you put in, and particularly you’re measuring it against your physical capabilities. How long can you sit without getting into too much pain? How long can you walk without getting too tired?

But that’s just one aspect of right effort. After all, when you’re meditating, it’s not just a question of whether you’re sitting or walking. It’s a question of what your mind is doing.

You can meditate perfectly seriously lying down or standing still if your body doesn’t allow you to sit or stand for very long. You can have shorter periods of sitting, shorter periods of walking, shorter periods of standing, but you try to maintain the consistency of your effort inside. That’s when you get into other aspects of right effort, and where it’s good to have other images to hold in mind.

There are four aspects altogether. One is just knowing what the right effort is: what things you’re supposed to develop; what things you’re supposed to abandon—like knowing that concentration is something to be developed and not just something you just watch come and go. There are people who say, “Concentration is inconstant. If you see it come and you see it go, you’ve learned a lesson of insight.” But you haven’t done what you’re really supposed to do with concentration, which is to develop it.

Here you can think of the image of twisting the horn of the cow. If you want to get milk out of the cow, you don’t get it by twisting the horn. You get it by pulling on the udder.

Some people have been twisting the horn many, many times, putting a lot of effort into their practice, and not seeing anything come out. So they decided not to put any effort in at all, saying that, “The only right effort is no effort.” Well, what you’ve got is just “cow awareness,” just looking at the cow. It’s easier on the cow, easier on you, but you don’t get the milk. To get milk, you have to make the right kind of effort at the right spot. In other words, when you meditate, you have to know what is the right thing to do with this particular state of mind: what things should be developed, what things should be abandoned. When you do the right type of effort in that sense, then you actually get results.

Then there’s the question of motivation. You really have to want to do this. After all, part of the definition of right effort is generating desire. There are going to be things you don’t like to do but will give good results, and things you like to do that’ll give bad results. You have to learn how to motivate yourself to want to do the things that will give good results in the long term, even though you may not like doing them. And vice versa, you have to learn how to want to abandon the things that you like to do that will give bad long-term results.

The image for motivation in the Canon is like going to a monastery. If you don’t want to go to the monastery, then you won’t get there. But monasteries are pretty neutral. You can think about the monasteries as places where you have to do without food in the evening, have to be quiet most of the day, spend a lot of time alone. When you think like that, a monastery may seem to be an unpleasant place to stay.

A better image could be your diet, what you eat. There are things that you’d like to eat that you know will give trouble down the line, clog up your arteries, develop neuropathy, but you like eating them. Then there are things you don’t like to eat but will actually be good for your health. In a case like that, you have to think about the long term. You have to think about your health, not so much the flavor of the food in your mouth.

This is an example of heedfulness. As the Buddha said, “All skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness.” That’s the motivation for doing anything skillful at all: realizing that unskillful things will give bad long-term results and so will put you in danger. Skillful things will give good long-term results and so provide you with safety. So you have to learn to think in the long term. Get yourself on board. If you just go through the motions of the meditation, you won’t last long.

Say hindrances come up. The Buddha gives you all kinds of techniques for counteracting sensual desire, ill will, sleepiness, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt. But if you actually like your hindrances, if you don’t really want to do away with them, then no matter how good the techniques are, they’re not going to work for you, because you don’t want them to work. You have to see the drawbacks of these things, and they have to really hit you.

This is why the Buddha has that five-step analysis: You see these things arise, see them pass away. What makes them arise? What makes them pass away? What’s their allure? Why do you like them? Then think about the drawbacks. How long does the allure last? How long does the allure actually pay off? And how long do the drawbacks last? When you can see the drawbacks outweigh the allure, then it’s easy to develop some dispassion for your hindrances and to think that maybe it would be a good thing to separate yourself from them, to want to be free of them. See them as slavery; see them as debts; see them as being in prison. Use the right images. Don’t see them as opportunities.

You’re sitting here with your mind still, with no responsibilities. Nobody’s watching your mind. You can take this as an opportunity to indulge in some sexual fantasies or some resentment about certain political figures, but what would that accomplish? You have to see that thoughts like that would be a waste of your time right now. You’ve got skills you need to develop in your mind. Do you want to die with hindrances like that, pulling you in the directions of things you might like to think about right now? Are they going to pull you down? Do you want to develop those ruts in the mind? Think in the long term.

So just as you would take on a diet that’s healthy for you because you think in the long term — learning how to motivate yourself to like broccoli sprouts or whatever — learn how to like the Buddha’s techniques.

That’s desire and motivation. It’s part of right effort. It’s also part of the bases for success, for getting the mind into good concentration. It’s really necessary. After all, all things are rooted in desire, including the path. So work on your motivation.

So far you’ve got the type of effort, the motivation, and part of the question about the amount of effort—in other words, what you’re capable of.

You also have the question of how much effort is actually needed. As the Buddha said, there are two types of causes of suffering in the mind: those that go away when you simply look at them, and those that require the exertion of a fabrication. With the first type, all you have to do is look at them. You don’t have to do much, and they’ll go away. The other type requires more effort. Think about the three kinds of fabrication that you could use against a particular defilement: the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, and the images and feelings you hold in mind.

If you just hold an image of the lute in mind, sometimes your defilements can laugh at you as you say, “I’ll put in a middling amount of effort—not too much, not too little.” But some of the defilements you need to counteract require a lot of effort, a lot of rethinking.

Here, Ajaan Maha Bua’s image is a good one. You come up into the sala and find that there’s a huge pile of excrement in the middle of the floor. You don’t just take teaspoons of water or moderate amounts of water to wash it away. You have to take whole buckets full of water to wash the stuff out. Some of your defilements require strong medicine, so be prepared for that.

So have the right images in mind. Don’t think just of the lute. Think of your diet. Think of the desire to get milk out of a cow. Think of what’s needed to wash piles of dirt away from the monastery. Hold those images in mind when they’re appropriate, and in that way you get a sense of which type of effort is right effort, how much effort is right effort, and what you need to do to want to do the right type and amount of effort. That’s when your efforts can actually become right all around, leading to more right mindfulness, more right concentration, embodying right view, bringing all the factors of the path together. That’s when you’ll get the results you want.