Let’s continue with our series on six perfections. After discussing Giving, Patience, and Moral Discipline, in the past weeks; I thought we will discuss perfection of effort today. This is also known as vigor and enthusiasm. The effort is a mind that delights in virtue. The effort is not something we practice on its own. The effort is something we practice with all of our actions.
I am sure you have heard this expression that goes half of life is just showing up. I used to tell this to my kids all the time. All that means is to make sure that you are consistently showing up for what needs to be done. Keep giving your efforts without regard to short-term results or lack thereof.
Let me give you an example. When I came to the US, during the first semester, I was paying for all my expenses. As an international student, the fees are really high. So the goal for most international students is to receive a research assistant position where the University waives their tuition and pays them a small stipend on top of that. Within the first month of starting the semester, I started talking to professors about a potential research assistant position. One professor told me, he had a grant application out with the National Science Foundation and if it was approved, he would have two or three positions open. I would go visit the professor every two weeks to see if heard anything from the NSF. About two months later, one day I visited the professor and asked if he heard anything. To my surprise, he said, yes his application was approved and he would need three research assistants on that project. He said there were about ten students who were asking him for a position. Then he said something totally surprising. He said he was going to interview everyone for two of the position and he was offering me one of the positions. I thanked him and he went, do you know why I offered you this position? I had no clue. He explained that I was the only one, who was persistent, meeting him every two weeks, and wanted his lead researcher to be someone with that kind of drive. Who knew?
The point here is that no matter how many times you hear no, or fail, we must get up and move towards our goal.
Now to apply effort, we need to overcome three types of laziness: 1) procrastination; 2) attraction to what is non-virtuous; and 3) discouragement
What perseverance means is that we must become independent of internal and external influences when we are moving toward a goal. All of you are here listening to these meditation videos and attending sessions because something in you tells you that you want to become mindful. You want some level of mental peace and joy and bliss within you. if that is the goal then please make sure that you don’t get influenced by outside factors. You will have good meditation days and not-so-good meditation days. Some days you may feel like you met Buddha himself and other days, your mind is so wound up that nothing brings peace it seems. That is perfectly OK. With time, you will be able to get into a situation where no matter the external conditions, you will be able to bring your mind to peace.
What you want to avoid is I will start meditating once the kids are out of the house or I will focus once I retire and so on. These are just examples of procrastination. Essentially it is an unwillingness to put effort into what is meaningful to you. This is dangerous because this opportunity to practice is easily lost once we are distracted by other things.
The second type of laziness is when we do mundane things instead of what is meaningful to us. I call this busywork. There are so many people who stay busy for the sake of staying busy that it boggles my mind. When one is busy for the sake of busyness, you don’t have time to think about what is important and what would make you better or what would take you places.
The third type of laziness is discouragement. Don’t get discouraged because you think you are not making progress in your meditation practice. You are certainly making a progress. Even if you get 10 seconds of peace within you that is 10 seconds more than you had before.
There are three types of efforts: 1) armor-like effort which is a strong determination to succeed; 2) the effort of gathering virtuous actions which is the effort we apply to accumulate positive karma, and 3) the effort of benefiting others which is the effort we apply to help other living beings.
Another thing about effort is how we apply our effort. Some people begin their effort with huge fanfare and go full force to begin a task but then fizzle out after a while. This is called the waterfall effect. We want to be more like a river in our effort constantly flowing as opposed to intermittently applying effort.
Hope this is useful in your daily activities, especially your meditation practice.