Up for the Challenge

Years back, I was giving a talk at a meditation center back East, and I happened to mention that when you meditate, when you practice, there has to be the desire to practice, the desire to develop skillful qualities and to abandon unskillful ones. It’s part of right effort.

One of the people in the audience raised his hand and said, “Wait a minute, wherever there’s desire there’s going to be suffering, right?” “Yeah.” He thought he caught me in a contradiction. “But look at your practice,” I told him. “Has your practice been constantly smooth and pleasant all the way, with no suffering at all?” “Well, no.”

There’s going to be struggle in the practice because you have lots of different desires inside. It’s not the case that when you sit down to practice, everybody inside is on board. You have lots of different desires going in different directions. An important part of learning how to meditate—to engage in the kind of practice that you can live with—is to learn how to negotiate.

You can see at least three types of voices inside: There are the voices that tell you what you should be doing, and they have lots of different shoulds. Then there are the voices that say, “Well, this is what I want to do”—there are lots of those as well. And your job as a meditator is to take on the third voice: learning how to negotiate among all the different voices.

Fortunately, the Buddha’s shoulds are all in your favor. But that doesn’t mean all the ideas of what you should be doing inside come from the Buddha. You have lots of ideas about your duties that have nothing to do with the practice at all. So you have to sort out which of those duties you’re really going to follow, which ones you’re going to give priority to and which ones you have to say No to—exactly how much you’re going to let the Buddha’s shoulds take over your life.

His shoulds are pretty simple. First, you should try to comprehend suffering, which means seeing that suffering is in the act of clinging to form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. You want to see yourself suffering in the act of clinging itself.

Sometimes we’re told that we suffer because we cling to impermanent things. But it’s possible to cling even to permanent things and still suffer. You have to learn how to let go of everything at some point. That’s what the duty is with regard to the cause of suffering. Wherever there’s craving that leads you to cling, that’s to be abandoned.

The end of suffering is to be realized.

The path of practice leading to the end of suffering is to be developed.

Those are the Buddha’s shoulds. And the question is: To what extent are you going to let those shoulds have a voice and actually have some power over what you’re doing, some authority?

This is where the Buddha said that a measure of your wisdom lies in seeing that there are some things that you would like to do but you know they’re going to give rise to long-term suffering—and how well you can talk yourself into not wanting to do them. Or things that you don’t like to do that will give rise to long-term happiness—how well can you talk yourself into wanting to do them.

We tend to think of our wants as raw and unmediated. But a lot of our desires come from the way we talk to ourselves and the voices we pick up from outside, the shoulds we pick up from outside. So you have to learn how to negotiate.

One of the basic principles of negotiation is that everybody gets a piece. If somebody’s at the table, you don’t want them to go away empty-handed. Otherwise they’re going to rebel.

And one of the voices that’s most obstreperous is the one that says, “I want happiness right now. I don’t want to have to think about the long term. Give me some instant gratification.” This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration—to get a sense of well-being inside right here and now.

But that also requires that we come to the concentration with a sense of well-being, which is why the practice is not just sitting with your eyes closed. It also involves generosity and virtue. Here again, you have to learn how to talk to yourself so that you get a sense of well-being, a sense of pride that comes out of generosity, a sense of pride that comes out of practicing the precepts—pride not in comparing yourself with other people, but just in having an inner sense of self-worth—that you’ve learned how to say No to your unskillful desires in such a way that you’re not just miserable. You’re offering them something better—a better kind of happiness—and it’s immediate.

As the Buddha points out, when you practice generosity and virtue, the happiness doesn’t come later. It’s there in the action itself—and a lot of that happiness has to do with learning how to appreciate what you’re doing. Appreciate your generosity, appreciate your virtue, and you’ll come to the concentration with a sense of competence and confidence that you can do this.

Here again, though, there’s struggle. All those hindrances are just waiting for you to have a lapse in mindfulness. So you have to counteract them.

Instead of thinking about sensuality, you think about the breath. That’s directed thought.

Instead of allowing yourself to get into periods of doubt, you actually experiment: How about trying it this way? How about trying it that way? See the results as they actually appear to you. That’s evaluation.

Try to evaluate the breath in a way that gives rise to a sense of energy and rapture. That counteracts sleepiness.

Your evaluation also gives rise to a sense of well-being that helps to counteract any ill will you might be suffering from.

And then you just learn how to stay focused right here on one thing. This helps to counteract the mind’s tendency to worry about this, worry about that, be restless, fidgeting around.

These are the five factors of concentration, the factors that go into getting your mind to settle down: singleness of preoccupation, directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure. They’re your weapons against the hindrances. They also speak to that part of the mind that wants some pleasure right now. So learn how to cultivate them. These are part of your negotiating skills.

And then you also learn how to give yourself encouragement, because a lot of voices in the mind are still not satisfied with the concentration. They want some entertainment. They want some variety—in which case you can start thinking about: Where do my defilements tend to go? What other topics of meditation can I bring in?

For example, you can think about the body. Think not only about the body—your body, the other person’s body—but also about the fantasies you have around bodies. As the Buddha points out, our cravings may not be located where we think they are. We think we crave a body but maybe we crave an image—and it has nothing to do with the body at all. This is one of the reasons why we contemplate the 32 parts of the body to say, “This is what you’re actually getting. Does it correspond to the image that you’re holding in mind?”

Or your fantasies may have very little to do with the actual bodies, and more with the role you play in them. You can ask yourself, “How realistic is that?” Think of Ajaan Lee when he was thinking of disrobing. He decided to prepare himself mentally, so he started thinking about what kind of life he would like to have as a layperson. At first, everything was going really well—impossibly well, in fact. But then reality began to set in. He wanted a daughter of a nobleman as his wife, which was pretty impossible. But then he realized if he had a daughter of a nobleman, she’d have to work, too, because he was poor, and yet she wasn’t used to working—her health might be fragile. She ends up giving birth to a baby and dies. Then reality comes barging in, more and more and more. That’s how he was able to get past that fantasy.

So look at your fantasies about what you want: How realistic are they? How complete are they? How all-around are they? This is just an example of how you would deal, say, with the problem of lust.

You can also contemplate your anger in a similar way. You can contemplate anything that’s unskillful coming up in the mind. Ask yourself, “This voice that wants me to get involved in this unskillful emotion: How far can I trust it?” In this way, in your negotiation you help to weaken the unskillful members as you’re trying to strengthen the skillful ones.

A successful negotiation doesn’t just give in to everybody. You should have some sense of priorities—what you really want in your life. If your priorities don’t correspond with the Buddha’s priorities, be clear about that. Accept the fact that “Okay, this is what I actually want. There are going to be these problems down the line.” Be clear-eyed about it.

If you’re more inclined to say, “I want to devote my time totally to the practice,” be clear-eyed about what the practice will involve. You’ll have to do a lot of negotiating because there’s going to be struggle inside.

You see those descriptions in the Canon of a monk embarking on the practice, and everything flows smoothly from one level of the practice to the next, without any struggle. But then you look in the Theragatha—the section in the Canon where monks talk about themselves—and they have to engage in a lot of struggle: getting the mind into concentration and seeing it crash, getting it again, seeing it crash again, getting suicidal over the fact. The Buddha says there are some people who practice the holy life with tears running down their faces. But, he says, it’s better to hold on even then, because in the long run you’ll be glad that you did.

So don’t expect the practice to be smooth. Learn how to talk to yourself in a way that gives rise to some fighting spirit—that “Whatever the challenges are, I want to be up for them. I’m not going to let myself be fooled by the defilements ever again.”

Think of Ajaan Mun’s very last Dhamma talk, where he compares the practice to going into battle, where different aspects of the practice correspond to different aspects of battles: Discernment is the weapons. Concentration is the food. Then, there’s the soldier. The soldier is the determination not to come back and be the laughing-stock of the defilements ever again.

You want to learn how to hold to what you think is really important, have a clear sense of priorities, and be willing to fight everything that comes up in the mind and gets in the way. In some cases there’s negotiation, and sometimes there’s just out-and-out battle.

Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about going into battle, finishing off the defilements. Ajaan Lee talks more about learning how to convert some of the defilements to your side. But even then, he says, you have to be very alert, very heedful. Either way, there’s going to be a struggle.

So learn how to enjoy the struggle, enjoy the challenge—because you have been the laughing stock of defilements for a long, long time. But now, here’s your chance to put an end to that situation. So even though there’s a battle, see it as something you enjoy. You’ve got the opportunity to fight for freedom. Learn how to appreciate that opportunity. Do your best.