Making our practice healthy and happy

To continue with a "healthy and happy" contemplative path, in this case the path of insight meditation, we must feel it's bearing fruit.

Life is short, free time is sparse, so why would we continue on something that wasn't working for us?

From my vantage point, leading Eastside Insight Meditation for the last 21 years, the question of fruitfulness on the path is crucial. Over these years I've seen people come and go, leaving the practice and returning to it, while others maintain a kind of continuity that keeps them going and that generates real results.

I have no agenda to convert anyone to Buddhist thinking. But I do feel a kind of sorrow when I meet someone who shares with me they no longer are practicing. I feel sorrow because sometimes I feel an almost palpable sense of inner disappointment within such people, a sense that they had an inner vision that they haven't yet been able to fulfill.

On the other hand, as I've made my own way on this inner journey I've increasingly come into contact with people who are reaping the fruit that the path of insight meditation offers. It's deeply inspiring and uplifting to be around such people, even while I marvel how individualistic are their expressions.

We can see how the practice is bearing fruit for these people, and that is awesome. But getting there can require determination, just as with anything worthwhile, whether it's learning to write code to bringing up a child.

It's hard getting started in anything, and this can be especially so with meditation practice. After all, we're doing something here that has few contact points in our culture, with results that can be less-than-tangible, especially in the beginning.

Ultimately there's a big carrot-and-stick factor here. That is, on the carrot side, what can we do that draws us forward? What can we do that makes our practice fruitful, and satisfying, to keep us going?

Then on the stick side, what does it mean to us to neglect our inner lives, to fail to cultivate the possibilities that are there? How will we feel toward the end of our lives, if we passed up on the chances offered?

I'm going to offer three key ideas, which I hope will be of some benefit to you, to help you to cultivate a vibrant spiritual practice in the years ahead.

First, it's important to live ethical and generous lives.

This might seem surprising, even mundane, but in fact it's impossible to separate true spiritual growth from how we live.

In Buddhism ethical attitude is defined by five trainings: to refrain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct and abuse of addictive substances.

These are trainings, not rules, but think of any time you've spent in interior stillness. If any of you struggle in your lives with the consequences of a choice you made, perhaps an ethical breach, there's a high likelihood that haunts you a bit, colors your attitude toward the day.

Stretch that out over decades and the consequences of wholesome conduct of body, speech and mind, versus unwholesome conduct, is inexorable.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a great Tibetan Lama, summed this up beautifully:

"To expect happiness without giving up negative action is like holding your hand in a fire and hoping not to be burned."

Our past conditioning and life challenges make finding freedom difficult enough as it is, but this difficulty is compounded if we're continually stirring the pot of distress with more deeds we know are compromised.

(One thing to clarify is that this refers to behaviors of the present more than the past. That is, this path of insight meditation is often just how people heal from actions of the past they now regret. But they do that on the basis of making different choices now.)

Living well, cultivating a clean and ethical heart, is the foundation for a fruitful meditation practice, something we all need to continually nurture.

Second, turn your hearts and minds toward what is possible. In short, have confidence, have faith.

For starters, have confidence in what you can realize in yourselves. In the context of the spiritual path this means to envision our inner potential before we fully realize it.

Now this is nothing new, because in fact all great spiritual visionaries were ahead of themselves. Whether the Buddha or Martin Luther or Nelson Mandela, they saw possibility latent within themselves, and then made their way forward to uncover it.

So bravely keep looking for your potential, even in the middle of difficult times.

And third , what are we to do with this? How are we to bring this faith and these teachings alive in our own hearts?

To me this is at the heart of what's wonderful about this practice of meditation, that there's something you can do. This insight meditation practice is the ultimate DIY project, (do it yourself in case you missed that), because through what we do we can uncover an essence within us that is otherwise mostly hidden.

This mindfulness practice works, it's well within your grasp no matter your circumstance, and it only gets better over time.

As all of you know, the most fruitful endeavors in life are difficult in the beginning, and bear fruit only after some mastery is developed.

Think about it - the first notes from a violin are hideous squawks, the first objects off a potter's wheel are misshapen lumps. But later, after years of cultivation despite obstacles, comes the singing notes of a symphony or the loveliness of a vase.

With this meditation practice of mindfulness -- this moment-by-moment awareness of our experience -- it's the same way.

And please be comforted by how simple is this practice. As teacher Steve Armstrong often says:

"It's easy to be mindful. It's difficult to remember to be mindful."

So all we have to do is to keep returning to awareness. What's not to like about that?

I remember when I first started meditating, in my mother's basement back in 1968, it was very difficult to understand where I was going. Back then there were essentially no Western teachers offering mindfulness teachings, and it was very hard to sort out a clear path of awakening from the colorful froth of the counterculture.

The only spiritual bookstore in Boston was "the Sphinx," a dark and mysterious place mostly focused on the occult.

But something in me has kept going, led by an innate sense that it's possible to find freedom past conditioning. You can too.

So please think about cultivating confidence and faith. Think about the depth you have felt from the teachers you have met or have heard. You can be just like that, because each one of us has the same unrecognized potential.

So here are a few tips about how to bring this practice and these teachings alive in your lives.

First off, apply energy and don't give up. Inner realization doesn't happen by itself; we have to set our intentions and decide to practice.

Whatever works for us, however you fit it with our family and other responsibilities, it's doable. Don't give up.

As some of you know, most of what I've done on the path has been while embracing family and a full career. My wife and I have three children, I was a journalist in newsrooms for more than 30 years, but I always found or made time for meditation practice. Often this was right in the newsroom, minutes from deadline, staring into the silver screen.

There's no doubt in my mind that I was a much-better parent, husband and worker, just because of my meditation practice.

But also I'd like to suggest that it's also important to exercise discernment, and apply intelligence, if you're to do this well.

That is, the teachings are rich and subtle, so it's time well spent to do some study, in whatever form works for you, to know what you're doing.

Put another way, if you want meditation practice to work for you, and develop to a point where you're beautifully playing the violin of dharma instead of creating squawks, clarify what you're doing.

And here's a little secret - the process is stepwise. What I mean is that as your dharma practice deepens and matures, you'll do it better. But the only way to get better at it is to apply yourself from wherever you are, so that your understanding of the process slowly reveals itself to you.

Sometimes this requires time. That's why people go on retreat, why they practice for weeks and even months, to make major shifts in who they are and what they see.

Part of the mystery of all this is that the biggest steps on this journey can be nearly impossible to fully articulate or describe. This is just because they reveal that which is now so hidden to us.

I want to close with one of my favorite stories in the Pali canon, the collected discourse of the Buddha, about the wanderer Bahiya. I share it with you now because it points to the depth of this practice and this path, how the possibilities are more than we can imagine.

Bahiya was a solitary meditator, 2,600 years ago in India, who had been seeking a path of awakening. After years and years on his own he felt discouraged, felt he wasn't on a path that would bring the results he intuited was possible. Then someone told him about the awakening and freedom discovered by the Buddha, who was just going out on his morning alms round right nearby.

Bahiya quickly went to where the Buddha was, and asked for the essence of the path. The Buddha asked him to come back later, pointing out that he was on alms round, asking for food from the people of a local village, and that this wasn't a good time for teachings. But Bahiya had a sense of urgency, and asked three times, and in his compassion the Buddha assented.

Here's what the Buddha then said to Bahiya. Listen close, and see how this resonates with the simple mindfulness practice we've been doing all day, and also how it stretches our understanding:

The Buddha said:

"In the seen there is only the seen,

In the heard, only the heard,

In the sensed, only the sensed

In the cognized there is only the cognized:

This, Bahiya, is how you should train yourself.

When, Bahiya, there is for you

in the seen only the seen,

In the heard, only the heard,

In the sensed only the sensed,

In the cognized only the cognized,

then, Bahiya, there is no 'you'

In connection with that.

When, Bahiya, there is not 'you'

in connection with that,

there is no 'you' there.

When, Bahiya there is no 'you' there,

then, Bahiya, you are neither here

nor there

nor in between the two.

This, just this, is the end of suffering.

It is said that Bahiya gained full awakening just in that moment, kneeling in the dust and clamor of the town of Savatti. His journey was done, his freedom was found.

And Bahiya's urgency was well-placed, because just moments later a runway cow impaled him, and he died right there.

So in our own way, we can be joyously relentless in our pursuit of freedom.

We can be free of conditions, doubts and fear. It is our birthright.

Keep clarifying where you're going. Keep clarifying how you get there. Keep clarifying your boundless potential.

The journey is worth every moment. Remember, no moment of mindfulness is wasted.

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