Effort in Buddhist practice

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by janielee

Our effort in our practice should be directed from being to non-being, from achievement to non-achievement.

Do you know who the author of that is? I could not find it from your link.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by janielee

It's subtle - it is effortless effort. And the one who doesn't put in the effort to know is drinking from the waterhole that is weak.

Your perception, I feel, is because all you do is feel and say that is all there is

JL

Your waterhole is flooding over..

I just say.

The rest is just your noitanigami

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

It’s just all so effortless imo..

Such demands, such deliverance..

And here you are delivering..

I think we need to start with the basic 'right effort': to remove unskillful mind states and cultivate skillful ones.


Because this involves recognising mindstates, it requires attention rather than unconsciousness.


As this relates to meditation, the effort in question is in recognising all the unintended volitions of habitual, unskilled mind rather than 'trying to do something'.


In sitting meditation discomfort comes in the body, and your effort is to 'not react', 'not distract', which is cessation of that sort of unskillfulness, while recognising 'this is how I generate suffering'.



In this way, no-effort relates to stop doing what you realise you have been doing 'unskillfully' and unconsciously, and effort relates to the attention it requires to achieve that, how hard it is to stop doing, and all the ego dilemmas associated with cessation of volition.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by janielee

Right Effort is one of the 8 paths of the Eightfold Path Gautama Buddha taught.

All Buddhist traditions without fail encourage effort and practice. To reach the destination one walks. One who does not do the work and imagines they are there, sits only in a mirage, a mirage which breaks as easily as one has created it.

Peace,

JL

So share your walk through life as you experience right effort.?

When people start flooding with right effort teachings, it tells me they might be
Confuscious about flooding with right effort teachings, and forgetting to show what their own personal experience understands of him/herself?

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by janielee

Ahh the old nihilistic approach - how common and ordinary. The easy route but highly ineffective as well. Such people can start their own religion perhaps. Here, I am just quoting what the Buddhist teachers and Buddha said.



JL

Buddha said to move from being into non-being? Where? Can you provide a link? I would guess that is not from Buddha.

Originally Posted by Rain95
Right effort is effort that does not assert a person. Seeking a goal through a practice asserts a person and is therefore wrong effort. However, a practice that ends seeking and a seeker is right effort.

There is nothing nihilistic there. I think you are confused about the meaning of the word... here is the definition: Nihilistic - rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless. I am asserting the religious and moral principals Buddha and others taught, that to live without asserting person is the goal Buddha taught. Not only does it lead to no conflict within and without, it gives meaning to life. To project those spiritual qualities that are an inherent part of consciousness itself.

I think maybe you are using the word "nihilism" to mean rejecting becoming.... but Buddha rejected becoming as well. He said "being" not "becoming" thus why that author you posted seems very far from Buddha...they said to move to non-being....

Now calling just being an easy route as you are applying "doing nothing" conceptually, when one gives up becoming mind, but see is it easy to drop desire? To drop seeking? To drop the seeker? To drop person? No this is not an easy task. It takes an insight into self in this now moment that transforms the self.

Remember the opposite of doing is not not doing, both involve the one doing or not doing. The opposite is no "doer" and that requires a very high degree of disciplined awareness in this now moment. It requires right effort.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by janielee

Zen:

The most important point in our practice is to have right effort. The right effort which is directed to right direction is necessary. Usually our effort is making towards wrong direction. Especially, if your effort is making -- your effort is directed towards wrong direction without knowing it means so-called deluded effort. Our effort in our practice should be directed from being to non-being, from achievement to non-achievement. Usually when you do something you want to achieve something but in our practice from achievement to non-achievement means to get rid of some evil result of the effort. Whether or not whether you make your effort you have good quality. So if you do something that is enough but when you make some special effort to achieve something, some excessive quality or element is involved in it. So you should get rid of some excessive things. If you -- when your practice is good, without being aware of it you will become proud of it. That is something extra. Pride is extra. What you do is good but something more is added to it. So you should get rid of that something which is extra. This point is very, very important. But usually we are not subtle enough to realize that. And you are going to wrong direction. So this kind of effort to get rid of something extra is very important point and that is the effort we make.

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zenmind.pdf

I scanned over the PDF and that's probably the best book of zen I've ever seen.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

I think we need to start with the basic 'right effort': to remove unskillful mind states and cultivate skillful ones.


Because this involves recognising mindstates, it requires attention rather than unconsciousness.


As this relates to meditation, the effort in question is in recognising all the unintended volitions of habitual, unskilled mind rather than 'trying to do something'.


In sitting meditation discomfort comes in the body, and your effort is to 'not react', 'not distract', which is cessation of that sort of unskillfulness, while recognising 'this is how I generate suffering'.



In this way, no-effort relates to stop doing what you realise you have been doing 'unskillfully' and unconsciously, and effort relates to the attention it requires to achieve that, how hard it is to stop doing, and all the ego dilemmas associated with cessation of volition.

I agree.

It’s rather silly going out into the world aware of your anger or unkind ways and not put any effort as your more beginning/ basic starter point. If you intend to put the effort in, in the real life experience, where you can notice and place effort on being conscious of yourself in this way, that kind of effort can instigate a move towards changing the old ways of being. With right effort awareness, one can be attentive to those triggers.

And of course Over time, as I mentioned, it can become a natural way of being, calmer less contained by your anger, or unkind manner, because your making conscious effort to be present with yourself instead. Letting it all move through you.

Less sterile and robotic about it and more ‘running on rich fertile foundations!’ You can feel someone faking all the same. So it doesn’t quite feel right at times when one is practising in this way, but you know deep down there a walking time bomb!! Dem ones try as they may, probably do need to put more effort in!

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Buddha said to move from being into non-being? Where? Can you provide a link? I would guess that is not from Buddha.



There is nothing nihilistic there. I think you are confused about the meaning of the word... here is the definition: Nihilistic - rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless. I am asserting the religious and moral principals Buddha and others taught, that to live without asserting person is the goal Buddha taught. Not only does it lead to no conflict within and without, it gives meaning to life. To project those spiritual qualities that are an inherent part of consciousness itself.

I think maybe you are using the word "nihilism" to mean rejecting becoming.... but Buddha rejected becoming as well. He said "being" not "becoming" thus why that author you posted seems very far from Buddha...they said to move to non-being....

Now calling just being an easy route as you are applying "doing nothing" conceptually, when one gives up becoming mind, but see is it easy to drop desire? To drop seeking? To drop the seeker? To drop person? No this is not an easy task. It takes an insight into self in this now moment that transforms the self.

Remember the opposite of doing is not not doing, both involve the one doing or not doing. The opposite is no "doer" and that requires a very high degree of disciplined awareness in this now moment. It requires right effort.

So what is non being as you see it?

If we have being/non being, what becomes of you then?

Is good I’ve been reading and found this

Arriving at the Experience of Nonconceptual Awareness Through Negation
One way to arrive at the experience of nonconceptual awareness is through negation. We first negate presence or being, and we experience absence, or metaphysical emptiness. This negation comes not from a denial or rejection or attempt to go beyond, but simply through one’s awareness expanding or deepening past being and presence. Then we negate absence, arriving at nonconceptual presence, which is pure awareness. This occurs experientially in the path of the Diamond Approach, where the student moves from pure presence to pure absence, recognizing the ontological emptiness of presence and all phenomena predicated on presence. The revelation of truth continues to pure awareness, beyond presence and absence. Traditionally, the most common route in this process is the transcendence of the discriminating mind, by going beyond any discriminating cognition and simply pointing to what is.

The Inner Journey Home, pg. 327


Pure Awareness is an Aware Ground, An Aware Medium that Doesn’t Know what It is Aware Of
The intriguing mystery is that the nature of forms, the nature of the body, the nature of consciousness, the nature of all phenomena, include both emptiness and presence, both Being and nonbeing, in a mysterious juxtaposition. This interpenetration of Being and nonbeing in reality is even more mysterious than pure or nonconceptual awareness. Pure awareness is an aware ground, an aware medium that doesn’t know what it is aware of and doesn’t discern one thing from another. By nonconceptual I do not simply mean not mental, not constructed. I mean the barest minimum of sensitivity, the ground that is simply the capacity to be aware, to perceive. Therefore, by nonconceptual we mean noncognitive. There is perception, but there is no knowing, no cognition of any kind. Although we see that nonconceptual awareness is both emptiness and presence, both Being and nonbeing, we cannot say this in the actual experience of nonconceptual awareness. We cannot say anything, because pure awareness lacks recognition, lacks knowing.

Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 355

When All the Concepts and Categories are Gone Only the Nonconceptual Awareness Remains
What we’re seeing here is that self-realization is ultimately self-annihilation. We don’t gain anything. Rather, we are going to lose everything. We lose the concepts of our mind, one after another, one category after another: people, objects, values. When all the concepts and categories are gone, only the nonconceptual awareness, which is a field of pure consciousness, remains. This spontaneously dissolves into its underlying ground, absolute nonbeing, total absence of being. This nonbeing, when we recognize it as the ground and inner secret of all of reality, is the night of reality, the inner of the inner. This is the Guest.

Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 1

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by JustBe

So what is non being?

Yea that's what I was trying to figure out. I was forced to read more Suzuki than I wanted to lol. He makes the point that "pride" and "achievement" are wrong outcomes of effort as is "being." So obviously there Suzuki is saying "person" is a wrong result or outcome of effort. What can achieve? What can have pride? The ego, the person.... So like I posted before needing Suzuki to say the same thing I did in his way, ....

Right effort is effort that does not assert a person. Seeking a goal through a practice asserts a person and is therefore wrong effort. However, a practice that ends seeking and a seeker is right effort. - Rain95

So "non-being" in Suzuki's quote is the non-assertion of self or person or ego or whatever one wants to refer to it as.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Rain95

Yea that's what I was trying to figure out. I was forced to read more Suzuki than I wanted to lol. He makes the point that "pride" and "achievement" are wrong outcomes of effort as is "being." So obviously there Suzuki is saying "person" is a wrong result or outcome of effort. What can achieve? What can have pride? The ego, the person.... So like I posted before needing Suzuki to say the same thing I did in his way, ....


So "non-being" in Suzuki's quote is the non-assertion of self or person.

If one resides in pure mind, the natural arising of right effort would instigate a non being state of grounded awareness. Neither being or non being, just grounded pure awareness.

Through this line of thought everything is imagined outside the stream of pure awareness, and everything coming from pure awareness is just that, where nothing is real, everything exists through the waking conscious state of being, manifested into being by the mind.