Effort in Buddhist practice

[sky]

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's effortless effort and deliberate effort, most start with deliberate and progress to effortless, hopefully

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by sky123

There's effortless effort and deliberate effort, most start with deliberate and progress to effortless, hopefully

Couldn’t have said it better.

Originally Posted by Rain95

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

That one, from memory, should be Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

Originally Posted by Gem

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

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a pretty good guy.

JL

Originally Posted by JustBe

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?

Hi JustBe

I've shared before.

What you see as flooding is sharing teachings. Interesting that you call it flooding and I see you once again feel compelled to out forth your conclusions. That is a good example of the anger you call out - how you think they are, their judgements, their motivations, and now of course more, which you cannot stem in yourself. It's the same thing I see - fakery, underlying anger, repression, weak tea.

A feeler is someone who thinks that feeling everything is somehow the same as spiritual teachings of old, and it's nice, in its own right and produces sentimental emotions and poems, but also, as seen over and over to me, it's a circulatory, self-based system* and apparently, can be quite self righteous in its own condemnations and inability to register or receive its perceived slights positively. A self proclaimed arbiter of right and wrong, the God head of character approvals or otherwise, the scolding Mother head offended.

Perhaps stemming from a repressed childhood, perhaps the result of an overly sensitive nature, grown up, cocooned to protect and in a valiant effort, has found something that works for itself..I can't fault that.

I think it's really fair and understandable that one would think this is somehow spiritual practice, and maybe in some terms or ways it is, I don't know. What I do know is it's easier to do i.e. just feel, and yields sentimentality and feeling, translated into thought. It's admirable in self healing terms to a degree, yet it doesn't go far enough and yields still the derelictions of what is still there, this time masked by a belief of its methods as comparability to transcendence. Others might have it differently - *I would think that the overall equation and flow depends on the disposition and kamma of the individual ultimately. I do know and believe that that is not the practice the Ancients speak of...

Blessings,

JL

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.

When you say there is no person, no effort needed etc. and one starts with that assertion, that is the road of nihilism.

Even Gem (who can correct me accordingly) puts in effort - the effort of physical meditation is effortless effort over time but that assumes one knows the rigors of that road

As sky123 so aptly puts it - well sky123 nailed it, as usual.

People like you or others who read the books and think that is the end and realization make big (Buddhist ) mistakes in my opinion, and it shows..

This is not an insult or an offense by the way, it's just the way it is.

The teachings are subtle, deep, nuanced - do you really think, even intellectually, that the Buddhist Masters of old practiced for decades, and that in today's world of fast information, a few people repeating a few phrases (which are easily digestible and understandable intellectual bites) is the same level of realization? Or even the start of it?

If you don't believe me, you can let life show you, but if you are avoiding feelings, and thinking that "dropping thought" and avoiding "bad people" whenever you feel uncomfortable is somehow the ultimate, well...I think it's a very big mistake. But whatever floats your boat I guess at the end of the day, I guess. Just don't mislead others too please.

JL

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by sky123

There's effortless effort and deliberate effort, most start with deliberate and progress to effortless, hopefully

If someone wants to cease deliberate effort, be here now without asserting person, without asserting ideas, judgments, beliefs, opinions.

Let now be what it is, let your nature naturally interact with all aspects of it. Don't assert your ideas, your opinions, your beliefs, your conditioning onto it, into it. Just be here now with what is present, with what is inherently here when you are not. Experience it, not yourself. In this way you become it, it does not become you.

[sky]

Originally Posted by Rain95

If someone wants to cease deliberate effort, be here now without asserting person, without asserting ideas, judgments, beliefs, opinions.

Let now be what it is, let your nature naturally interact with all aspects of it. Don't assert your ideas, your opinions, your beliefs, your conditioning onto it, into it. Just be here now with what is present, with what is inherently here when you are not. Experience it, not yourself. In this way you become it, it does not become you.

' If someone wants to cease deliberate effort '

You don't cease deliberate effort, it's a happening not a doing

[sky]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Couldn’t have said it better.

Thank you

[Rain95]

Originally Posted by janielee

When you say there is no person, no effort needed etc. and one starts with that assertion, that is the road of nihilism.

I certainly don't start with or have any of those assertions. There can be a person. There is a person every time thoughts are asserted as reality. Right effort is needed as I and Buddha said. Nihilism? One is more themselves, not less, when one abandons the person or ego. After all, thought is not what you are, the creator is not the creation. An imagined path of effort is the denial of the actual for the imagined, so I could say that is the road of nihilism. What I and Buddha describe, is not a road at all, it is being present with what is, not with what I imagine is.

Originally Posted by janielee

Even Gem puts in effort

Imagining oneself to be in some state of "becoming" moving from one idea to another one through "effort." That's fine to create and live in that imaginative space. It's a state of conflict, but then conflict will eventually lead one to truth as it is not a pleasant way to be, not a good state to create and live in. It's wasting energy that could be used in presence or awareness.

Originally Posted by janielee

People like you or others who read the books and think that is the end and realization make big (Buddhist ) mistakes in my opinion, and it shows..

The mistake you are making is letting ego defend itself and its imaginary way of being without even a push back. Your mind has turned a pointing to the actual, back into pointing at the imagined. Only now exists. Thought wants now to be about the imagined, about thoughts. About the ego or false self. Why? Because this is the design. It is designed this way because the only way out is awareness of the actual. The design exists so that more awareness becomes an aspect of consciousness itself.

Dropping thought is not dropping self. Thought is not the self. Ending becoming mind does not end progress, it begins it. Each moment is new and potential experience in each now moment is infinite. So where do your images of nihilism come from? Empty, nothing.... those are just defensive assertions from your ego. Life is not less without ego, it is more. But ego asserts, oh without me that is dark and bleak and nothing. Yes of course it does. It is designed to keep one focusing on it, listening to it, to remain forever in this judgmental conflict way of being. It is designed so we keep seeing though it's eyes, though it's interpretation.

You use the term "easy" to describe being. Being requires the dropping of becoming. Can you easily drop becoming? When your thoughts continually dismiss it as nihilistic? How can you beat yourself? Oppose your own thoughts? Your own opinions, beliefs, conclusions? Yes that is no easy road. But in reality it is not a road at all.

There is only now, it is a point on a map, an instant, right now, and right now what is? What am I creating now to be? A conflict by accepting an idea this or I need to be different? That I and now needs to be something other than what is it? What is it? It is me accepting ideas as truth, as reality, as now experience.

Ideas are being created by the brain. They are not me, not created by me, why do I accept them as me or a part of now? How do I really know what now is, what I am, if my source is thought? I know better than thought. I am right here, I am closer to what is, to now, than thought which has to be created by my brain based on desire, conditioning, animal drives and all of that....it is just a noisy cat demanding attention. I can be aware, I can look, without thought and then I can see what is, discover what I really am, and experience the mystery that lies right here, beyond my own mind, if I can let that mind go. The journey has only begun when one has dropped the ego, dropped the effort, dropped the becoming illusion. It is a journey into what we are, into what is present, not into what we want to be or are imaging is present.

Originally Posted by janielee

This is not an insult or an offense by the way, it's just the way it is.

Thought will never reveal the way it is. It only reveals what thought creates it to be.