This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Rebalancing; Dharmette: Letting Go and Cultivation (3of5) Effective Effort. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Kim Allen at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
As you’re arriving, please find a posture where you’ll be comfortable for a little while and settle in, so that we can start off this year with some really good energy among ourselves and sending out into this world that needs it so much.
If you’re comfortable doing so, I invite you to close your eyes. Allow your attention to come inward, settling back from the screen, finding a balanced and upright, or if you’re lying down, a straight back posture. Maybe really sensing your feeling of presence, almost rootedness, like where your body is placed, your seat on the chair or the cushion, having a sense of groundedness, of stability, connection to the room that you’re in or the place that you’re in. Just being here.
And then from that place of clear presence, softening. Softening the face, softening the shoulders, the arms, down through the torso and the belly. Softening even in the legs and the feet. So inviting a sense of clarity and presence that is at ease in some way.
And then inviting ease also in the mind. So letting the mind be at rest, be okay with the condition of the body, with the conditions of the environment. Maybe it’s chilly, maybe there’s some sound, but it’s okay. We’re here.
So you may notice that it took a little bit of energy or effort to orient the mind, collect it, bring it here. Maybe still some effort is needed to be stable or willing to be present. But as you find your balance, maybe tuning into the breath or sounds, sensations in the body, some simple anchor that can keep you present, maybe it starts to feel like there’s a little bit of momentum. Maybe you can begin to feel like it’s more like being on a skateboard or a bicycle, and as things get slightly out of balance, you just add a little bit. You know, you move to the right or the left, or you push again on the skateboard, but generally, the motion is already happening. We just do enough to rebalance.
So sit quietly for a few minutes now with this intention of seeing if we can establish some momentum and then get into a position where what we’re mostly doing is rebalancing the mind.
The art of learning to rebalance the mind has to do with noticing in what ways it tends to fall away from the present moment at this time, because sometimes that’s different. You know, on a given day, the mind might be really obsessed with the future, thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow, what do I need to do. So then you set up a little check in the mind. Okay, every time I’m thinking about the future, I need to watch when the mind starts going that way, and then I’ll bring it back. Other times the mind isn’t concerned with the future, but it’s more with that pain in my rib cage today. And then we have to watch when the mind starts going in that direction. So it’s very situational, very attuned to how things are now.
So how’s your mind right now, today? What are its top three ways of being distracted? Can we notice those when they just start and rebalance?
If the distractions of the mind are not seen as problematic, but instead seen as normal opportunities to rebalance, it can be really enjoyable to just cruise along with the mind, like riding a bike through different kinds of terrain. Sometimes we’re pedaling harder, sometimes not as hard. Sometimes there’s gravel, sometimes it’s smooth, and it’s all just part of the bike ride.
And as we find that we’ve gotten the hang of being present with the mind as it’s just starting to drift off, we might have the feeling that we could back off from any doing, any sense that we need to be managing, even actively rebalancing. The mind feels more like a ball rolling downhill or a stream flowing toward the ocean. You can release some doing and trust that the mind will be with the unfolding of experience. Maybe it will still drift off, but somehow it will naturally come back, the way a stream may move back and forth but is always flowing down toward the ocean. So seeing what it’s like to let go of some of the doing of meditation.
So noticing, how is the mind now? Has there been an effect from letting go of some of the management of it? Maybe that meant it drifted off a bit more, or maybe not. And maybe there was a different feeling in it to not be continually managed by the cognitive mind. There’s something of an art to interacting with the mind, how much energy or effort we put into working with it, so to speak. So just noticing that there is that range and there is that effect, sensing how it was for you today in this meditation.
And as we are going to be coming out in a couple of minutes, and then after that moving into our lives, that’s also a time when sometimes we’re very active in staying present, being with the situation, actively seeking to shape it in some way. And then there are other times where we’re more just letting it unfold, still present but with a very light touch, having some trust in the unfold of it or otherwise sensing that we don’t need to be so active. This is also an art form, and it also has an effect on situations when we’re trying to manage them versus not, other people too.
So considering as we go out: May the way that I bring energy into my interactions, into my work, into the tasks I do for others, may that energy be rebalancing. May it be helpful, beneficial, just the right amount that things are kept flowing but not over-controlled. With the wish that that helps things to go smoothly and helps other people to feel welcome and connected, so that our presence is a joy and a benefit in the world and can bring goodness to this world.
Okay, so Happy New Year to everyone in the way that we measure time. Very nice to be joining you with this outset of 2025. But we’re also right in the middle of our week of talking about letting go and cultivation, and specifically some of the Dharma topics that support doing these actions effectively. So we’ve noted earlier how these are not opposites, but they’re actually intertwined. Letting go and cultivation are intertwined, almost like two sides of the same hand. And we’ve also talked about some internal factors that can help any of them, either of them, to succeed. We talked yesterday about willingness, capacity, and know-how as three important components in our efforts to let go and to cultivate.
So today, we’re going to look at the topic of wise effort or right effort, which is not about right and wrong, but it’s really more about effectiveness or appropriateness of the effort or energy that we bring to our lives, to our endeavors. And it’s a very important factor. This is actually the sixth factor of the eight-fold path, so the Buddha singled it out as an important area for investigation. It’s quite integral to both our practice on the cushion and to our everyday life. Sometimes people feel a little bit down when they hear this topic of effort because it’s been associated with other things in their lives, but hang in there, there’s some interesting sides to it.
All along the path, actually, we’re accompanied by this issue of effort, and the teachings on it tend to focus on what we’re doing and what we’re making an effort to do, which fits in perfectly with our topic. The definition of wise effort on the eight-fold path is to let go of, and if possible prevent, unwholesome mind states, and also to cultivate, and if possible to maintain, wholesome mind states. So it’s totally about this theme we have of how can we let go of what’s unwholesome and cultivate what’s wholesome. But an equally important dimension is how much effort we need to apply in any given situation, and that’s a little bit more what I want to focus on today.
There’s a reason for that. There’s a wide range of efforts that are talked about in the Buddhist discourses, and I hope maybe what I say today will expand the range in your understanding of how the Buddha talked about effort or energy in our life. So many of us have had introductory meditation instructions where we go and take an introductory course or start working with a group or a teacher, and most often here in the West, those instructions will encourage relaxation, ease, acceptance, words like this. And actually, we can practice just with those for a very long time. So these are important instructions to start with, often because we’re very driven or over-efforting in certain ways. And so it’s like, okay, let’s just start with ease, with acceptance, with being still. And that’s good.
And yet, we also know from our own experience, I think, that it does take some effort or energy even to accomplish relaxation. If we sit down and do nothing while we’re sitting, we’ll probably think for the whole session, and the mind will become tired or agitated from that. Thinking is actually pretty energetic and tiring. So we have to put in some kind of well-directed effort in order that the mind can settle down and find ease. So even with that first instruction, we find that there’s some subtlety to this issue of effort or energy, and we’ll need to put in some kind of effort in order to settle down and experience the deeper benefits of meditation.
So when should we ease up, and when should we bring in energy? And to relate it to this turning of the New Year, how can we apply ourselves appropriately to any change that we might wish to make in our lives? So I hope we can set aside our associations with this word effort—about pushing or striving or what a teacher told us in school one time to make more effort or something—and let’s try to take a fresh start on it, a fresh start for the new year.
What I want to do is walk through several quotes from the discourses of the Buddha that span a wide range about what he said on effort. So that’ll maybe give us the idea, first of all, that there is a wide range, but also that he didn’t teach uniformly about this topic. There’s a lot of different ways that he did, depending on the context, depending on the person, depending on the situation. So I hope it will spark some reflection and a sense that there’s a need for discernment in this area. Some of what I’ll say applies specifically to sitting practice, but some of it also applies to the practical, wider world that we live in. And anyway, what we do on the cushion, of course, influences how we act in the rest of our life.
So we’re starting at one end of a spectrum. We’ll start with the end of applying more effort, and a lot of effort. In fact, there’s probably no way to study the early Buddhist teachings without hearing that there is a strong emphasis on making effort. The qualities and factors of effort and energy appear in most lists that the Buddha gave. So this term Viriya1 or some similar term appears the most often in the various common lists that he taught. And so about the Buddha’s own quest for awakening, he made this declaration. I want to read it:
“Gladly would I let the flesh and blood in my body dry up, leaving just the skin, tendons, and bones. But if I have not attained what can be reached through human firmness, human persistence, human striving, there will be no relaxing of my persistence. From this heedfulness of mind was attained Awakening. From this heedfulness of mind was attained the unexcelled freedom from bondage.”
Okay, so that’s quite powerful language. Maybe at the top level, we could say that the instruction to relax and accept everything is not the only instruction. But of course, this degree of striving that the Buddha is talking about here is quite extreme, and we wouldn’t do that on an ordinary, everyday basis. But you may recall that there may be you’ve encountered times in practice where there were very strong physical sensations or very strong emotions coming, and we did have to bring forth a pretty strong effort of attention in order to meet them mindfully. Maybe we weren’t able to in that moment, but I can think of times where I had just enough capacity that I could, with maximum effort, meet what was arising that was pretty strong and powerful. And that felt really good. You know, it actually felt like, yeah, I’ve got some strength of attention here, and I’m just going to be with this. And it’s like, oh, and you feel the power of that and the way that it slowly transforms what’s there. Or it can be the other way. We could be caught by a powerful wave of sleepiness or torpor, and the mind is really fading, and there’s a sense of, no, I really want to stay awake, I really want to stay present. I had a time on a retreat where I was falling asleep every day after lunch. It’s fairly common, but for some reason on that retreat, I was very determined that I wasn’t going to fall asleep. And so I stood up during about halfway through each of the after-lunch meditations. I stood up, and I felt very tired. It took effort, actually, to bother to move my body to stand up, but I felt like that was what I wanted to do, really wanted to stay awake. So there are times where we bring forth a fair amount of effort, and it feels good, feels right for that moment. So that’s one end of the spectrum. It is there in the teachings.
And then there’s also a broad middle range where the Buddha talks about balanced effort. And many of you may have heard a sutta called the Sona Sutta, where he’s teaching a monk named Sona. And poor Sona had been doing such vigorous walking meditation that his feet were bleeding. He’d walked and walked and walked because that’s what he thought practice was about, and he cut his feet on the ground. And the Buddha teaches him that it’s about tuning his effort like one would tune a musical instrument, because Sona had been a musician before. You know, he said, “If the strings are too taut, can you play your instrument?” And Sona says, “Oh no, I can’t. It sounds terrible.” He says, “Well, and if the strings are too loose, can you play it?” “No, that also doesn’t work.” So the Buddha says, “Right, we have to tune our efforts so that our mind will be in tune and playable like an instrument.” And so then we have to put in the right amount of persistence, not too much, but not too slack. And then, of course, Sona finds that balance and finds awakening.
So there is that need for balance. And then another image he gives for the balance is a goldsmith to purify gold. So from time to time, he blows on the fire so that it revs up. Sometimes he sprinkles water on the fire so it cools down. And sometimes he looks, and it looks fine, and so he just watches the gold purifying. And it’s the same way with our mind. That’s what I was encouraging in the meditation, is to kind of watch how the mind goes off and do what needs to be done to rebalance it. So there are a lot of teachings also about balanced effort. So that message is more like the effort is not formulaic or uniform. We need to apply sometimes more, sometimes less, always looking toward the balance point.
But then there is yet another, farther out on the spectrum, the other end of the spectrum. Sometimes it’s appropriate to apply no effort at all, that any effort would be disruptive to the practice. So I want to read a very interesting verse from one discourse. The Buddha says, “One insight is that effort is the basis of all suffering. The other insight is that by the complete cooling and cessation of effort, no more suffering is produced. Every form of suffering grows out of effort. Eradicate effort, and no more suffering is produced.”
Wow, right? Obviously, that’s not a general instruction, and it’s in a specific context that he says that. This word that’s being translated as effort, Bhikkhu Bodhi2 translates as “instigation.” It refers to the kind of inception of energy, the movement toward doing something. And this word that is translated here as suffering is, of course, dukkha3, but dukkha can also just mean stress. So we could say, one insight is that moving toward doing something creates stress, and by the complete cessation of the movement toward doing anything, no stress will be produced.
So there are times in practice—not all the time—but times where things are flowing along so smoothly, or in meditation, the mind gets so still that any movement creates a little bit of tension. Any effort to do anything introduces a little bit of strain, a little bit of dukkha. And so in that case, the mind will actually let go of intention itself, which is a very deep kind of surrender. So maybe we’ve come full circle, and “relax and accept” is actually the deepest instruction as well as the initial, top-level instruction.
So the teachings on effort span this amazing range, right? From unremitting striving, human striving such that awakening can be achieved, through balancing our effort, all the way through, “don’t do anything, if you do anything, it’s going to disrupt this flow, this perfect smooth balance.” So there’s a need for wisdom then in how we apply effort and how much particularly. So I hope this maybe is an inspiration to being inspired to really tune in and listen to our own mind and body at a given moment. We have to look all the time, where are we at? What’s going on with me and with the surroundings? How much effort is needed? How much energy should I put forth to be present or to change what’s happening or to redirect my mind? Well, maybe I don’t need to at all. Maybe trying to do all that is just going to mess it up, and I should just let things flow.
This also points us eventually toward something that points away from our self. You know, there’s sort of less and less emphasis on personal effort where we need to sort of consciously manage everything, and more a sense of intuition of, okay, what needs to come forth here, or what shouldn’t come forth? Maybe everything’s unfolding just as it should. Life doesn’t necessarily unfold because we are doing it. It’s actually already unfolding. The question is what we’re doing in response to that, how we’re being with that. You’re already on the river. What are you doing with the oar in your boat? That’s the question. We’re not creating that flow, we’re being with it in a certain way.
So in a sense, the fruit of learning balanced effort is forgetting about effort. It’s kind of like when we learn a skill or a craft. At first, we are painfully deliberate, making sure we do each movement with our conscious will, and then later it flows naturally without we really having the sense that we’re doing it, even though we are doing things. So this is not necessarily easy or simple, but it is something that comes about through this clear seeing of how we are.
Okay, so to wrap up, it’s clear that the appropriate amount of effort could be seen as an act of wisdom. That’s what I’ve been pointing toward. But as a preview for tomorrow, we could also see this balanced effort and this appropriate effort as an act of care, love, and compassion. And kindness are related to how much effort we’re putting forth. All of these are behind acting skillfully. So tomorrow, we’ll talk a little bit more about the affective side, the heart side of our efforts to let go and to cultivate in the new year. So I hope to see you then. Be well.
Viriya: A Pali word for energy, diligence, enthusiasm, or effort. It is one of the five spiritual faculties and one of the seven factors of enlightenment. ↩
Bhikkhu Bodhi: An American Buddhist monk and scholar, known for his numerous translations of the Pali Canon. The original transcript said “pbod,” which has been corrected based on context. ↩
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism, referring to the inherent stress and dissatisfaction in life. ↩