How do I balance between effort and expectation?

The teachings of Ajahn Suchart. 

Question: How do I balance between effort and expectation?

Tan Ajahn: I think people put effort into the wrong things.

What they should put effort into is in developing mindfulness, which is so simple and easy to do, and they can do it all the time, all day long. But they are not doing that.

Without mindfulness, they will find doing everything else is very difficult, very hard to do.

They should focus first on developing mindfulness. From the time they get up, they should develop mindfulness by either reciting a mantra or constantly watching the movement of the body.

Whatever the movement of the body is, just keep watching, keep staying with the body, and don’t let the mind wander to other things.

This is so simple and you can do it anytime, anywhere, but at times there is resistance to doing that. If you just want to sit and meditate right away, and if you find it very hard to do it, it’s because you don’t have mindfulness.

So, this is what you have to do first of all, that is to develop mindfulness. The Buddha said that mindfulness is the key to all the other Dhamma. If you have no mindfulness, you cannot have all the other Dhamma.

Let me give you an illustration.

When you want to drive a car, what do you have to do first?

You have to get inside the car, right? If you have no key, can you open the locked door?

You cannot. So you have to find the key, you have to have the key to open the locked door. 

Once you open the door, you can get in the car, sit in the driver's seat, and put the key in to start the car and drive to wherever you want to go. But you have to have that key to get inside the car.

Without it, you cannot drive the car anywhere.

You need mindfulness first in order to sit and meditate and to achieve results. Once you have jhāna, you have apanā-samādhi; then you can develop insight, or vipassanā because the mind will not resist, the mind will not create obstacles to your development of vipassanā.

There is no skipping this step.

You have to go step by step. It is like before you can run, you have to learn to walk first.

Before you can walk, you have to learn to stand first. These are basic things that you have to do. 

You cannot jump from crawling to running.

It is the same way when the practice becomes hard; you find it hard to exert your effort because you put in the effort on the wrong things, the hard things that you still cannot do.

The efforts that you can make all the time, you are not doing.

That is all. Just develop mindfulness first.

“Dhamma for the Asking, Dec 9, 2014”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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