Intentions and Right Effort
Quick note — this isn’t like my normal writing. It’s not a story. It’s an essay on right effort and intentions. If you want a story, you might want to stop now. You should still look at the cute picture of my daughter, though.
I was thinking this morning about what Suzuki Roshi said when he was asked about right effort — “get up with no hesitation when your alarm clock rings”. It is a deep practice for me. It’s about right effort, and it’s also about following through on your intentions, but it’s also about more. It’s about being honest about my intentions.
When I am setting my intentions, I have to ask myself, is this intention a wise intention? Sure, I could set my alarm for 5 a.m., but is that the right time? Yes, I want to get up and meditate, and write, and have a relaxing breakfast, but is that the best choice?
If getting up with the alarm is optional, then I don’t have to decide, when I set it, what my intention is. I can set it for 5 a.m. every day and just do whatever I feel like when the alarm goes off. Nine times out of ten that will be to hit the snooze button over and over until it’s 6 a.m. and I have to get up or I’ll be late to work.
The side-effect of that is negative self-judgement. I set the alarm for 5 a.m., why didn’t I get up? What’s wrong with me?
But if I know I’m going to get up when the alarm goes off, I have to think honestly about my intention when I set the alarm. What’s more important, that extra hour of sleep, or meditation, writing, and a slow breakfast reading the newspaper?
Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s the other, but both are okay. Sometimes, even, I realize I don’t have to make a binary choice, I can choose to set the alarm for 5:30am instead, and meditate, without the writing or the easy breakfast. I decide that when I set the alarm. My intention is set at that moment so I don’t have to think about it when the alarm goes off, I just have to get up and follow the intention I set for myself.
Setting my intention and knowing I am going to follow through on it is a way of avoiding the trap of conflating what I believe I should be doing with what I actually intend to do.
To simplify it a bit, it’s like making a promise to my 9 year old daughter.
If I make a promise her, I’d better be serious about it. She remembers that promise, and if I don’t keep it, she will be upset, even if, to me, the promise is inconsequential. As a result, I find myself being very careful about what I promise. Making the promise has become as important to me as fulfilling the promise is to her.
If I’m careful about commitments I make to her, shouldn’t I be careful about the commitments I make to myself? Imagine how much easier life would be if the thought, “Why didn’t I do X?” never arose. If I’m honest with myself about my true intentions, that kind judgment decreases.
This dropping of judgment is not the only side-effect, though. If I’m doing what I intend to do, right at this moment, I find myself with less time on my hands, time that I’m likely to fill doing whatever catches my attention. For me that means less Facebook, Twitter, TV, etc. It doesn’t mean none. There’s nothing wrong with any of those, I just want to be making a choice to do them rather than doing them so I don’t have to be here in this moment, unsure of what I want to do. I don’t take my phone out of my pocket to check Facebook when I’m waiting for the toast anymore. I wait for the toast. I’ll check Facebook later, when I can actually pay attention to it. As a result, I enjoy Facebook a lot more. I also enjoy my toast more.
Sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do. This is especially common at work; there’s a project that I have to do for someone, and I don’t want to do it, I want to work on my project. It’s so easy when faced with something like this to rush through it, just to get it over with.
In this case, the project I don’t want to do is just like the alarm clock. Really, I don’t want to get up at 5 a.m. I don’t. I love to sleep in. I do want to meditate, write, and have a nice breakfast, though, so I, sometimes, set my alarm and get up at 5 a.m. I may not want to do the project either, but I want to keep a good relationship with the person I’m working with and I want to be proud of my work, so I choose to set my intention to a positive one and I follow my intention.
There are days I set my alarm for 5 a.m. and I don’t get up. There are projects where I don’t do my best work. The longer I focus on the practice of simply following through on my intentions, though, the easier it becomes to get up when the alarm goes off and the easier it becomes to be happy, or at least not unhappy, when doing things I don’t want to do.
It’s a simple teaching — “get up with no hesitation when your alarm clock rings” — but I have a feeling it’s going to be a big part of the rest of my life.
