Vow to be Courageous

Sometimes I think, if only I could say more, do more, work harder, then I could really be helpful.

Then I could offer whatever I have in the way of wisdom, compassion, and maybe actually make a difference.

It’s not always easy to remember that all this work we do – supporting clients, students, colleagues, family, friends: if we're doing that work with joy, with irrepressibility, as Norman Fischer invites us to do, then what we're doing is enough. And, anyway, we aren’t ever going to finish the job.

I'm not sure that's the bad news. In fact, I think it might even be the good news.

Transcript

Wake Up Call #372: Vow to be Courageous

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 372. 

Let’s keep looking at the fourth perfection, or paramita, of heart and mind, which is virya paramita, the perfection of joyful effort. Last week was about joy, or “irrepressibility” as Zen teacher Norman Fischer calls it, and how to understand that, notice it, practice with it, and cultivate it.

I’ve been practicing with joyful effort, which is what I’m doing with the practices as I offer them here. With virya, joyful effort, I’ve noticed something interesting lately. 

I tend to wake up really early a lot of mornings, sometimes earlier than I’d like. Often around 4 or 4:30am. I’m not sure why, or that the “why” is even important. 

When I first reported this to my teacher as a problem, he said, predictably: no problem! Just get up and practice. Or get up and write. So I have been. And he was right: it’s really lovely to practice yoga, and to sit, so early. It’s dark when I start and when I open my eyes at the bell, it’s beginning to get light. The light, the sunrise, the trees – it’s very beautiful.

Nevertheless, I do feel under-slept. And so my more generalized, and I’d say until recently, relatively unconscious, response throughout the day, to waking up so early, has been to be frustrated that I haven’t gotten enough sleep, and then to feel somewhat betrayed by my own body, which just won’t sleep enough. But I wasn’t really paying attention to the fact that those were the feelings that were beneath the surface, or that because those were what was there, they were no doubt permeating my mind & heart and spilling out into my day.

Which points to two things about joyful effort. One, it requires courage: the courage to turn towards whatever is there and not flinch. Once I finally saw that frustration and betrayal were happening, my initial response was, flinch! That’s terrible. That’s not the wonderful person I want to be – or, more precisely, want to know my “self” as. 

But to vow to be a Boddhisatva – someone whose primary commitment is to heal the world, tikkun olam – is first, to not flinch. And next, to see, and then turn towards, and investigate. For me, that has meant letting go of the flinch, letting go of not wanting to be “like that” – a sleep complainer, a frustrated person, a person betrayed – and just seeing, without any judgment or frustration at that level, “Oh, yeah, that’s what’s happening. There’s my girlfriend frustration. My BFF betrayal. Not pleasant to be around. But there she is.” So joyful effort – and maybe joyful isn’t so resonant any more J - is first, about that process.

And then next, the courage to not flinch, and to see, and to turn towards and investigate, also means there’s something to do. And that something has been to bring joyful effort to letting go of frustration and betrayal, so I’m not spreading that around like peanut butter on everyone’s bread. And it’s also been to bring joyful energy to the fact of waking up at 4am. In other words, not only do I need to transform frustration and betrayal into my teacher – my beloved teacher – and see what I can learn about, and how I can let go of, this attachment to not wanting to be “that person”; I also need to bring virya, joyful effort, to the morning itself. And to seeing the morning as my teacher as well. And to being grateful to the early morning as a teacher. Or to put an even finer point on it, to fall in love with the early morning. (And maybe go to bed a little earlier at night.) 

As we practice more and more with these Boddhisatva vows in general, and with joyful effort in particular, the ancient texts say these changes, whatever we’re each practicing with, do come. How? We simply become less self-centered. Less self-concerned. As Norman Fischer says: we become an extraordinary person concerned to reduce self-centeredness and establish love and concern for all others, without exception. And then he helpfully reminds us that “of course, once you become this kind of person, you can’t help but notice that you are not different from anyone else. While taking this vow changes your life, at the same time you remain the same. Your self-centeredness doesn’t simply and suddenly vanish…. It remains just as before. The difference is that now you know it for what it is and that your commitment is to see through it.”

All of this begs the question, though, of what it means to take these vows to begin with. Which is possibly academic considering that Norman says we can’t “take” or even “make” the Boddhisatva vow, we can only practice it. 

Meaning, we can practice generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyful effort, and the last two, which are concentration and wisdom, but we can’t vow to “become” a Boddhisatva because then we’re just going back to it being all about ourselves. In other words, this whole discussion about the paramitas: it’s definitely boots-on-the-ground stuff. AND, it’s also deeply aspirational, or imaginal.  

Because look, the world is a mess. Not as much of a mess as I was afraid it was going to be today, for sure, but still a mess. The news out of Sharm El Sheikh; political turmoil in so many places; war; and the ordinary (and extraordinary) stressors of practicing law. We all know all the things. 

But this vow of joyful effort, and these other vows we’ve been looking at, transcend all of that. Yes, absolutely, they’re practical: Be generous, be ethical, hurry up and learn patience already. And do all of it with joyful effort, with irrepressibility. 

But also, my friends, we are not going to get this thing “done.”

No matter how early you get up, no matter how generous you are, how patient, how irrepressible, the world is what it is. Things are what they are, people are who they are, your partner is your partner, your kid is your kid. And you are you! We all want to bring our very best, most generous, ethical, patient, joyful, energetic, self to each moment. But we are not going to permanently solve anything. The world goes on. A little better for our joyful effort, but still, it goes on.

So, the invitation is to cultivate so much joyful effort that every day – every moment of every day – we are ready to do what has to be done to heal the world. We are looking for things to do. And we are not overwhelmed. And we know that no matter how hard and joyfully we work, we are not going to get to the bottom of world’s inbox. And that’s ok.

…

Let’s sit. 

Sometimes I think,

If only I could say more, do more, work harder,

Then I could really be helpful.

Then I could offer whatever I have in the way of wisdom, compassion,

And maybe actually make a difference.

It’s not always easy to remember that

The work we all do – 

supporting our clients, our students, our colleagues, 

our families, our friends:

that work is a treasure. 

We are a treasure.

We aren’t ever going to finish the job,

And still, we are a treasure.

[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]