Joyful Effort – The First Step

When I look out at the human landscape right now, it feels like joy is in short supply. Sometimes it’s present, but plenty of moments cry out for an infusion of joy. 

The first step, or one of the first, on the mindfulness path, is “wise effort.” In the past I’ve taken “wise” to mean the diligence to develop practices like paying attention, caring, and peace.  

I still think that, but I also think attitude matters. If I’m making diligent effort with a joyful heart/mind, joy gets infused into the moment. If my diligent effort is laced with resignation or resistance, those get infused. 

The great news is, we get to choose our states of mind. So why not choose joy, and then put diligent, joyful energy into practice? When I remember to do that, practice is more fun, plus joy follows me into the day. I wonder what would happen if we could all remember to do that, even a little bit more?

♥️♥️

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #506. I hope everyone is doing ok. If you’re engaging in No Kings day this Saturday, or in election protection work or any work in support of democracy, thank you. Be safe.

So let’s talk about the Fourth Noble Truth, the truth of the path to the end of suffering. Remember, the First Noble Truth is the truth that this being human is a bumpy ride. The Second Noble Truth is the truth that there’s a reason why we feel so much stress, strain, and suffering in relation to that bumpy ride, which is that our natural inclination is to push back against the hard stuff, cling to the good stuff, and engage in magical thinking about how we can not be subject to that bumpiness. The Third Noble Truth is the truth that when we let go of clinging and pushing and magical thinking, we’re good. There’s still plenty of difficulty but instead of relating to it with stress and strain, there’s peace, in even the stormiest moments. Which not only doesn’t detract from whatever commitments we have towards justice or democracy or healing, but instead increases our capacity to do that work, and to enjoy our successes and accept our failures with equanimity. And the Fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path, which to me is essentially the truth about how to walk the talk.

The Eightfold Path has eight steps, which organize into three buckets: the Samādhi steps, of training the mind in stillness, attention, and love; the Sila steps, of leading an ethical life, in the law and in general; and the steps of Panna, or wisdom. And while they’re not sequential and we want to be practicing all eight all the time. Samādhi, Sila, Panna feels like the right order for right now.  

So, Samādhi: there are three steps in its bucket: effort, mindfulness, and concentration. All three – and actually all eight steps – begin with the word “wise” or “right.” I’m shy of the word “right” because the eight steps are aspirational and the work of a lifetime. But the legal mind, or this one anyway, can so easily swing into a binary perspective where there exists only a kind of perfectionistic “right” and a devastated wrong – in our work, that perspective can feel necessary or justified – and I don’t want that to be our frame of reference here. In mindfulness practice, as opposed to in the practice of law (and other professions), we simply want to be pointing in the right direction as often as possible, knowing we’re imperfect and being ok with that - even joyful about that. 

“Wise” works, if we agree on its definition. “Wise” can be problematic if it has religious or spiritual connotations, because while it’s lovely if mindfulness intersects in a positive way with our beliefs, mindfulness itself is an evidence-based system, like law. We practice mindfulness – we cultivate stillness, attention, and love, for example – and we see for ourselves if we feel better, if we’re better able to connect with and care for ourselves and others, if we feel more competent, less stressed, healthier, and just plain happier. If we do, we keep practicing. If we don’t, we find another path. The Dalai Lama was once asked by a group of neuroscientists what he would do if it turned out that the science didn’t back up the promises mindfulness makes, and famously said, “we’ll change the practices.” So I’ll use “wise” in that way, as evidence-based rather than a belief-based wisdom. 

So, in the Samādhi bucket there are Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration, the training-the-mind, or mind/heart, steps. The other steps are training steps, too, but these three are specifically about training in stillness, attention, and love, and how much effort we need to do that. 

So we’re training, and there’s one overarching theme in these three steps: the theme of calmness. As we exploring Wise Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration, and cultivate stillness, attention, and love, we’re calming the mind and the nervous system. Pamela Weiss says, you have to calm down before you can wake up, and that feels so right to me, especially in our current world. I have to calm down to meet each moment in the law and in my life; each moment of conflict; each moment of news, actually. Only once I’m calm can I get a sense of the right thing to say or do or even think. 

OK, so we have the overarching theme of calm, and the first of the three steps in the Samādhi bucket is Wise Effort. I like to think of Wise Effort as having two components: quantity and quality. There has to enough effort, first of all. If I don’t sit, don’t study, don’t reflect on my practice, I see what happens – it’s not abstract. I don’t feel very calm, or still, or attentive, or loving. And everyone else sees it, too. It’s what Louis Armstrong said: “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.” 

And yet it can feel like there’s no time, especially in the law, for mindfulness practice. For years I lived in so much panic that I wouldn’t get everything done at work, so how could I also meditate? I’d try to keep in mind Suzuki Roshi’s words: “If you don’t have time to sit for an hour each day, sit for two” – which was sometimes helpful. And also the story of Sona and the lute: a student who happens to play the lute, asks how much effort is Wise Effort. And the teacher asks, “If you tune your lute strings too tightly, the lute sounds terrible, right?” The student agrees. Then the teacher asks, “If you tune the strings too loosely, it sounds terrible, too, right?” The student agrees. Which I understand to mean that there’s a “wise” amount of effort for each of us, a Goldilocks amount to put it in legal terms, that we know is wise by tuning into how we feel, and how our words, actions, and choices, in the law and in our lives, land.  

So, quantity and then also, quality. One of the paramitas or perfections of heart and mind, is virya, or joyful effort. Joyful effort is the quality of effort we’re looking for, to me. It might be getting darker earlier if you’re in the northern hemisphere so it’s harder to get out of bed early to practice, but there’s no point in doing it at all unless it’s with joy: no point in practicing with resignation or resentment because that quality then gets infused into the practice, and into the day. Best – very much best – to be infusing joy.  

So with Wise Effort we’re looking for effort that’s in tune with the life we’re living – possibly a very busy, multi-faceted, and full life – and is also bringing in joy. 

Let’s sit.

Practice is joyful effort