Exerting Meticulous Effort
Photo by Luke Helgeson
In the fourth talk in a series on the Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings, Zuisei speaks on the fourth awareness: exerting meticulous effort.
Rather than over-exertion, this awareness calls us to place thoughtful intent upon what and how we practice, and it asks us that we dedicate ourselves fully to this effort. The more intent and dedication we put forth, the easier it is to abide in a space of freedom.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
The Buddha said:
If your friends exert meticulous effort, nothing will be difficult to accomplish. Therefore, you should make an effort to practice carefully, for when water flows constantly against a big rock, even a small amount of water will eventually wear a large hole. But if one who practices becomes lax, it will be impossible to accomplish anything. It is like trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together; if you stop rubbing before the wood gets hot enough, you can’t start a fire. This is what is meant by ‘meticulous effort.’
Meticulous effort is the fourth awareness of an enlightened being. I’ve spoken of effort before—right effort (eightfold path), zeal (paramitas). But I like this phrase even better. It describes very well what kind of effort it is: Careful, deliberate, as detailed and focused or as wide and encompassing as it needs to be. Maezumi Roshi says the Japanese is shojin: sho is pure (not mixed) and jin, progress (forward-moving effort, not regressing). In the Shasta Abbey translation this passage speaks of “devotion to progress” instead of meticulous effort—which, being the capitalist society that we are, we could misinterpret. But it really means not regressing, not being confused about what we need to do, what is most important.
This first line of the passage: “If you exert meticulous effort, nothing will be difficult to accomplish.” We could just stop here if we exert. But don’t we often say, “Practice is so difficult”? Sesshin is difficult? Sitting still, facing our demons is difficult?
So what does the Buddha mean when he says that if we exert meticulous effort, nothing, nothing we do will be difficult to accomplish? He’s not saying it will be easy. He’s saying, nothing will be difficult. How is that? He speaks with such certainty, such a sense of knowing.
Sometimes, when I feel I am facing something difficult, I think of the story of Joe Simpson in the Peruvian Andes […] When I’m very tired in zazen I have a phrase, a word, just one word. Inhale, exhale, word, pause. Come back, come back, come back. Simpson made it just hours before Yates was set to leave camp for good. He survived. Now, that’s difficult. Living in a war zone is difficult. Having to walk two miles each way to get a vat of water is difficult. Not having use of my body or my mind is difficult. But even in these situations, what is difficult? If you’re born blind, is being blind difficult, or is it just the way things are? Can difficult exist without easy? Can it exist without comparison? What is difficult? And why?
Simpson’s example is very dramatic. He couldn’t afford to not be meticulous. Most of us don’t usually find ourselves in such dire situations. It doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of life and death, and that’s a shame. That’s where comfort works to our disadvantage. It doesn’t seem so crucial, to be meticulous or not.
There is no time to waste. There’s so much living to do, while you can do it fully. And when it seems you can’t do it fully, to do that fully. As Shugen Sensei said, we don’t have to die a little every day or die early. Not knowing we don’t have forever, we feel we can afford to pick and choose. Or we choose what things to really put effort into, and what others we can let slide. But then, ironically, things become more difficult. Like the weight of thinking you have to clean your room, or sit zazen, or finish that project is so much bigger than the doing. In fact, all the time we spend thinking about what we have to do, we could have done that thing three times over. Be meticulous, the Buddha said, and whatever you want to accomplish won’t be difficult. He could also have said, “Get close.” Be wholehearted.
In the beginning of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha speaks of the precepts as the ground for the disciple of the Way. He also says it in the sutras:
Virtuous conduct, concentration, wisdom, the precepts are the foundation and source of liberation so practice them diligently.
He says:
With an upright heart and appropriate thoughts you should seek to ferry others to the other shore. Do not go about trying to conceal your faults and shortcomings or display how different you are from deluded creatures.
In making the four offerings (fire, water, earth, and air) which are your joy in awakening your heart, your reverence for the dharma, your resolve to train, and your practice, know your capacity and be content with that.
Be quick to go about doing services and work but do not seek to amass tasks; these guidelines summarize the characteristics of keeping to the precepts.
At the end of the sutra he also says: “The Teaching to spiritually benefit yourself by benefitting others contains all.”
Let your life be a life of service. Live your life with an upright heart and appropriate thoughts, skillful thoughts, loving thoughts. Don’t conceal yourself or elevate yourself. Do not separate yourself from yourself or from others. Then he has that wonderful line: “In making the four offerings which are your joy in awakening your heart, your reverence for the dharma, your resolve to train, and your practice…”
Do you feel this when you stand in front of your altar? When you offer a stick of incense? Do you feel, as you do this offering, joy in awakening your heart? Do you feel reverence for the dharma, Your resolve to train? Do you feel your practice?
There’s meticulous effort of doing one thing single-mindedly: Paying attention, letting go of distraction. Meticulous effort for the sake of the task, and for the sake of the effort. There’s also meticulous effort which becomes a doorway into another realm. Ancestors’ inner chamber, Master Dogen called it. Where you’re no longer the one doing anything. Where you’re accompanied by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas and offering a stick of incense is the offering of a thousand, a million, billion sticks offered by countless yous who are not you in a beginningless and endless multiverse. And in that realm, I like this, I don’t like this, difficult, easy, accomplishing, not accomplishing all get swallowed up.
I’ve told the story before of the desert father who spent his days weaving baskets out of palm fronds, and once his cave was full of them, he’d take them apart and start over. No point, no goal, no reward, no accomplishment. But was that effort shojin? Non-regressing? Was it pure? We only have the information we have: a man, a cave, a pile of palm baskets. Like a koan, we have to know his mind, we have to be his mind, be him, weaving those baskets, hour after hour, day after day—actually, no, that’s extra, just weaving.
In a different example, a woman who worked in an assembly line soldering parts together, she had to put the same pieces in exactly the same way and solder them over six hundred times a day. And what she did, is she challenged herself to do this operation as fast and as accurately as she possibly could.
She very carefully studied how to lay out her tools, where to place her hands precisely on the parts she was soldering, and what extraneous movements she could eliminate. It takes her coworkers about 43 seconds on average to complete one repetition, she does it in 28. But when she was asked about this, she said it wasn’t even the point, to do it fast. She found it so pleasurable to challenge herself, that she didn’t want to slow down. And so she’d been happily doing for five years a job that most people after a week, would find unbearable mind-numbing.
Difficult or easy? Work or pleasure?
Years ago, I was at the studio working with Daido Roshi on The Zen of Creativity. It was Saturday night, around 9 or 10 o’clock. We’d been working all week and Daido wanted Ryushin and I to come back and work on Sunday afternoon.
And Myotai Sensei, who had come over to try to get Daido to let us go, said to him, “You know, even God rested on Sunday. Are you really going to make them work so hard?” And without missing a beat, Daido Roshi said, “What is working hard?” And I thought, “Holy Mother of God, they’re doing dharma combat! It’s happening live! And I’m witnessing it!”
Anyway, she convinced him in the end. But it’s an excellent question: What is working hard? What is not working hard? What is meticulous effort? What is not exerting meticulous effort or any effort? Is that the same thing as being sloppy? How do you know?
Now, this example of not being able to start a fire if you stop rubbing the two sticks together… I think it was Yasutani Roshi who said you can’t cultivate samadhi if you let your concentration go on and off. It’s like trying to boil a pot of water, and every time the water starts to get warm, you turn off the heat. It doesn’t work either if you get it to boil but then walk away from it, don’t use it or if every five minutes you switch the pot to a different burner because you think there’s something more important you should be cooking.
So we could say that meticulous effort requires a kind of endurance. But I actually use a different term, because endurance sounds a bit jock-ish. It’s not about strength or, it is about strength, but not the usual kind. I think about it in terms of constancy. In order to be meticulous in your practice, your life, you have to be constant. You can’t turn on and off. Now I’ll pay attention, now I won’t. So part of the work of exerting meticulous effort is determining what kind of effort you can sustain on and on—not because you have to, but because you want to. Because you want to live awake, you want to be here for your life, know your mind.
O you friends, when receiving food or drink you should look upon it as upon the ingesting of medicine; do not give rise to fluctuations in judgment by weighing it on the scales of good and bad. Be prompt to ingest it as a support for your body which removes hunger and thirst. At the same time, be as the honeybee who, while gathering pollen from a flower, only takes the nectar and does not spoil or destroy the flower’s color, shape or scent.
(This is still the Buddha)
A honeybee gathering pollen from a flower doesn’t criticize the flower. She does not criticize the flower’s appearance or its yield. She doesn’t look at one flower and compare it with another saying, “This one is better.” She also does not use the flower for her own ends, she receives sustenance, yes but she doesn’t then trample the flower, she doesn’t suck it dry, she doesn’t cut it up or pull it from its roots so no other bee will be able to drink from it. Knowing what honey is and what it’s for, she knows how to use it well.
When receiving an offering from another, partake of it while ridding yourself of any feelings of irritation and dislike; to feel that you have not gotten very much, and therefore seek after more, destroys the good-hearted intention of the donor. It is just the same as with the shrewd person who measures the strength of an ox by how much it can bear and does not go to excess so that they wear out its strength.
This reminds me of that other line: In making the four offerings, etc., know your capacity and be content with that. It also has echoes of the second awareness: Know how to be satisfied. It’s not resigning ourselves to our limits, it’s accepting them, and this acceptance gives us enormous strength. We work with and within our capacity, not in excess of it. We use our strengths, and we learn from our weaknesses. Except they’re not even weaknesses. It’s more: Some things come easy to us, some don’t, but we can work with all of it.
Knowing ourselves, we know how to be challenged but not overwhelmed and when we are overwhelmed, we notice. Is it the circumstances, is it what I’m doing with them, is it both? Do I need to work harder? Do I need to work smarter? Do I need to ease up? Do I need—very importantly—to protect my mind?
Here’s the reality of what’s happening. Here is my view, my feelings, and my opinions about what’s happening. Being meticulous is being aware of both and not mixing them up. A synonym of meticulous is accurate. Let me call it realistic, grounded, clear, wise.
Knowing our capacity, accepting it, using it, we are like water, falling drop after drop on a rock, until we can bore a hole through it—if a hole is what’s needed. If what’s needed is to flow unimpeded over the rock, we do that. If we need to move the rock so the water flows more smoothly, we do that. And we do so constantly, patiently, resolutely—We do so under the auspices of the Three Treasures, with deep and grateful reverence for the dharma, and boundless joy in awakening our hearts.
Explore further
01 : Eight Means to Enlightenment by Master Dogen
02 : Touching the Void by Joe Simpson