Dharma Topic: Joyful Diligence

Dear Still Water Friends,

Many of us have inside us a deep longing for an abiding inner peace. We are searching for a way of life which allows us to live with grace, dignity, love, and joy. This longing is captured for me in a stanza from the Buddha's Discourse on Happiness:

To live in the world
with your heart undisturbed by the world,
with all sorrows ended, dwelling in peace --
this is the greatest happiness.

In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the Six Paramitas are offered as concrete practices which help us to make the transition from our current place of agitation and suffering to the other shore of peace and joy. On prior Thursday evenings we have explored the paramitas of dana (generosity), shila (morality) and kshanti (inclusiveness).

This Thursday Evening we will explore together the fourth of the Six Paramitas, virya in Sanskrit. Virya is about focusing our energy on what we need to do to take us across the river of suffering. Sometimes virya is translated as diligence, continued effort, or perseverance - getting up each day and attending to the important spiritual work that is always in front of us. Sometimes virya is translated as joyful exertion, or enthusiasm -- doing what needs to be done because it is so satisfying and so much fun.

And what is it we are suppose to be doing with our joyful diligence? Thich Nhat Hanh (in a summer 1997 Dharma talk) suggests we continually direct our attention to the quality of the seeds in our consciousness we feed through our actions of thought, speech, and body:

We know that when we cook potatoes, we have to keep the pot covered and should not take the lid off because the heat might get out. Also, we have to keep the fire on underneath. If we turn the fire off, then the potatoes could not cook. After five minutes, if we turn the fire out, then we cannot expect the potatoes to cook, even if we turn on the fire for another five minutes, and we turn it off. That is why there should be continued progress, continued practice, the continuation, the steady practice-that is called virya.

In terms of consciousness, we know that there are seeds to be watered and there are seeds to be transformed, and if we can continue to water the positive seeds and to refrain from watering the negative seeds, instead we know how to transform them-that is the process of continued transformation.

In a complementary perspective, Pema Chodron (In When Things Fall Apart) suggests that what allows us to connect with "the spark and joy that's available in every moment" is keeping in our minds our deepest aspirations:

The more we connect with a bigger perspective, the more we connect with energetic joy. Exertion [virya] is touching in to our appetite for enlightenment. It allows us to act, to give, to work appreciatively with whatever comes our way. If we really knew how unhappy it was making this whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure -- how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence -- then we would practice meditation as if our hair were on fire. We would practice as if a big snake had just landed in our lap. There wouldn't be any question of thinking we had a lot of time and we could do this later.

You are invited to join us for our meditation period (beginning at 7 pm) and for our program. Our discussion will look at what supports us in bringing virya, joyful diligence, to our practice -- and also, what cancels it, what sucks it away?

Warm wishes,