Jill Shepherd: talk: Wise Intention p2 - the intention to cultivate relinquishment / non-addiction

Okay, so for those of you who are new, we've been working through a series on some pretty

core teachings known as the Noble Eightfold Path, and this is a path that the Buddha laid

out that leads to really deepening freedom of heart and mind, trying to put it in a nut shell.

And this path has eight different factors, and we've been looking at the first two last

week.

We started looking at the second one, which is known as right or wise intention, and so

we were exploring this mental factor of intention pretty broadly to begin with, so just

knowing it as a capacity of the mind, a mental factor, that actually propels everything

we think, say and do.

Really nothing happens without some quality of intention in the mind, and the significance

is that intention is motivated by the underlying quality of the heart and mind that those

intentions are emerging from.

And this is why the Buddha placed so much emphasis on knowing what is happening in this

heart and mind, so to paraphrase the famous opening lines of the Dhamma Pada, if we think

or speak or act from a mind that's under the influence of negative states, the results

of those actions will tend to cause harm, cause suffering.

Conversely, if we think, speak or act from a heart, mind looks resting in skillful states,

then the results are likely to be beneficial for us, for others.

And we can see the truth of this playing out in the context of our own lives.

And we see that it naturally strengthens the first factor of wise view, the understanding

actions have consequences.

And if we want those consequences to lead us in a good direction, then again, pretty naturally,

we start paying attention to our intentions.

And as I mentioned last week, there are many different nuances and aspects and factors

of this.

So last week, we're looking at it pretty broadly.

Today, I want to actually dive in a little bit more detail to look at how the Buddha himself

defined wise intention in the context of the sutras, the discourses.

And just to say this wise intention is a common translation, but it is often also commonly

translated as wise or right thought.

So some of you might also have seen that right thought.

And I tend to not use that translation, because I read the novel 1984, maybe some of you

hear a bit younger and you have no idea what that novel is about, but it's basically a

dystopian novel, said in a future society that's completely controlled by an authoritarian

state.

And everyone in the novel is under surveillance by the thought police.

And the thought police are constantly looking for evidence of thought crime.

So for me, when I heard this term, right thought, made me a little bit sort of paranoid, a

little bit squeamish.

And there can be a sense of you've got to think the right way.

And some of us come from religious backgrounds where there is a sense, you've got to believe,

you've got to fit in, you've got to take things on faith, so-called faith.

And disturbingly, that kind of control is growing.

You can look around the world and see even in countries that are supposedly democracies.

So we want to be clear what did the Buddha actually mean by right thought?

The intention of it is to create more freedom of heart and mind, not less.

So we want to keep that in mind.

Right thought is used in the service of increasing freedom.

And how does it do that?

It freezes from the thought patterns and states of mind and tangles in unhappiness and stress

and distress and suffering.

And instead, it strengthens those thought patterns and states of mind that disentangle us

from all of that.

So the intention of wise intention or right thought is to establish the heart, mind,

and healthy habits, and to establish them so deeply that they become second nature.

And when I wrote that, I thought, that's a weird saying in English, to have something

be second nature, because actually we want it to be first nature.

We want to be so steeped in skillful qualities that they become first nature, just who we are.

And, as I'm sure you all know, this isn't something that happens overnight.

It takes sustained intention.

And so wise intention is sometimes also translated as wise resolve,

because it requires patience and steadiness and determination and yes, resolve

to keep tending to what is going on in here, to keep releasing what's not so helpful

and to keep strengthening what is.

So, as we often say, simple, but not easy.

And a second challenge of working with the mind, maybe you noticed even in that meditation

just then, the sheer volume of thoughts and intentions and mental activity that's constantly

arising and passing away moment to moment.

Anybody got no idea what I'm talking about?

In some ways, it's the nature of the mind, not the first nature, but it is very common.

And thoughts seem to happen so fast.

It can be hard to even know where do we begin.

And I sometimes think the Buddha himself had the same problem, because actually he was a human being,

so it would be surprising if he didn't.

But in the discourses, it talks about when he sat down to examine his own mind.

And one of these discourses talks about him doing that, not too long before he attained complete liberation,

sometimes known as nibbana.

And he describes how he sat down and he decided to observe his mind

and pay particular attention to two types of thoughts, thoughts that either led to suffering,

or thoughts that led away from suffering towards ease and happiness and freedom.

And I like to read sometimes the actual words of the sutra.

And I know they're old fashioned, and it can take a little bit of work to get the gist of it.

But the reason I like to read them is because these days, as everything becomes more and more mainstream,

we often hear things attributed to the Buddha that are actually just feel good, pop psychology,

and they're nothing like what the Buddha said.

So, you know, we see on Instagram places.

The Buddha said, love yourself more than anybody in the world.

Not true.

And in fact, some of you might know there's a website where you can plug in quotes and find out

if they actually are from the Buddha or not.

And that website is, I can't believe it's not Buddha.

So, a useful resource.

So, that's just to say why I like to, from time to time, bring in the actual language.

So, this is the Buddha reported to be describing this.

He says, practitioners, before my awakening, while I was still only an unenlightened bodhisattva,

it occurred to me, suppose that I divide my thoughts into two classes.

And I said on one side, thoughts of sensual desire, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of cruelty.

And I said on the other side, thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of non ill will,

and thoughts of non-cruelty.

And so, he engaged in that process and goes on to describe what happened

when he clearly saw the effect of these thoughts of sensual desire of ill will and cruelty.

And so, I'll read you just what it says in relation to sensual desire.

As I abided thus, diligent, ardent and resolute,

a thought of sensual desire arose in me.

I understood this thought of sensual desire has arisen.

It leads to my own affliction, to others' affliction, and to the affliction of both.

It obstructs wisdom.

It causes difficulties.

It leads away from nibbana, from freedom.

And when I considered this, the affliction subsided in me.

Sorry, the sensual desire subsided in me.

So, he clearly saw sensual desire, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of cruelty,

the effect that they had, and when he understood that, they released sound simple.

But he goes on to name the opposite of those harmful thoughts.

He says, practitioners, whatever a practitioner,

whatever a practitioner frequently thinks and ponders upon,

that will become the inclination of one's mind.

If one frequently thinks and ponders upon thoughts of sensual desire,

one has abandoned thoughts of renunciation,

and then one's mind inclined as to thoughts of sensual desire.

And then he goes on to say the same for thoughts of ill will and thoughts of cruelty.

And the more we think those types of thoughts, the more they become, our nature.

So again, this is wise intention, wise thought.

So the Buddha specifically talked about wise intention as these three aspects,

cultivating the antidotes of greed, of ill will, and of cruelty.

Namely, as the antidotes cultivating non-greed,

often translated as renunciation, non-ill will or meta-kindness,

and non-cruelty as compassion.

So renunciation, kindness, compassion.

And this is what he meant by wise intention,

the intention to really strengthen those skillful states.

And I think for most of us, cultivating kindness and compassion makes sense.

How about renunciation? Does that have the same appeal?

Only on Sundays.

Very well said. And why is that in a way you're pointing to it

that with our Judeo-Christian heritage, this term renunciation tends to bring with it quite a lot of baggage?

So when I was looking at this and I just looked in the dictionary,

what does it actually mean? Relinquishing, abandoning, repudiating,

sacrificing, giving up, abandoning, resignation, abdication,

surrender for going, abstention, refraining from,

going without, doing without, giving up,

a shoole of, and rejection.

Hang in there, hang in there.

So pretty heavy.

And we have to, in a way, wipe, I was going to say our slates,

but that's pretty old-fashioned, wipe our hard drives, wipe our hearts and minds of all of that conditioning.

Because when the Buddha referred to renunciation, he almost always talked about it as the bliss of renunciation.

And in English, those two words just don't naturally go together.

The parly word that's translated as renunciation is nekama.

And according to one of my teachers, Gil-Franstal,

the original meaning of this was about going forth,

taking on the holy life, becoming a monastic,

living a life of voluntary simplicity,

which we as householders can do. We don't have to become monks and nuns.

But Gil says it in describing nekama,

the emphasis is on what we gain,

much more than what we're leaving behind.

And so another of my teachers, Joseph Goldstein,

I think he tries to convey this more positive aspect of nekama

when he refers to it as non-addiction.

So non-addiction maybe gives you the sense of the freedom that comes

when we're not so dependent on things out there,

on sense pleasures for our happiness.

And what I appreciate about thinking of nekama as non-addiction

is that it's asking us to look at our relationship to wanting,

wanting sense pleasures.

So we're not throwing the baby out with a bathwater.

We're not saying any kind of desire is wrong.

There are definitely healthy desires.

For example, the desire to live with more kindness,

with more compassion, with more clarity, with more simplicity.

So we're looking at wanting in terms of this whole spectrum of intensity.

So the simple desire to eat when we're hungry,

not necessarily harmful.

But if that desire gets distorted by all kinds of internal and external views and beliefs,

it can end up as a eating disorder which is harmful.

So we're looking at where does a simple wanting movement towards

turn into a bit more intensity, a bit more compulsive,

maybe into full-blown addictions.

So we're looking at our relationship to the wanting.

And when we bring more mindfulness to this whole terrain,

it gets easier to see the suffering that comes

when we are really caught in the grip of some kind of intense wanting.

And conversely, we can notice the relief that comes

when we manage to let that go.

So just to play with that, to see if you can get a sense of that in your own life,

just to invite us into a short contemplation.

And see if you can think of an example from your own life when maybe you were caught up

in that more intense wanting or longing.

Maybe there's a time when you did that have a sort of compulsive relationship to

getting something, could have been a material thing,

could be an experience, could be a person.

Might be something that happened a long time ago.

Maybe a time when you were a teenager. I think for many people,

teenagers are a time of quite intense longing.

Maybe there's a crush on someone.

Maybe you're a kid and you can remember being desperate for that Christmas present.

So just take a moment to see,

can you bring to mind a time in your life when wanting was pretty intense?

Maybe as you bring that to mind again now,

maybe there's a little echo of some of the feelings in the body,

or the emotions in the heart in the mind.

I don't see if you can reconnect with what it was like to feel that

pretty intense kind of wanting.

And then take a moment just to recognise that that has passed.

And you don't anymore have that same kind of intense desire.

And that same object,

well that same experience, well that same person

just doesn't have the same pull anymore.

Might be more subtle, but see if you can notice what's it like to be free

of that particular wanting.

Maybe you can know it as a positive sense of relief.

Well maybe it's more neutral to see if you can recognise the absence of desire.

Maybe appreciating the subtle freedom that comes from not being caught

in craving anymore.

So thank you for experimenting with that.

So maybe you got a sense from that experience or the more recent ones

that by its very nature, wanting agitates the heart and the mind.

It creates a sense of lack, something that we don't have, that we want to have.

And so it pulls us out of a present moment to some imagined future

when we're going to get what that thing is or that person is.

And so it disconnects us from our actual experience here and now

and takes us up into the realm of mental fantasy.

And ironically that fantasy often blinds us from the pleasant experiences

that are available right here and now.

And even if we do manage to get that thing we think we want,

what happens next?

Usually it's not quite as satisfying as we thought it was going to be.

Or maybe it is, but that satisfaction doesn't last very long.

And then the mind convinces us that we need something else to start chasing after.

Something else that's going to make us comfortable and satisfied and happy.

And then the whole cycle starts over again.

So when we pay closer attention to the effect of wanting,

it becomes obvious that it's pretty unpleasant.

And often it ironically pushes us into chasing even harder after the thing we think we want,

actually to get rid of the unpleasantness of wanting.

So I've shared this before, but for me it was a revelation to see that

because for wanting is unpleasant we often go after something

thinking it's the thing that's going to make us feel better.

But it's actually the relief of the wanting

is the thing that's really giving us more pleasure.

So if you think, for example, of eating snack food,

maybe you have a bag of your favorite potato chips or a chocolate bar

and it's sitting on the couch next to you and you have a couple of bites, it's really good.

And I think that's probably enough, but then part of you still wants it.

I just have one more.

And then you think, and that's really enough, but then the bag's still sitting there

and you think, okay, I'll have another one.

And then you think, okay, another one, another one, another one.

The agitation of the wanting, right?

Often, maybe it's just me.

I sometimes eat the whole whatever it was just to get it out of the way

so that it's not like pulling at me, not because I wanted to eat the whole

bar of chocolate or the whole bag of chips, but just to get rid of the wanting.

So that's a relatively benign example.

That the same thing applies to bigger and more intense wanting too.

And if you happen to notice that, it's crucial to meet it with kindness and compassion

because spinning out in self-judgment,

it often has the effect of fueling the habit even more.

The unpleasantness of self-criticism can push us to try and sue ourselves

by getting more of whatever that thing was that we thought we wanted.

It's a misplaced strategy to avoid the harshness of the inner critic.

So another book popped into my mind.

Do any of you know that book by the French author

Antoine de Saint-Ézouperie, The Little Prince?

It's years since I read it, and I wasn't a Dharma person then,

but I still remember a dialogue where one of the characters said something like

I drink because I'm ashamed of my drinking.

And I remember it because at the time it struck a chord, even a nerve,

not only in relation to drinking, but to other kinds of behaviour that had that sort of

compulsive shame-based basis.

So I'll read the exchange between the prince and what's called the drunkard.

Why are you drinking, The Little Prince asked?

In order to forget, replied The Drunkard.

To forget what inquired The Little Prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.

To forget that I'm ashamed, The Drunkard confessed, hanging his head.

A shamed of what asked The Little Prince, who wanted to help him.

A shamed of drinking concluded The Drunkard with drawing into total silence,

and The Little Prince went away puzzled.

So maybe some of you recognise something similar in your own history,

and there'll be a time at the end soon just to hear your reflections.

But before we bring it to a close, I just want to acknowledge,

I'd like to shift gears a little bit, so far mostly I've been talking about wanting on an

individual level, but it feels important to acknowledge that wanting, in fact greed,

is something that gets reinforced on a societal level too.

Wise intention, wise thought wise resolve, can really challenge some pretty deep rooted

cultural conditioning. Here we are in a capitalist society, and we're taught from a very early age

that happiness, control, acquisition, the more stuff we get, the more experiences we have,

the happier we'll be. An advertising and mainstream media are constantly telling us

that the only way to be happy is to have this and buy that and do this and become that,

and always make sure you stay in your ever shrinking comfort zone,

get more money, spend more money, own more things, acquire more property, and only then

do you have any chance of living happily ever after. And there are quite a few problems with that

approach. One is fundamentally it doesn't work. No matter how hard we try to satisfy our desires,

does always something else to want. So consumerism, capitalism, they push us into constant dissatisfaction.

They deepen that sense of lack, of not enoughness, of comparing ourselves to others,

and no matter how much we have, it doesn't feel at home. And we don't have to look far to see that

some of the most miserable people on earth are those who have the capacity to satisfy their

every desire. And in Buddhist cosmology, in the tradition, there's a particular type of hell

that's known as the hungry ghost realm. And in this imagery, these ghosts have enormous

bellies and pinhole mouths. So no matter how hard they try to satisfy themselves, they're always

starving. And I think some of the most influential people on the planet seem to be in that realm.

Never enoughness. Unfortunately for us, they're able to inflict that suffering on

entire societies too. So on a society-wide level, at least in the more developed world, one of our

major addictions is to comfort. And as a very broad generalisation, the more materially wealthy we are,

the less tolerance we have for discomfort. And the more time and energy and money we spend on trying

to stay in our comfort zones. And again, you might have noticed this in your own experience,

but the more we do that, over time those comfort zones tend to get smaller and smaller. And our

capacity to be with even mild discomfort starts to shrink. And the problem is that in the west,

most of us have a million ways that we can't escape discomfort. And it's just nature if we have a

choice. We're going to go for the easy option. Oh dear. But in the medium to long-term, that impulse

undermines our own well-being and the health of the entire planet too. So these teachings have

pretty broad implications. So in the Dhamma powder, it says,

by giving up a lesser happiness, one can experience greater happiness. A wise person would renounce

the lesser to behold the greater. Does that make sense? We want to, you know, we're taught to go

after instant gratification. But the more we can relinquish that, the better chance we have of

finding a deeper, more lasting, more sustainable happiness, sustainable for us, sustainable for the planet.

So there's a lot more that I could say here. But I want to just close with it.

Quite a well-known quote from Ajahn Chah, the Thai forest meditation master. Most of you probably

heard it before, but it's worth repeating. It's talking about relinquishment as letting go.

He says, do everything with a mind that lets go. If you let go a little, you will have a little

peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will

know complete peace and freedom. But that's really where this whole exploration of wise view,

wise intention is heading. Okay, I think that's enough for now. Thank you for listening.