We’ll meet again this Wednesday, Aug 12, 5:30 at the Quilt Museum.
Our actions are our only true belongings. We cannot escape the consequences of our actions. Our actions are the ground on which we stand.
Last week, in our continuing study of actions, we focused on the “moral core” of our actions: our intentions. The Buddha taught that it is important to become aware of our intentions in every moment. How is that done? Well, we don’t discern them by trying to “see” them with our minds, rationally. Our true intentions are too subtle. We are more likely to “feel” them – in what Phillip Moffitt calls “our heart-mind.” So, rather than deciding what our intentions are (or should be), it’s more likely that our (probably unconscious) intentions inform who we are being in the moment. What we are called to do is simply pay attention.
We did an exercise last week where we looked for our intention in an action we had taken recently – perhaps an important conversation or project we’ve been working on. Not surprisingly, most of us recalled a moment when we detected an unwholesome intention, or we failed to live up to a wholesome intention. Maybe we caused harm to ourselves or someone else. And predictably, we feel pain (dukkha) when we recall it. We probably beat ourselves up about it. Why we do that is probably a question for psychologists. But Moffitt points out that this self criticism rarely keeps us from repeating that behavior, and that’s certainly been true for me.
I think it’s important to sit with the discomfort we feel about that moment, and really allow it to be there, knowing yourself as a human being who is suffering. (The R.A.I.N. practice is helpful here.) And then, to understand that we really can’t control or determine our intentions. As humans, we always have a mix of wholesome and unwholesome ones. They are the product of causes and conditions in our lives. But there are a couple of things we can do, the Buddha said, that will lead to our happiness:
We can practice the Brahma Viharas (metta, compassion, joy and equanimity) to cultivate and nourish our wholesome intentions.
We can contemplate our own goodness. Yes, indeed. This is so counterintuitive to our Western minds, but it is a practice highly recommended by the Buddha.
Let’s talk specifically about this practice of virtue contemplation (sīlānussati, in Pali) this Wednesday night. Then, the following week, we’ll do a metta-refresh.