How did walking become a joyful effort?
Answers
Explanation:
This evening I’d like to speak about joy in the practice and about joyful effort. Meditation is never meant to be approached as an ordeal, a grim task of chipping away at a rock face. The Buddha once said that this path is a path of happiness that leads to the highest happiness, which is peace. Some people when they hear that think he’s talking about everybody but them.
It is really important that there be a sense of joy in our practice. Joy doesn’t mean that we just have pleasant sensations, blissful experiences, or happy thoughts. It is something much deeper than that. If we are going to be able to really sustain a vital and deepening spiritual practice, not only in retreats but also in our lives, that sustainability will be rooted in the kind of joy we can find in our practice and in ourselves.
It takes effort for all of us to get up in the morning, to raise a child, to bring things we dream of to fulfillment. It takes perseverance. It takes effort for you to come to the meditation center, and to actually engage with the meditation hour after hour. To take one step after another in walking meditation when inwardly there can be countless voices encouraging you to flee, to be elsewhere—this too takes effort. It takes effort to sit with ourselves in stillness during times that are not always easy, when part of us knows there’s countless other things, more gratifying things, that we could be doing in that moment. We can look at all the journeys we make in our life, and the pervading theme in all those journeys is that they ask for effort.
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