SAMMĀ VĀYĀMA (RIGHT EFFORT)

RIGHT EFFORT: Effort is energy deliberately directed in a certain direction.  It can be physical; the effort to push a broken down car: or mental: the effort to learn multiplication tables.  If the effort is successful, the aim of the action is achieved (the car is moved, the tables are learned).  A successful action is not necessarily a right action: “when the bomb exploded it killed everyone in the shop”.  Nor is an effort necessarily a right effort; “an effort was made to beak the Jewellers’ shop window”.

Right Effort is an effort that has a wholesome action as its goal.

A wholesome action is an action that does not cause suffering to other living beings.  Experimentation on animals is unwholesome action irrespective of the motivation.  Wholesome actions arise from wholesome thoughts.

Efforts to empty the mind of unwholesome thoughts and feelings constitute Right Effort.  Negative thoughts and feelings include cruelty, jealousy, envy, hatred, anger, ill will and even laziness.  Positive thoughts and feelings are those that are directed towards the happiness and well-being of others and oneself and also energy, determination and courage.

Mettā shines;

the cancerous growths

which cling to the living cells

of the Children of Light

shrivel into powdery dust.

New Project: MINDFULNESS

JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE

If you have nothing better to do, there is no reason not to do what you are doing. 

If you have got something better to do, then there is no reason not to be doing it.


  The splendour of a hundred kings
  fades like the bloom on a butterfly’s wings.
  The meanest flower that blows
  goes the same way the forest goes.

  All is consumed by worm or fire;
  nothing needs building any higher.
  The rattling of teeth within the jaw
  mocks the tongue murmuring:

  “Please, some more!”


New Project :  SAMMĀ VĀYĀMA (RIGHT EFFORT)

SAMMĀ ĀJIVA (RIGHT LIVELIHOOD)

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor
Everyman is his own gaoler;
shuts the door and turns the key,
ends up where he wants to be,
looking at what he needs to see
- you for you and me for me.


Right Livelihood supports your Life. 

Working for a living may take up most of your working day. 

Would you do it if you didn't have to?  It involves sacrifice.  Is the life you lead worth that sacrifice?  

What are you working for? 

What is the purpose of the work you do to earn food, clothing and shelter and the other things you consider necessities?

Are you working in order to go to work?  

What is the purpose of your life?

    Walt Disney lies in a deep, deep freeze
    Like a packet of Smedley's frozen peas.


New Project: Justify your Existence

SAMMĀ KAMMANTA (RIGHT ACTION)

RIGHT ACTION

When you throw yourself
down from the top of high mountains,
the Earth does not take you
into her arms
and comfort you.

When you kneel
and kiss the ground,
the Earth does not praise
your humility.

It is for this reason
that she is called
‘The Great Mother’.

Every moment
is a fork in the road.
And every fork
is always the same:
the choice between right and wrong.

The wrong is always
arrogating to oneself
things which do not belong
to oneself.

The right is always
following the Light.


        *  *  *


Time drifts away
as mist fades on mountain.
The world itself is hardly more substantial.
Living water springs
from life’s fountain
yet it runs dry,
leaving powdering bones
bleaching in the sun.

Molecules of arm and leg and brain
are rebels and would all be free again.
The whole pageant of our days and hours
runs only till we lose our feeble powers.

As children we play out our days
with sandcastles and fantasies
until the turning tides erase
what we work so hard to raise,
struggle to protect and call our own –
fragments of things, at very best, on loan.

Upwards our thoughts might usefully aspire;
nothing down here needs building any higher.

Deal justly with your neighbour
and make of him your friend
and in your inner garden, labour
until you reach your end.



New Project: SAMMĀ ĀJIVA (RIGHT LIVELIHOOD)