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This month, we will practice the seventh step on the Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh says Right Mindfulness is “the energy that brings us back to the present moment.” When we cultivate it, we find ourselves not looking to the past or looking toward…
Practicing Right Effort in the most beneficial way means tuning the strings. A string musician came to visit Buddha to seek his advice. He was learning how to meditate but he couldn’t concentrate well and was feeling really frustrated. The Buddha asked him, “You play a…
Right Effort carries within it a quality we could describe as holy chutzpah. Here’s where my life took me last week: I did a brief dive into Kabbalistic teaching and stumbled onto something that feels totally related to Right Effort. I love it when this happens,…
Right Effort carries with it good energy. But what does that mean, exactly? Bhikkhu Bodhi writes, “Energy, the mental factor behind Right Effort, can appear in either wholesome or unwholesome forms… The exertion involved in Right Effort is a wholesome form of energy, but it is…
The fourth and final step of Right Action is to maintain the wholesome. Once we call up the beneficial seeds and cultivate them, we want to keep them thriving. Buddha says, “Herein the disciple rouses his will to maintain the wholesome things that have already arisen,…
The third step of Right Action is to cultivate the good. As a reminder, the first step is to prevent the unwholesome and the second is to abandon the unwholesome. But we can’t just run defense. To fully practice Right Effort, we also need to create…
The second step of Right Action is to abandon the unwholesome. This is our second week of practicing Right Action. As you recall, the first step is to prevent the unwholesome in the first place. Just keep it in check. But sometimes, despite our best efforts,…
The first of the four steps of Right Effort is to prevent the unwholesome. If you remember the metaphor of the living room and basement, we prevent the unwholesome things in the basement from taking up space upstairs. We keep them sleeping, so to speak. It’s…
This month we begin the sixth step along the Eightfold Path: Right Effort. Thich Nhat Hanh says “Right Effort is the kind of energy that helps us realize the Noble Eightfold Path.” This energy gets us there, so to speak. It keeps us engaged and practicing.…
In this final post on practicing Right Livelihood, here’s one final word of advice: just do your best. There are so many reasons why practicing Right Livelihood is complicated. Some of us feel stuck in jobs we may not believe in or agree with, but we…
