FIVE IDEAS THAT CAN REALLY CHANGE YOUR LIFE

‘You are terrible, but happily for you, you are not you.’ Vernon Howard.

Words have power—for better or for worse—and ideas have even greater power. An idea that expresses an eternal, metaphysical truth is the most powerful thing in the world. 

Here are five empowering ideas that have made a huge difference in my life. They have lifted me out of the depths of despair.

1.   You are be-ing

Life is pure be-ing-ness actualized. Life forever gives of itself to itself so as to create more life in one form or another. The tree of life is be-ing-ness, or Be-ing, itself. I AM-ness. Oneness. It is the impersonal principle of life that is forever becoming personal as you and me and all other persons and things.

Life is the one formless, source-less, essence-less, unlimited, unsearchable, self-existent, self-knowing, self-giving, absolute, omnipresent, indestructible, and abundant self-existence that forever takes form—incarnating as you, me, and everything—but which is never even for a moment absorbed by the innumerable objects of its self-expression. 

The omnipresence of life forever manifests itself as the eternal now by means of an endless process or renewal of the present moment. Each moment is a ‘centre’, for want of a better word, of life's own consciousness. Forms of life constantly change. No form is permanent. Indeed, every form will pass away in time, but the essence of life is formless and eternal. It never passes away. Yes, the life that takes shape in one form or another can never be destroyed. You are life itself—a unique individualization and expression of life. 

Yes, you are part of life’s self-expression, and life cannot other than be. You are be-ing and you are also be-coming. Indeed, you are always in a state of becoming because change is the essence of be-ing-ness. This means that you are constantly changing whether for better or for worse. Once you fully understand this metaphysical truth, you are ready to take charge of your life.

2.   You are consciousness

Life is consciousness. We are life itself—an integral part of life’s self-expression. Each one of us is an inlet and an outlet of consciousness. 

The materialist view that asserts that the mind and the brain are one and the same—the so-called mind-brain identity theory—is not supported by recent discoveries in neuroscience and quantum physics as respects the nature of reality. Those discoveries tend to show that the mind and the brain are not co-extensive or identical, and that mind or consciousness is the creator and governor of so-called matter. 

Because you are be-ing, be-coming and consciousness, you have the powers of thought and observation. There is a time to think and, yes, a time to simply observe … choicelessly. Listen to these words of J. Krishnamurti, pictured right:

I wonder if you have ever walked along a crowded street, or a lonely road, and just looked at things without thought? There is a state of observation without the interference of thought. Though you are aware of everything about you, and you recognize the person, the mountain, the tree, or the oncoming car, yet the mind is not functioning in the usual pattern of thought. I don't know if this has ever happened to you. Do try it sometime when you are driving or walking. Just look without thought; observe without the reaction which breeds thought. 

There will always be a time for rational, critical thought, analysis, judgement and interpretation but if you do these things every second of the day, you will end up with analysis paralysis. Learn the art of choiceless awareness. Look. Observe. Be attentive. Be aware. That is what mindfulness is all about.

3.  You are what you think

No, I am not contradicting myself. As I have said, we need to think. This is the first verse of the Dhammapada according to one famous English translation: ‘Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.’ The same idea is expressed in the Hebrew Bible: ‘Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts’ (Prov 4:23); ‘For as a person thinks in their heart, so are they’ (Prov 23:7).

As we are consciousness, we must watch your thoughts. Are our thoughts positive or negative? Positive thinking has its detractors these days but I have never seen any benefits in negative thinking. Positive thinking is good for the mind and the body. Positive thinking releases life-affirming, healing chemicals into the brain and the body. Negative thinking releases life-destroying, malignant chemicals into the brain and the body. It’s clear which one is better for us. Of course, we must be realistic thinkers. We need to always see things-as-they-really-are. The true positive thinker is a realistic thinker who sees things-as-they-really-are but at the same time refuses to be deflected, let alone overwhelmed or defeated, by that which is negative. The true positive thinker never dwells on those things.

So, in the words of Plato, ‘Take charge of your thoughts; you can do what you will with them.’

4.  You cannot change yourself

The ‘I’ of you cannot change the ‘me’ of you. One of my all-time favourite spiritual teachers Alan Watts, pictured left, has this to say in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity about the wrong way to embark upon self-improvement:

I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good ‘I’ who is going to improve the bad ‘me.’ ‘I,’ who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward ‘me,’ and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently ‘I’ will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make ‘me’ behave so badly.

The reason the good ‘I’ can’t change the bad ‘I’ is because they are one and the same and they exist only as self-images in our mind. Yes, all the 'I's' and 'me's' in your mind are little 'selves' that brought about by thought. These 'selves' have no separate, independent reality in and of themselves. They appear to be 'solid,' 'fixed,' and 'permanent,' but they are not. They are the product of thought which divides itself. You have hundreds of little 'selves' within you. None of them are the real you—that is, the person that you are. The person that you are is a mind-body complex in respect of which both physical characteristics and states of consciousness can be ascribed. Only the person is ontologically real. 'Selves' come and go; they wax and wane. They have no power and have no separate and independent existence from the person that you are.

You, the person that you are, can change. First, you, the person, must want to change. Secondly, you, the person, must do what is necessary and appropriate to change. The power to change is within, but it is always a ‘power-not-oneself’. Self has no power. Self cannot change self. The ‘I’ of you can never change the ‘me’ of you. Never forget that. Never.

Vernon Howard, a great spiritual author, wrote:

While there is no you who can rescue you, there can be an impartial awareness of the rescuing process. The rescue is complete when the awareness is complete.

What is this 'rescuing process' alluded to by Howard? It is none other than the process of choiceless awareness from one moment to the next, undertaken by the person that you are. Howard wrote:

You can begin to catch your false behaviour by asking the question ‘Who said that?’ and you will catch false personality being pleasant, sarcastic, and so on. As often as you can, you will interrupt yourself and say ‘Who said that?’ and if it is negative in any way at all, that is the invented self speaking in your name. 

All your little, false selves purport to speak in your name. Give them no power over you. They have no power in and of themselves. You give them power only when you believe them to be real. Don't do that!

5.   Acceptance is the answer to all your problems

‘On the acknowledgement of what is there is the cessation of all conflict,’ said Krishnamurti. Yes, acceptance—that is, acknowledging what is—is the answer to all your problems. Now, I am not saying that we should simply give in. No, not at all. However, before we can change we must first accept the reality of what is. Alcoholics cannot recover from their disease until they first accept that they are alcoholics. There’s more, though. Krishnamurti has stated a metaphysical truth of supreme importance, namely, that once we acknowledge what is, conflict in the form of resistance and the like comes to an immediate end. We must surrender in order to gain victory. Never forget that.

There are many other empowering ideas that can change your life. Many of these I have explored and discussed in other posts over the years—ideas such as the law of indirectness (don't attempt to put a thought or problem out of your mind directly but rather let the problem slip from the sphere of conscious analysis’), the principle of non-resistance (what you resist, persists), truth is a pathless land (we are always in direct and immediate contact with truth, so there is no separation or distance between us and truth), and truth is a moment-to-moment experience (truth is dynamic, not static).

I love empowering ideas. As Victor Hugo said, ‘Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.’

All power to you!

Note. The substance of this post first appeared on September 2, 2016 as 'Five Empowering Ideas That Can Change Your Life Forever'. Some new material has been added while some material in the original post has been omitted.

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MEDITATION IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Those words – meditation is not what you think – were written on a bookmark I once received when I purchased a book from a metaphysical bookshop.

For some time – I must be slow or dim-witted – I pondered what those words meant. They seemed to be saying to me that meditation was something different from what I thought it was. Well, that was certainly true, for I was to learn that meditation was indeed something very different from what for many years was my limited understanding of the practice. Then, one day, it dawned on me what was the real ‘meaning’ of the phrase. Meditation is not what you think. Meditation is not about thinking. Meditation is not thinking at all. Meditation is something other than thinking.

What, then, is meditation? Well, meditation is many things such as waiting, listening, sitting in silence, observing, being attentive, being aware – that is, choicelessly aware – of the content of the action of our mind as well as the action of our surrounds.

Now, when we think about the activity of our mind – in particular, our conscious mind – we come to be aware of, and observe, what J. Krishnamurti (pictured) referred to as ‘the activity of the self’. Actually, there is more than one self in our mind. There is, for example, the ‘self that is judgmental’, the ‘self that hates immigrants and refugees’, the ‘self that loves pleasure’, and so on. Each of our innumerable likes, dislikes, views, opinions, beliefs, attachments and aversions is a ‘self’ of sorts. They are all our little ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ – and there are literally hundreds, even thousands, of them. The combined activity of these ‘selves’, none of which is the true person each of us is, is known as the ‘activity of the self’. This activity causes us no end of trouble. What sort of trouble? Self-obsession, self-centredness, self-absorption as well as addictions, obsessions and compulsions of various kinds. The activity of the self results in all manner of thoughts, words and deeds that are selfish

This is what Krishnamurti has to say about the activity of the self and meditation (This Light in Oneself, Seventh Public Talk in Saanen, July 1973):

Where there is the activity of the self, meditation is not possible. This is very important to understand, not verbally but actually. Meditation is a process of emptying the mind of all the activity of the self, of all the activity of the ‘me.’ If you do not understand the activity of the self, then your meditation only leads to illusion, your meditation then only leads to self-deception, your meditation then will only lead to further distortion. So to understand what mediation is, you must understand the activity of the self. …

Meditation can assist a person to become free from the bondage to self – free from the activity of the self. The ‘secret’ is to sit quietly and watch, non-judgmentally, the activity of the self. In the words of Krishnamurti (The First and Last Freedom, Chapter 19 (‘Self-Centred Activity’)):

If you watch yourself and are aware of this centre of activity, you will see that it is only the process of time, of memory, of experiencing and translating every experience according to memory; you also see that self-activity is recognition, which is the process of the mind. … Is it possible for the mind ever to be free from self-centred activity? That is a very important question first to put to ourselves, because in the very putting of it, you will find the answer. That is, if you are aware of the total process of this self-centred activity, fully cognizant of its activities at different levels of your consciousness, then surely you have to ask yourselves if it is possible for that activity to come to an end - that is, not to think in terms of time, not to think in terms of what I will be, what I have been, what I am. From such thought, the whole process of self centred activity begins; there also begin the determination to become, the determination to choose and to avoid, which are all a process of time. We see, in that process, infinite mischief, misery, confusion, distortion, deterioration taking place. Be aware of it as I am talking, in your relationship, in your mind.

In his many talks and writings Krishnamurti would often talk about the futility of self-forgetfulness, pointing out that there is no means of forgetting the self. In his Commentaries on Living, Series I, Chapter 41 ('Awareness')), we read:

Problems will always exist where the activities of the self are dominant. To be aware which are and which are not the activities of the self needs constant vigilance. This vigilance is not disciplined attention, but an extensive awareness which is choiceless. Disciplined attention gives strength to the self; it becomes a substitute and a dependence. Awareness, on the other hand, is not self-induced, nor is it the outcome of practice; it is understanding the whole content of the problem, the hidden as well as the superficial.

‘Problems will always exist when the activities of the self are dominant.’ How true that is! It is especially true of the addict – and we are all addicts of one kind or another. Not all of us are addicted to alcohol or other drugs but each one of us is addicted to certain ways of thinking, feeling and acting. We are addicted to our own views, opinions and beliefs, our own likes and dislikes. Meditation, practised as choiceless awareness, helps us to disengage, to dis-identify, from the objects of our addictions. When we observe – non-judgmentally – the activity of the self diminishes and reduces in intensity. In the words of Krishnamurti, we come to understand ‘the whole content of the problem, the hidden as well as the superficial’.

Meditation is not what you think. Meditation is not thought or words. Learn to empty your mind of the activity of the self. Refuse to identify with it. You are not those false selves that cause you so much grief and angst. You are a person among persons. A person caught up in the activity of the self is never free. He or she is in perpetual bondage to self. However, it need not be so. Meditate. Practise emptying your mind of the activity of the self. Let it go. Don’t hold onto it. Then, and only then, will you be free.

MINDFULNESS IS NOT CONCENTRATION

The great Indian spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti [pictured right] spoke a lot about mindfulness without hardly ever mentioning the word. Listen to these words from his wonderful book Freedom From the Known:

‘Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment, the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water.’ 

Concentration is fixed and focused in a particular moment. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a moment-to-moment activity … from one moment to the next and then the next and then the next and so on. 

Of course, we all need to concentrate from time to time on what we are doing. For example, we may be trying to balance a set of accounts or solve a legal or similar problem. We certainly need to concentrate when we’re engaged in any such activity. However, we do not need to concentrate as such each and every second of each and every minute of each and every hour of each and every day. What we need to do is to be attentive and aware of what’s happening in and around us.

A concentrated mind is anything but an attentive and aware mind. The concentrated mind excludes everything other than that the subject of your concentration. Awareness, on the other hand, is never exclusive. It is inclusive, universal and all-encompassing. Mindfulness — that is, bare (that is, diffused and unconcentrated) attention and choiceless (that is, non-judgmental and non-interpretative) awareness — is the direct, immediate and unmediated perception of ‘what is’ … as it actually happens from one moment to the next!

When we concentrate on something, we are totally blind, that is, inattentive, to all other things. Those other things quickly become the past without our ever having experienced them. Don’t let reality — that is, what happens from one moment to the next — die on you. Don’t experience it as a past event. Otherwise, you will instantly lose the immediacy, directness and actuality of the experience.

The Buddha advised us to observe and watch closely ... that is, mindfully ... whatever is occurring in time and space in the here-and-now, in the moment, from one moment to the next. Not only watch, but the Buddha went on to say, ‘and firmly and steadily pierce it.’

So, my friends, pierce the reality of each here-and-now moment-to-moment experience. Be attentive and aware. Only then can you say you are alive and no longer living in the past. Only then can you truly say you are living mindfully.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT MINDFULNESS FROM FRENCH POET CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

But what can eternity of damnation matter to someone
who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

Charles Baudelaire.

I am fascinated with the person and poetry of Charles Baudelaire [pictured right and below]. I am sure that says more about me than I would like to know or share.

Expelled from school, and extremely morbid and tortured, Baudelaire lived a life of excess and ruined his health by overindulgence in alcohol and addiction to opium. He attacked bourgeois complacency and one finds a ruthless honesty in all his writing. His poems are very much about evil and corruption, decadence and debauchery, depravity and damnation, physical and moral dissolution, and sin and redemption, the latter, at least in Christian terms, seemingly impossible in Baudelaire’s view. Still, the ideal can at times be perceived to shine through the transient, the ugly and even the sordid. Even the infinite can at times be dimly perceived – a wonderful solace – even if it remains unattainable except in death with which he appeared to have a special fascination. Take, for instance, these lines from Baudelaire’s poem ‘The Living Flame’:

Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light

As candles lighted at full noon; the sun

Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.

… and these two quatrains from ‘Hymn to Beauty’:

What matter, if thou comest from the Heavens or Hell,
O Beauty, frightful ghoul, ingenuous and obscure!
So long thine eyes, thy smile, to me the way can tell
Towards that Infinite I love, but never saw.

From God or Satan? Angel, Mermaid, Proserpine?
What matter if thou makest—blithe, voluptuous sprite—
With rhythms, perfumes, visions—O mine only queen!—
The universe less hideous and the hours less trite.

It’s not that I like Baudelaire’s poetry all that much, although one must admit that although his vision of life is for the most part bleak, he wrote so very well and with passionate imagination. He could see the beauty even in ugliness and degradation. No wonder Paul Valéry called Baudelaire the most important poet of the 19th century. He certainly was the greatest lyric poet of his age. Having said that, after reading several of his poems in one sitting you can end up quite depressed. At the very least, you feel like you need a good, long bath or shower. Take, for instance, these lines from his poem ‘Spleen’:

I’m like some king in whose corrupted veins

Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains;

Who, young in years, is old in all distress …

Then there’s these lines from ‘Heauton Timoroumenos’:

I am the vampire at my own veins,

  one of the great lost horde

Doomed for the rest of time, and beyond,

  ‘to laugh – but smile no more.’

… and these from ‘Beyond Redemption’:

A damned soul descending endless stairs
Without banisters, without light,
On the edge of a gulf of which
The odor reveals the humid depth ...

Of course, there are some quite uplifting, even lyrical, poems. Here’s a quatrain from ‘Exotic Perfume’:

When, with closed eyes, on a hot afternoon,
The scent of thine ardent breast I inhale,
Celestial vistas my spirit assail;
Caressed by the flames of an endless sun[.]

However, the mood of foreboding, torpor and gloom is never far away. Take, for instance, this quatrain from ‘Autumn Song’:

The whole of winter enters in my Being--pain,
Hate, honor, labour hard and forced--and dread,
And like the northern sun upon its polar plane
My heart will soon be but a stone, iced and red.

Now, we can learn a lot about mindfulness from reading the poems of Baudelaire. You see, mindfulness is seeing things-as-they-really-are in a non-reflexive way. Choiceless awareness, to use a phrase often used by the Indian spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti. Here are some lines from Krishnamurti:

When you look at a flower, when you just see it, at that moment is there an entity who sees? Or is there only seeing? Seeing the flower makes you say, ‘How nice it is! I want it.’ So the ‘I’ comes into being through desire, fear, ambition [all thought], which follow in the wake of seeing. It is these that create the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ is non-existent without them. (J. Krishnamurti, The Krishnamurti Reader, ed by Mary Lutyens (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), p 245.)

Mindfulness is choiceless – that is, non-judgmental – awareness. You look, you see, you observe. You touch, you feel. You hear. You smell. You taste. There is no reflexive thought about these experiences. You, the observer, are one with the observed. You are one with the experience and the thing or occurrence experienced … as it happens … as it unfolds. Awareness without choice, judgment, condemnation, interpretation, comparison or analysis. The French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre [pictured below] astutely understood Baudelaire:

‘Baudelaire’s fundamental attitude was of a man bending over himself—bending over his own reflection like Narcissus. With Baudelaire there was no immediate consciousness which was not pierced by his steely gaze. For the rest of us it is enough to see the tree or the house; we forget ourselves, completely absorbed in contemplation of them. Baudelaire was the man who never forgot himself. He watched himself see; he watched in order to see himself watch; it was his own consciousness of the tree and the house that he contemplated. He only saw things through this consciousness …’ (Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, trans from the French by Martin Turnell (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1950), p 22.)

Yes, Baudelaire sees things through his consciousness of—himself. Here are some more lines from ‘Heauton Timoroumenos’:

I hear it in my voice - that shrillness,
that poison in my blood!
I am the sinister glass in which
the Fury sees herself!

Baudelaire is not alone. If we are truly honest with ourselves, most of us bend over ourselves much of the day. We bend over our own reflection like Narcissus who, according to the Greek version of the myth, saw his own reflection in the water and was so entranced by the reflection of himself that he died at the banks of the lake. Why? Because he was unable to obtain the object of his desire. You see, the object of his desire was nothing more than an image. A self-image. It’s the same with us. We have lots of images of ourselves in our mind but they are just that—images. They are not the person that we really are. When we experience reality as it unfolds from one moment to the next we tend to experience and interpret that reality through our various self-images. The result? An indirect, non-immediate, distorted experience. Reflexive consciousness as opposed to mindfulness.

So, what exactly can we learn from Baudelaire about mindfulness? Well, this. Don’t let your ‘watching self’ distort your experience of life as it unfolds moment by moment. Learn to see things-as-they-really-are by merely observing them. Resist the temptation to compare, contrast, analyse and judge. Just enjoy the experience of watching and observing. In other words, be choicelessly aware. Be ever mindful of the intrusive ‘watching self’. Once you become aware of its presence, it ceases to be a problem. It disappears. Let it go. You don’t need it at all.

Practise mindfulness at every moment of the day. Stop watching yourself watch. Just watch, look and see. That, my friends, is the art and science of living mindfully.

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MINDFULNESS IS MORE THAN JUST STAYING ALERT AND BEING PRESENT

Far too many modern writings on the subject of mindfulness over-emphasize the importance of staying alert and awake and being fully present in the now. Of course, those things are not unimportant. Indeed, they are of great importance. However, there is much, much more to mindfulness than just those two things.

There is a phrase often used in writings on mindfulness—‘choiceless awareness’. I often use that phrase but I was not its originator. I think I first heard the phrase used in the talks of the Indian spiritual teacher J.Krishnamurti [pictured left] but I can’t be even sure that he was the originator of the phrase. Actually, it doesn’t matter who first used those words. The important thing is what the words mean.

Choiceless awareness. The word ‘choiceless’ is of paramount importance. The task before us is to be aware of whatever may form the content of our awareness. The content—thoughts, feelings, memories, images, bodily sensations and so forth—is constantly changing. To be choicelessly aware is to be aware of whatever may be our internal and external experience. We cease to label that experience, or any part of it, as good or bad or indifferent. It just is. Such is life.

The American Buddhist monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu [pictured right], in a short essay titled ‘Mindfulness Defined’, writes:

Equanimity means learning to put aside your preferences so that you can watch what's actually there. Patience is the ability not to get worked up over the things you don't like, to stick with difficult situations even when they don't resolve as quickly as you want them to. But in establishing mindfulness you stay with unpleasant things not just to accept them but to watch and understand them. Once you've clearly seen that a particular quality like aversion or lust is harmful for the mind, you can't stay patient or equanimous about it. You have to make whatever effort is needed to get rid of it and to nourish skillful qualities in its place by bringing in other factors of the path: right resolve and right effort.

Equanimity is a beautiful word. It even sounds lovely. Equanimity is defined as a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. Serenity is another word meaning more-or-less the same thing. When we are disturbed by someone or something, our equanimity comes goes out the window. In order to have equanimity we must learn to simply stay with what is. We must learn to look, observe, and be prepared to ‘watch what’s actually there’. That means we must ‘put aside [our] preferences’. Ordinarily, we choose to be aware of some things and not others, and we refuse to watch those things we label as bad or even indifference. True mindfulness is staying with whatever may be the content of our moment-to-moment experience, without labelling or judging that content as good, bad or indifferent.

All this requires patience, as Ajahn Thanissaro points out. Patience is not something we develop overnight. I know that. I am 61 years of age and I am still trying to learn to be more patient. That’s where mindfulness practice can help. As we practise mindfulness we become more patient over time. I still need a lot more practice. I hope I live long enough.

Ajahn Thanissaro provides a helpful working definition of patience—‘the ability not to get worked up over the things you don’t like’, and ‘to stick with difficult situations even when they don't resolve as quickly as you want them to’. We all know that we are upset not so much by what happens but by our reaction to what happens. It’s our reaction that hurts us, and often our reaction is automatic and self-defeating. We all need more patience. The next time you find yourself upset, may I suggest that you do the following. Watch what’s happening. Stay with it. Follow it through. Self-observation leads to self-knowledge, and self-knowledge leads to self-cure. If you can stay with and simply observe the content of your experience, rather than run away from it, and not label or judge that content, you will gain insight into the workings of your mind. You will come to understand that you have always been your own worst enemy, for you, and you alone, are the originator and cause of your self-defeating behaviour.

Letting go is very important, but so is sticking with difficult situations that we would rather not face. Life just is.

Ajahn Thanissaro refers to ‘right resolve’ (also known as ‘right intention’ and ‘right mindedness’) and ‘right effort’ (also known as ‘right diligence’). Those two things are just two of the eight path factors in the Noble Eightfold Path. Right resolve leads to right understanding, right effort, and right attentiveness. It means, among other things, watching our thoughts, for as we think, so we are. Right resolve also means reflecting upon our thoughts, words and deeds. Are they true? Are they necessary? Are they kind? (That threefold test of the rightness or wrongness of any proposed words or deed is known as 'The Three Gates'.)

Right effort is fourfold in nature and involves the effort to prevent unwholesome qualities from arising, the effort to extinguish unwholesome qualities (for example, greed, anger and resentment, and lust) that already have arisen, the effort to cultivate skilful or wholesome, qualities (especially generosity, loving kindness, and wisdom) that have not yet arisen, and the effort to strengthen the wholesome qualities that have already arisen. Whether you are a Buddhist or not, right resolve and right effort are of extreme importance.

True mindfulness is more than just a calm acceptance of what is. It means being prepared to change what needs to be changed in one’s life and making the effort to make those changes.