The Contentment Sutra (SN 16.1)

150 inspiring quotes on the quality of contentment for spiritual progress (quote.cc)

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Long Discourses of the Buddha

"Contentment"? What the Avici is that? Imagine a disposition of mind, a mood, of everything being fulfilled, everything being fine, having enough... The Laws of Attraction and Vibration and One would be so proud we made it. Here we are, at peace. There is a useful opposing force we sometimes cultivate called "a sense of urgency" or samvega. Most of us being lazy, it's probably better to develop enthusiasm and a spiritual quickening. But, actually, too much striving does not help and is counterproductive. It ruins a practice: efforting, manly (virility or viriya) energy, straining. There's a place for it. But it's better to follow the Buddha's "gradual or progressive instruction" (anupubbikathā) to peace: calm (the result of virtue), wakeful stillness (cultivated as the absorptions), and fourfold mindfulness for insight the is the Middle Way that avoids extremes and is the direct path to enlightenment and nirvana.

In this spirit, here is British translator of Wisdom Publications' The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Digha Nikaya) Maurice Walshe:

SUTRA: "Contentment"

"Meditators, Kassapa [1] here is content with any old patchwork robe. He praises contentment with any robe, and he commits no offense of rule or etiquette [2] on account of his wardrobe.

"If he has no robe, he worries not; if he has, he enjoys the use of it without clinging or foolish attachment, committing no offense, aware of the danger [of developing attachment and clinging] he wisely avoids it [3].

"Kassapa is content with whatever food offerings he gets... whatever lodgings... whatever medicinal requisites... he enjoys the use of these without clinging or foolish attachment, committing no offense, aware of the danger, he wisely avoids it.

"Therefore, meditators, train yourselves in this way: We will be content with whatever robe... food offerings... lodgings... medicines... that we might get... We will enjoy the use of them without clinging or foolish attachment, committing no offense, aware of the danger, we will wisely avoid it.

"Meditators, I exhort you all using Kassapa as the example, or someone like Kassapa. Exhorted in this way, practice to gain the goal" [4].

NOTES

1. Maha (Great) Kassapa, one of the Buddha's chief disciples who later became the leader of the Monastic Sangha, who convened the First Buddhist Council, organized the Dhamma into a religion after the Buddha's final nirvana, and who was declared by the Buddha as the foremost in the practice of the sane ascetic practices.
2. Unlike, for example, the Buddha's half-brother, the princely monk Nanda (SN 21.8).
3. Nissara napañño: literally, "wise as to liberation."
4. Tathatta: the state of "thusness" or "suchness," nirvana (nibbana). With a different suffix there is the almost equivalent term tathata, found mainly in Mahayana texts, but also occurring in The Path of Purification (VM XVII, 6), etc., where it means "the state of being really so."

• Maurice O'Connell Walshe (trans.), Santuttham Sutta: "Discourse on Contentment" (SN 16.1 PTS: S ii 194 CDB i 662), with Pali title based on the PTS (Feer) edition; edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

What comes before mindfulness? Right effort

What is the meaning of Right Effort in Buddhism? (LotusBuddhas)

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What Comes Before Mindfulness? Right Effort and the Buddhist Path to Enlightenment

Effective Effort: How to Inner Garden

Western Theravada Buddhist monk Ajahn Sona (the abbot of Birken Forest Buddhist Monastery, British Columbia) published a paperback late in 2023. It has 5 out of 5 stars with 8 ratings, asking: What comes before the practice of mindfulness?

It's not a trick question, even though mindfulness is always in season, always of benefit [if done correctly and not practiced incorrectly while thinking it's mindfulness, which is where people get in trouble.]

Ajahn Sona answers just as one might think the Buddha would. Right Effort comes before mindfulness.

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  Noble (Aryan) = "Enlightening"

  [Only this isn't exactly true. The Noble or Ennobling (Enlightening) Eightfold Path, in spite of its name, is not a step-by-step guide to practice. One does not one day wake up, develop Right View, and then carry on through the remaining seven factors. It's nothing like that. Every factor supports every other factor. They co-arise, to a greater or lesser degree, simultaneously. They interdepend. They mutually support. So just as one is practicing fourfold Right Effort -- one is carrying on mindfully and boosting all of the other factors right at that moment.

1. the effort to prevent the arising of unwholesome states (eliminating harmful and unwholesome mental states that have already arisen);
2. the effort to generate wholesome states (like the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, guarding the sense doors, restraining the sense faculties);
3. the effort to maintain wholesome mental states that have already arisen;
4. the effort to keep these states free of delusion, to develop, increase, cultivate, and perfect them.]

Back cover of book

Right Effort is a sadly neglected factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. There are endless retreats about "mindfulness," but the sixth factor of the path, Right Effort, is woefully underappreciated and not talked about enough in Buddhist circles.

It's one of the most inspiring and beautiful of the path factors, full of so many clear instructions about how to navigate in the inner world and in the outer world.

Ajahn Sona teaching at Birken Forest

This Dharma book is an attempt to bring Right Effort out of the shadows of its glamorous sister, beautiful Right Mindfulness, by going back to the basic sutras of the Pali language canon and examining the language of the Buddha around this essential training.

[Remember, if one were practicing Right Effort correctly, one would be practicing mindfulness. and the practice of Right Mindfulness is essential to the Buddha's practice as a whole.]

• BOOK: What Comes Before Mindfulness? Right Effort and the Buddhist Path to Enlightenment
• Who is Ajahn Sona? Books, biography, latest update
• Ajahn Sona (Birken); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

My kick ass American Zen (video)

American Zen: Fighting For Our Lives TV mini-series in development (imdb.com)*

Muscle Bound Buddhist Doggone

Have you noticed how a lot of American Buddhists are bunch of sissies, snowflakes, and crybabies? Crying when they meditate, can't press into full lotus, and everything has to be so PC all the time? I'm going to do my Zen practice with viriya -- always mindful, purely vegetarian, ultra concentrated, and uber compassionate, with no ego. I mean, you can muscle these things, right? If Dōgen can do it, so can I. Look at these guns! "Nirvana or Bust"! That's what my tattoo is going to say...or my headstone. I'll report on my progress  to my girl guru Ananda. Join me!

What is a sesshin in Zen but a workout session and ordeal? (Great Vow Zendo, Oregon)

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*American Zen: Fighting For Our Lives is an upcoming TV mini-series we're excited about. It is not related to Wisdom Quarterly, Dharma Buddhist Meditation, Ananda, or Doggone.

ANANDA'S ADVICE

Zen Women: Beyond...

See, Doggone, the thing is, you're "efforting." You're trying to muscle it. It doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. But a fool who persists in his folly, there's something to be said for that. There's something to learn by that approach, like Sid did under the first tree. It was a sal (not a bodhi) tree. He pushed it to the extreme ascetic limit and nearly died. So carry on.

If Zen, Taoism, and Chinese Chan are all about being spontaneous and "natural," how can anyone will it? Christians and Jews joke, "If you want to make God (or the Universe) laugh, tell it your plans." Karma works in mysterious ways. How can you push it or "do" it? It just is. Let it be. Allow it rather than forcing it. Here, take a lesson from Zen Women.

• Ananda's further advice:
• The Life of Zen Master Dogen
• Did the Buddha ever talk about "Zen"?
• American Zen (IMDB); Comedian Arj "Sickest Buddhist" Barker; American Zen guy Doggone; I. Rony, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Is "magic" real? Caught live on VIDEO

Terrifive (youtube.com); Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly

With meditative alegria and esprit de corps, I can fly, I can fly...well, almost.

 

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe...

The East is still mysterious. From a real life "Superman" in Hong Kong to a girl with mind control powers in Thailand to a teleporter (deva?) in India, here are Five People with Superpowers Caught on Tape. 

Are any of these real or merely staged hoaxes? Some can't be real but others?

What a mystery to live in a world where beings have superpowers. It is entertaining to watch and wonder. Whether or not all of these are real, it is sure is that such things do exist.

coherIn Buddhism, today as in Ancient India, they are called siddhis (abhinna, iddhi) often associated with great yogis and ascetics living in silence and seclusion. They are the byproduct of very intense concentration known as "meditative absorption" or jhana (Sanskrit, dhyana).

What does concentrating mean?

Magic of flight or a block "South Park" style cut-out inserted in a hoax video?

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But "concentration" is a misleading English translation. It leads us to imagine squinting and trying, gritting our teeth and momentarily forcing our attention. 

Right concentration, samma samadhi, is the natural state of coherence that results from calming the mind (heart) until it rests in quiescence. Then it is "held all together," that is to say, collected. A cool, calm, and collected mind/heart is a "concentrated" one.

It is almost effortless, except that paradoxically to begin with it takes considerable effort (padhana, viriya) to stop, let go, relax, and allow. One sets aside and abandons the Five Hindrances and obstacles simultaneously develops the "Five Factors of Absorption" (jhana-anga). The heart/mind will cohere as we remain attentive in a state of serenity, focusing on a single object (such as the subtle breath, the prana, at the tip of the nose).

James McDonald: Energy in Meditation

(Wisdom Quarterly) Theravada Dhamma Society, Daly City, California

Bay Area Dharma discourse by James McDonald, Wednesday Nov. 18, 2009

The Five Balancing Factors:

1. Concentration
2. Energy
3. Wisdom (Investigation)
4. Faith
5. Mindfulness

Successful meditation depends on balanced effort. What is there to balance? There are five factors to keep balanced. Mindfulness (sati) keeps the other four in equilibrium: Concentration is balanced by energy or effort. Faith (confidence) is balanced by investigation or knowing.

Image: Artist's rendition of speaker's immediate past life experience (mentioned in a subsequent clip) as a saddhu (Indian holy man): a guru giving balancing instructions to a chela. Below: photo of an actual Indian saddhu. Note large white mustache.

American meditators have a characteristic problem: "They go on a retreat, and they're going to succeed! They're going to work and work and work, harder and harder...until they're guaranteed that they will succeed. And that really guarantees that they will fail -- because their energy is much too high. That's partly because they're confused by the translation of the word viriya [which is the root of the English word virile] into 'energy.' They think it means like a football player or a policeman or some big, active, strong thing.

"But if you look at the word carefully, viriya's function and characteristic are both supporting. It supports. Its manifestation -- the way it appears to us, to a meditator -- is to not collapse. And the simile which illustrates viriya is that if an old building is falling down, if you put a log, a timber inside that building, it is something that supports. Viriya is strength. But it's a gentle strength. It's a supporting strength. It's a persistent, supporting, gentle strength. And when Americans have this anxious, rambunctious, chaotic thing they think is viriya, [they're really so messed up]. So they really should have less."

Thai lay Buddhist meditators characteristically have the opposite problems as Americans. They sit, smiling, happy, but lacking in viriya, gentle/persistent work, strength, energy. The Buddha did not praise grasping and clinging even to jhanas (absorptions in meditation), to the anapana nimitta (the countersign of the breath). Doing so is an expression of greed. Instead, when we meditate we should sit down and establish an intention. And then we should let our minds incline toward that objective, the way the Ganges inclines toward the sea. The river is not struggling and fighting and desperately trying to get to the sea. It's a river. That's all it has to do. And the banks carry it to the sea.

"In the same way, if we -- with an intention, a direction -- if we simply work constantly, persistently, and gently at the current task (sati = mindfully, dhamma-vicaya = keenly investigating of phenomena), something called the Law of Dharma (Dhamma-Niyama) will carry us to the next stage. It's automatic, as long as we have that intention. You can't just sit there and sit there. You have to have the intention. And then if you work gently, gently at what you're about, your practice will naturally progress. So that's a much better way to handle this than all that energy or rather than just sitting looking out a window."

• Questions for the speaker: WQJ.edu@gmail.com

Five Good Powers

WQ edit of Nyanaponika Thera's 1970 translation (BPS)*

Meditative development of five powers (Photo: energyenhancement.org)

Five Powers of those in Higher Training

"Recluses, there are Five Powers of of one in Higher Training [Note 1] What are those five? The trainer's power of:

• Confidence
• Shame-in-wrongdoing
• Moral dread
• Energy
• Wisdom

"What is the Power of Confidence? Recluses, herein [this Dharma] a noble disciple has conviction: One believes in the enlightenment of the Blessed One. 'This, indeed, is a Tathagata, purified, fully enlightened, endowed with [clear] vision and [pure] behavior, sublime, knower of worlds, incomparable trainer of those to be tamed, teacher of devas and human beings, awakened, and blessed.'

"What is the Power of Shame-in-Wrongdoing? Recluses, herein a noble disciple has a pull of conscience: One feels reservations in deeds, words, and thoughts; one anticipates shame at the mere thought of anything harmful or unwholesome [n.2].

"What is the Power of Moral Dread? Recluses, herein a noble disciple contracts with apprehension at the very notion of unskillful behavior of body, speech, or mind; one experiences trepidation at even the thought of doing anything harmful or unwholesome.

"What is the Power of Energy? Recluses, herein a noble disciple lives with drive and motivation set upon the abandoning of everything unbeneficial and the acquiring of every that's of benefit; one is steadfast and strong in one's efforts, not shirking the task of doing things that are skillful.

"What is the Power of Wisdom? Recluses, herein a noble disciple is discerning; one is furnished with that knowing and seeing which perceives the rise and fall [of phenomena], which is noble and penetrating, and leads to the complete destruction of suffering [n.3].

"Recluses, these are the Five Powers of those in Higher Training. Hence, O recluses, you are wise to train yourselves: 'We will acquire the powers of conviction, conscience, trepidation, motivation, and vision possessed by those in higher training!' Thus would it benefit you to train yourselves!"

NOTES

1. Sekha-bala: Bala means "powers." A sekha ("one in training" or "a learner") is one who, in the pursuit of the three kinds of training (or sikkha in Virtue, Meditation, and liberating-Wisdom) has attained one of the four supramundane "Paths" (magga, i.e., Stream-entry, Once-returning, Non-returning, or Arhatship). Or it is someone who has attained to one of the three "Fruitions" (phala) pertaining to these Paths. Anyone who has attained the Fourth Fruition -- namely, full enlightenment -- is called an Asekkha, "one who has passed beyond the need of further training."
2. Whereas shame (hiri) with regard to wrongdoing is motivated by self-respect and is inward-looking, dread (ottappa) with regard to wrongdoing is outward-looking and motivated by respect for others. It is prompted by fear of social consequences such as blame, bad reputation, and punishment.
3. AN V.12 says: "Of these Five Powers of one in Higher Training, this is the highest, this is the one that hold them all together, namely, the power of wisdom."

(AN V.2 = Anguttara Nikaya or "The Discourse Collection in Numerical Order, Book of the Fives, Discourse 2")