[Khemako BhikkhuMember]

It can be helpful to think of the components of the 8-fold path as falling into 3 sections: sila (morality), samadhi (meditation), and pannya (wisdom). They overlap and interpenetrate each other in many ways, but for the purposes of discussion and understanding this is a very good framework.

Right effort is part of the samadhi section of the path: right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The term “right” can also be translated “skillful”, and in that sense right effort means meditative effort that leads in the direction you want to go. A contrast would be unskillful effort – e.g. putting energy into stirring up the mind with the delights of sensual indulgence, or mentally cataloguing the details of how awful your neighbor’s dog is. You could spend a lot of time making efforts in ways that lead away from the goal, rather than towards it. Right effort includes sitting down to meditate, directing your attention to the meditation object, resisting mental habits that you know stir up your mind, setting and renewing intentions to be mindful, and so forth. Insofar as they produce the results you’re seeking such efforts are skillful, and therefore “right”.

Right action is part of the morality section of the the path: right speech, right action, right livelihood. ‘Action’ refers to acts of the body, and more specifically how such acts affect other living beings. At its most basic it means refraining from acts motivated by greed (e.g. stealing), hatred (e.g. killing), or delusion (e.g. carelessness leading to harm). On the positive end of the spectrum of action, it means acts motivated by loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity.

Right intention is part of the wisdom section of the path, the other component being right view. The intention here is defined as intentions of renunciation, of non-ill-will, and of harmlessness or non-cruelty. To quote Ajahn Thanissaro’s translation of the Dvedhavitakka Sutta (MN 19): “Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking & pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness. If a monk keeps pursuing thinking imbued with renunciation, abandoning thinking imbued with sensuality, his mind is bent by that thinking imbued with renunciation.”
And the same for with non-ill will and with harmlessness.

One develops wisdom by, among other things, cultivating right intention – and of course it takes right effort to do that. This in turn naturally leads to right action. All the factors of the path, practiced rightly, support each other and incline the mind towards increasingly wholesome states.

-Khemako

[Khemako BhikkhuMember]

Matthew, thanks for the reminder about the distinction between awareness and attention. I’m still working on stabilizing the simultaneous perception of both faculties. It often seems I can only do one or the other, but occasionally when conditions converge I can experience both clearly, which in turn seems to further deepen both. But its a delicate and fragile balance as yet.

I haven’t read Paul’s book, though I’ve heard many of the anecdotes along the way, plus a lot of Ajahn Cha lore in general, just by being here at the monastery. It’s really great, part of the reason I ordained in this tradition.

-Khemako

[Khemako BhikkhuMember]

Hi Blake,
Thanks for the response. Somehow I overlooked the detailed walking practices in my earlier read-through of the Plain English documents, so now I’ve got a bit more to experiment with.

I’ve found working with precepts to be quite good for helping me to maintain mindfulness . . . at first. It has been with mixed feelings that I find my sila running on automatic pilot after a few years at the monastery. The precepts are becoming habits now and the amount of attention required to keep from running afoul of them has become much less. I’m far from perfect in that area and I have to keep setting challenges for myself around things like speech to push the refinement envelope.

The best thing about habitual sila is that there’s very little remorse to stir up the mind. In my case it mostly gets stirred up around events, interactions, work projects, and suchlike.

You mentioned that Ven. Culadasa has an off the cushion awareness exercise for most of the stages of the samatha development. Could you brief me on those?

Kind Regards,
-Khemako

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