Energy and effort into the practice and not having expectations that are unrealistic, okay. We would rather have more energy than to have lower expectations of ourselves. To a certain degree it is like you are walking down a tunnel and you are blind folded. What is going to happen? You are going to bash into the right, then you are going to go back to the middle. Then you are going to bash into the left, then you go back to the middle. When you are blindfolded, you just keep moving right and left and back and forth.
To a certain extent that is what it is like when we don't understand about a balance in the practice. We can think of this as being in the right side of the wall, or on the left. One side is too much energy and we balance it. The other side is too little energy and we balance it, so the problem is not having expectations and so on. With all of these types of balances it's as if we are blind folded in the beginning and we slowly develop more understanding, more understanding every time we bash into the wall.
So maybe you put in a lot of effort and energy with high expectations and if you are getting too much Dukkha, that's the time to let off the energy. If then you find that you've let off too much energy and you are not putting it into the practice and your practice is starting to disappear because you don't have enough expectations and effort then you are going to have Dukkha that way. So you've got to be sensitive as to the Dukkha that you have and where the Dukkha comes from.
Now, pressure and expectations: okay, we have a statue of the Buddha on each side, that's the highest goal that we are looking at, the top of the mountain, so to speak. But even according to Theravadin Buddhism none of us will make that one if we get enlightened now. If we become fully enlightened we will become what they call an Arahant. The Buddha has the Ten Perfections perfected. Buddhas have them perfected, but Arahants do not have them perfected. They are very high, but not all ten perfected. So our expectations actually don't have to be as high as the Buddha. But that's our goal, that's the top of the mountain. We never want to let go of the goal but we do want to be realistic as to what we can achieve, what we can do now.
When you were six years old, maybe you had a dream, "Hmmh, I want to be a doctor!" And a six year old might play being a doctor with their other six year old friends and so on, but they are not going to believe they can be a doctor, now. They are going to be realistic, they have to go to school, they have to go to a college, they have to go a medical school. In general, as the person is growing up they will be very realistic in the goal of being a doctor. When they finally get their degree or diploma or whatever, then they are doctor, that's fine.
Somehow in the Meditation practice, people are often not so realistic, they are not so objective. They see the Buddha as the goal and they think, "Oh, I should be there!". You know, it took the Buddha six years, right? There are a few of you in here who have done more than six years, the rest of you will probably do more than six years, too. Now, we are not the Buddha, he did it in six years, some other people did it in five minutes. But they had the Buddha teaching them, you know. So he was a bit advanced compared to where I am at.
Ok, we have the goal, but we want to be realistic about with what we can achieve so that maybe we don't put too much pressure on ourselves but instead keep coming back to the practice right now. Did you get angry this morning? If so, why? Examine, why did you get angry? What was the cause, how did it come about? How can you avoid it tomorrow morning? It's that simple.
That's your expectation you can put on to yourself today, that's the pressure you can put on to yourself today. Were you very loving in the Meditation you had this morning? If so, good. Can you do it again, that's the pressure you want to put on to yourself today. Can you do that same type of loving meditation again today? Can you make it even stronger, can you expand it more? That's the sort of pressure and expectation that are realistic.
You can have the goal for the future towards the end, that's good. But that's not what we want to put on to ourselves today. So, the expectations and the pressure that you want to put on to yourself today is what you can actually work with today. When you look at it in that way, then you can put all the effort, all the energy you possibly can into today and not be off-balance. But if you put all the effort and the energy into a goal that's a bit too advanced then you get off-balance.
It's good to think of this kind of balanced practice when we think of Theravadin Buddhism, and if you don't know Theravadin Buddhism has a nickname of "The Middle Way". Think about that tunnel again: If we walk straight down the middle we won't get hurt, we don't bang into the wall one way or the other, the "Middle Way" as much as possible.
And as we practice this Middle Way, the thought of the tuning of the strings comes in here, too. Rosemary uses that example in one of the evening talks later. You have a guitar, you tune the strings too tight, bing bing; you tune it too loose, plung, plung. It's got to be just right. So this is a Middle Way between the too tight and too loose.
A guitar has only six strings, that is not much to worry about, I learned that when I was young. But in here, how many strings do we have? We have thousands of strings. It's not an easy game, so we don't want to expect that we are going to be perfect tonight, but what we can do is just keep working with whatever is coming up today, putting all our efforts and energy into it.