Question

Please talk more about idealistic wishes, judgment, and their relation to Right Effort. Are there any special questions we can work with to find the truth of right and wrong effort?

Answer

Yes, as far as Right Effort and idealism and judgment are concerned, to balance these we need first to have the basic practice of objective awareness. This helps to lessen judgment and just see things for what they are; because if things are arising in the present - if they are present - there is no use judging them, because they have already arisen. This is where we put forth the effort to let go of the things that have already arisen - that is Right Effort at that moment. So idealistic wishes tend to not wish whatever is present to be present. It has to do with guilt, also. We want something else to be present, we want to have a better understanding of ourselves or think that whatever is arising shouldn't arise. Therefore, we don't accept the results of our past conditioning - idealistic wishes. So the Right Effort at that time is to bring up the effort to have objective awareness of the hindrances, and the effort to bring up compassion for ourselves and perhaps even an examination of Cause and Effect.

Wrong effort is often the pushing away of what has already arisen, not wanting to see it - that is aversion, or bringing up judgment as they said. But then we make a determination, again a determination is very helpful to try to understand the causes for its arising - what are the causes for its arising? If we see it is in relationship to our lifestyle, and then we bring up an effort to prevent - one of the Four Great Efforts - by examining the negative lifestyle that cause these things to arise so frequently. We also bring up the effort to develop, another of the Four Great Efforts - the effort to develop antidotes to that particular thing that we prefer not to have arise again.

So we have to understand the qualities and the techniques that help to balance the views, and perhaps the wrong intentions, that bring forth such a mind pattern. We also have to look on the positive sides, not only looking at the negative sides, but also the positive sides; developing these beneficial qualities and strengthening the beneficial qualities. When you strengthen your beneficial qualities, you will then probably see that these other things won't arise so frequently, and we have to bring up the effort to maintain - again, one of the Four Great Efforts, the effort to maintain - by understanding the causes that bring forth these beneficial qualities, we have to maintain the lifestyle or the efforts to keep these qualities present. So this is talking about Right Effort.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.