Presence

Working with One Mind: The Buddhist Principle of Right Effort

The student sat silently working with his  master in the hermitage vegetable garden shrouded among the white clouds high in the mountains of the Chinese hinterland of Xiang Xi. An American, barely out of college, educated but disillusioned with the confusing matrix of American life, he came for answers to questions he did not yet know. But as the master silently planted, moving slowly and methodically through each row, the pupil, pounding the earth with stone tied to a tree branch grew impatient.

“Master, sit for a minute, teach us something.” said the pupil.  

The old monk, squatting barefoot in the garden among the dark clay kept working, planting the bean plants meticulously. Finally, the master stood.

 “Quiescence and action you cannot separate. Don’t distinguish these, there is no difference. Put your heart into it with one mind, with one mind all this is done in no time. All this is the practice, it is not just sitting quietly somewhere.   All this is balanced and tranquil, even work is very calm, don’t think this and that, just work.”

The Buddhist principle of working with one mind is a central lesson of the eightfold path. It represents an understanding of the nature of things and avoiding thoughts of attachment, hatred and harmful intent. But right effort through one mindedness can be  easily lost in the wilderness of  an electronically connected culture. This “connectedness” often causes anxiety. As  a result of attachment to the future and the almost constant accompanying subconscious fear, our natural wisdom remains deep in the recesses of the subconscious mind. 

“In right action, with one mind, your wisdom naturally arises.”  Said the master to the pupil.

The great artists and philosophers did their best work with  one mind.  Georgia O’Keefe’s genius arose  from a self imposed hermitage in the New Mexican desert. Ansel Adams produced his most inspired photography  when he was alone in the American west. Isaac Newton’s monasticism was considered radical. Neitschke wrote with one mind, in one room, alone, for many years.  The common element of the masters, whatever their craft, is that their wisdom was allowed to arise from their subconscious, not from their connectivity to the culture or society of their time.

In a  home move recorded by Jerry Garcia’s daughter Trixie, she walks  through her Marin County house where  her famous father sometimes sought refuge. As she entered a back room, she came upon  her father, alone playing a banjo beautifully in a back room for several minutes.   e finally noticed Trixie, then  smiled and looked up at the camera with a countenance of a flappy eared dog having out of a passenger care window.  His genius   naturally arose simply from the joy of playing his banjo, for no one but him, no attachment or judgment and no audience, all with one mind,. Indeed, the great master had learned the perennial wisdom of quiescence and action and the deconstruction of the philosophical difference.

Being conscious of one mind in right effort is the first step on the path to understanding the inherent nature of all things and elimination of attachment to fear of the future and harmful intent. It is with this understanding that one can begin to  break down the barriers to inherent wisdom that naturally arise. This is the practice.