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No Effort, No Practice, No Understanding So many teachers, especially those from the currently popular advaitic scene, particularly from the Poonjaji diaspora, have bad-mouthed spiritual effort and practice, calling it counter-productive and an obstruction to realization. So you go to one of these teachers, perhaps you consider this person to be your Guru, teacher, guide, mentor, and you shake your head in agreement when he or she makes such a statement regarding effort or practice. Perhaps you feel lucky that you've found such a guide who has led you out of the stultify traps that spiritual effort seems to be. You may have a warm feeling that perhaps you now have access to profound spiritual teaching and transmission that obviates any need for spiritual practice. It's obvious that enlightenment can't be produced by effort, that it only reinforces the illusory notion of a separate self to whom enlightenemt must be owned, right? Sure, you've heard that many times, and you believe it wholeheartedly. And perhaps you feel sorry for those poor souls out there doing their yoga, their meditation, mantras, prostrations, chanting, service to their Guru, that their efforts are so in vain, and if they'd just listen to your teacher, they'd see the light and get liberated from their effortful strategies and suffering. After all, you don't do any practice, and since the truth is inherent, it's all effortless. You don't make any foolish effort, right? Wrong. Consider this. Perhaps you heard about your teacher's satsang by email, from a friend, on a poster, through a flyer, and you decide to go. Now, if your teacher happens to be sitting in another city, you first must nail down the times you want to be there, then spend several minutes online or on the phone to book a flight. Then there's the work to book a hotel or arrange a place to stay with some friends, making a few phone calls. And, of course, you have to work to pay for your airline ticket, hotel, rental car, food and other ancillaries items purchased on a trip. All this, and you haven't even left to go yet. Then there's the intensity of packing your bags, getting to the airport, via shuttle or long term parking, waiting on lines, waiting to take off, waiting to disembark, renting your car or looking for your ride. And you may be very tired from all this effort. But finally, at least you're in the same city as your teacher. YOu also work hard to pay for the fee associated with the satsang events. Then the day of satsang arrives. You mentally and physically prepare your day to make room for the event. Perhaps you have children, and you get a baby sitter, or take turns watching the kids during satsang. Or you may prepare to bring some food or water along, just in case you're thirsty or hungry. You go through your wardrobe to pick out a set of clothing that make be comfortable for sitting for a long time.You may also consider bringing along a meditation pillow or blanket to sit on, depending upon whether you're a 'floor' or 'chair' person. You secretly hope to get a real good seat. You get in your car, map out mentally (or by looking on a map, the terrain is unfamiliar) the route that is the quickest to the satsang hall. You negotiate through various levels of traffic, risking your lives and the lives of your passengers in these fast moving metal boxes. Perhaps you get lost and have to circle around to find the satsang hall, or ask for directions. Then when the hall is found, you must alertfully watch for the closest parking spot you can find to the entry doors. You walk to the hall, perhaps faster than usual gait, hoping to find a good seat. You pay your entry fee (having worked for this for some time), or show your ticket. You scan the hall looking for an appropriate seat on the floor or in a chair. This can get very intense and territorial - perhaps you squeeze yourself into a small spot, annoying your neighbors, or someone squeezes next to you, annoying you. Or perhaps a tall person, at the last minute, comes back from the bathroom to claim his or her seat, and you have to make small changes in your posture to see around the big head in front of you. Line of sight may be very important - you don't want to miss that potential blessing when your teacher looks directly into your eyes! You go to the bathroom, possibly before you've come to the hall or just when you arrive to allow yourself to sit in comfort for the whole satsang session. Perhaps you secretly hope that you won't have to fart during the session, which is often extremely quiet. Finally, it's all systems go, you're ready for satsang - so, so many arrangements, so many details just to get your body-mind to this location, at this time in the time-space continuum. Your teacher finally arrives, and you begin to listen with full intention, full faith and enthusiasm. But the incessant noise of your mind makes you wander off occasionally, and you have to bring it back to focus. Perhaps his or her talk is so blissful that you find your concentration naturally focused upon him or her. But then there's the idiot who asked some really stupid question, whose answer seems so obvious, and you wonder if this jerk is just asking this to get some attention or validation in compensation for low self-esteem. Perhaps there are many dumb questions, or the teacher goes into tangents or areas that make you uncomfortable. Perhaps the satsang goes on for a long time, you've had enough spiritual energy, you got your blissful feeling, but the teacher appears that he or she will go on indefinitely. You start getting antsy, wishing the teacher would stop, wondering when the appropriate moment would be to walk out. Maybe you're hungry or bored with it all now, but part of you feels you should sit it out - there's something appropriately respectful waiting for the teacher to finish. And it starts getting real hot and unconmfortable, and now the place you spent so much energy to get to is the last place on earth you want to be. Some part of you wants to bolt and another part of you wants to stay. Finally, the satsang is over and you fight through the crowds to buy the tape or a book, and work through the traffic to get home or back to your hotel room. And all the while the teacher has been saying that the truth is effortless, and you believe him. And you believe that you're in sync with him or her. You don't make spiritual effort. You don't do those useless spiritual practice. Bullshit. That night you feel blissful, alive, joyful, thankful that you've seen this teacher, your teacher. This is all you've ever really wanted. You've got it. Then you go to bed. The next day or week, it's gone, that's blissful feeling, and everything that seemed so clear to you in satsang seems a bit flimsy and questionable in the cold, hard working world reality that you call your life. So you decide to go see your teacher, or another teacher. Again. And again and again and again and again and again. And for some annoying, mysterious reason, the same process of being filled up with clarity, bliss and joy, only to be deflated in the ensuing days or weeks, occurs again and again and again. You don't realize it, but you still believe, really believe deep down inside of you, despite what your teacher has said repeatedly, that the truth lies outside of you, in the form of that teacher and in that form of satsang. In your everyday life, you never feel the conviction of truth so powerful than when you're in satsang with your teacher. And you haven't really listened, you still believe in separation, in the solidity and truth of an inside and outside. It never really penetrates. But at least you're not making all that effort and doing all those useless and obstructive spiritual practices! The reason why you don't believe that you're not making effort is because all the effort that you make to get to satsang is no different than the effort it takes to get to any other venue, such as a concert, sporting event, work, the store. You're a fool looking for an easy, painless way. You want bliss and no pain. You haven't learned a single thing. You don't seem to see that your search for the truth is a fruitless attempt to revert to the comfort and safety of the womb. You have it 180 degrees backwards. You're only hope is that by making the enormous efforts to get your ass to satsang, eventually you will transformed, the same way iron is transformed into a magnet when introduced to an electric field. But don't kid yourself, you're making a monumental amount of spiritual effort. And satsang is a spiritual practice, in the form of staying in place and staying aware with what arises. But this has yet to come to fruition, that's why you have to go back over and over again to satsang. If you are converted to a commitment to the spiritual process, this becomes obvious. Consider the alternative. I wake up, go to the bathroom, put on my sweatsuit, plop down on my zafu and zafuton, bow and allow attention to rest at its root. The natural joyful spaciousness of awareness is evident, obvious. Non-separation is the case, the true, clear situation. And there has been great efforts and practice involved to get to this point, some of the same efforts described above, including a great deal of that 'useless' effort and practice. Through not perfect by any means, NOW it's effortless. To quote the Chinese sage Chao-Chou: In order to reach the depths of reality, So who's not making effort?
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