I want to share a quote from Ajahn Jayasāro that I rather like, continuing from this theme of an overview of the teachings. So he says, Western presentations of Buddhist teachings have often led to the understanding that suffering arises because of desire, and therefore you shouldn't desire anything. Whereas, in fact, the Buddha spoke of two kinds of desire, desire that arises from ignorance and delusion, which is called taṇhā, craving, and desire that arises from wisdom and intelligence, which is called kusala-chanda, or dhamma-chanda, or more simply, chanda.

Chanda doesn't mean this exclusively, but in this particular case, I'm using chanda to mean wise and intelligent desire and motivation. And the Buddha stressed that this is absolutely fundamental to any progress on the Eightfold path. So with that quote, I want to talk about goals and attainments and achievements in meditation and spiritual practice. And as Ajahn Jayasāro shares, well, you have to have some sense of direction.

Whether you call it an aspiration, a goal, an intention, there's some aim. Sometimes people say, well, the path is the goal. Forget about all the big stuff or where it leads. But one teacher and like he said, well, yes, the path is the important part to walk the path, but there's also a difference between a first-year med student and a board-certified doctor. They're different things, and so one leads to the other, but they're different.

And the Buddha said, when talking about this, very simply put, both formerly and now, what I teach is suffering and the end of suffering. Another little pithy summary, he says, Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so too does this teaching and discipline have one taste, the taste of liberation. Now that's where this leads. On an everyday level, we could look, well, what trips me up?

Is it anxiety? Despair? Some addiction? An unhealthy habit? Maybe it's the disagreeable people in your life that trip you up. Some overwhelm at the state of the world. Physical pain. And whether it's internal or external, maybe the stimuli won't disappear if we do a bunch of meditation, but our internal process becomes less agitated, less consumed with craving, aversion.

And so on a technical level, this aim the Buddha is speaking to is to progressively release deeper and deeper layers of greed, aversion, and delusion, which are considered the three roots of stress and suffering. My teacher, U Tejaniya, he would often talk about the aim as wisdom or understanding. He said, we do this practice of awareness to see things more clearly. And the more consistently we're seeing things clearly, wisdom develops.

We see, it's not me that liberates myself. It's not some act of will, it's wisdom. So he'd say, when we go through our lives, there really is no such thing as failure. There's just learning opportunities. every instance of the afflictions greed aversion delusion their relatives anxiety despair depression anger every time they arise it's not a sign oh i'm so bad i'm so hopeless i'm still caught in this it's oh good learning opportunity can i meet this with awareness and whatever wisdom is available to me and the more this happens the more that wisdom builds the stress just releases so a lot of the art of effort and wise desire in Buddhist practice is, well, how do we hold goals?

How do we hold intentions or aspirations? It's not, as I've been speaking to, it's not that, well, I'm broken and I'm bad and I'm hopeless, but maybe if I achieve that goal, well, then I'll be fixed. It's not turning this into some fix-it project. It's not having this fantasy of everything will be better when. Rather, it's about having a sense of direction without clinging to the outcome.

And so we can turn all sorts of the milestones and the quote-unquote attainments on the path into some big goal that will save us. Maybe the jhānas, maybe states of deep meditative absorption, maybe siddhis, the spiritual powers, magical powers that can come, or experiences of nibbāna, these classical enlightenment moments. Those are some of the traditional ones, but it really could be anything. I remember for a time, quite a time, when I was with U Tejaniya, I had read his books and he talked a lot about continuous awareness, like this is some milestone.

And so I really strived, worked really hard, a year of practice intensively, and then I achieved this goal, continuous awareness. and it was a big letdown because I had this idea once I got continuous awareness, I was just going to coast the rest of my life. Everything would be gravy. All my problems would just be illuminated in the light of awareness and I'd be floating through my life.

I didn't articulate this as such, but I realized I kind of implicitly believed that. And so when I got there, I was like, well, wait a minute, all these problems are still here. I just see them really clearly. And so there was a process of maturing that went in that, where it's like, oh, actually this awareness thing is really good. Now that I see clearly those ideas I had carried along with it, can I learn to release those?

I had Jack Kornfield in his book, After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, he has this interesting quote. He says, amid all the Western masters and teachers I know, some idealistic perfection is not apparent. Times of great wisdom, deep compassion, and a real knowing of freedom alternate with periods of fear, confusion, neuroses, and struggle. Most teachers will readily admit this. So these are the people with whom we read the books, we give the big talks, that people flock after to study with.

Jack also, in that book, he reported when he had all these big awakening experiences, jhāna experiences, and then went to Ajahn Chah, who he'd studied with previously, went back and reported to him all these dramatic experiences he had. And Ajahn Chah just said to him, kind of unimpressed, he's like, well, guess that's another thing for you to let go of. And it's so easy for the ego to co-opt our spiritual practice, to co-opt the breakthroughs and the attainments and say, ah, look at me, this great meditator who has achieved something.

But the practice exists right now. So in this moment, can I just be in this moment without all the ideas and sense of how great I am or how terrible I am? Just relax and be aware. And so it might seem like as I'm speaking and I started, okay, wise desire, goals are important, but then I'm kind of downplaying the goals. Chill out, be where you are.

And again, it's the middle way. This is a perfect application of that central principle. When I was with U Tejaniya for that year I was striving a lot, I liked to ask him about enlightenment periodically. And he would always just brush me off. He'd say, ah, don't worry about it. Do your practice. Just cause an effect. That stuff comes when the conditions are right. Relax, be aware, wisdom.

And so then at some point, my practice got very strong, very steady. I was really in a pretty good groove. And I said to him, feeling pretty good about myself, I said, you know, Sayadaw, I don't even care about enlightenment anymore. I'm just content to do my practice just moment after moment. And he looked at me very gratefully and he said, oh no, enlightenment is very important.

And what he's essentially doing is avoid these extremes. Avoid the extreme of complacency. Avoid the extreme of craving. Find that middle way. We're out of a self-compassion, out of an understanding. It's better to meet the moment with wise awareness than it is to meet the moment with craving, aversion and delusion. It's better to keep learning than to sink in despair. We can find that middle way where, oh yeah, there is a direction and I can apply myself to that direction without getting caught in all the ideas of how it will save me or fix me, without clinging after in kind of this agitated energy.

Not okay until. And so really how to do this, how to have a real clear sense of direction without the clinging. This is one of the central questions of meditative practice. It's an art. And I can point to some of these principles. I can't really tell you how to do it. We have to live our way into it. As a starting point, some of the things U Tejaniya was teaching, what we notice, we have centrally in our practice, noticing when craving is present or absent.

Oh, what's it like when it's here? What's it like when it's absent? Notice when complacency is present, when complacency is absent. Just notice. Collect that data. Builds into wisdom.

You're starting to notice when these ideas come in, if only I could attain X, Y, or Z, things will be better. Or when the idea comes in, nothing will ever be better. It's hopeless. I can't possibly achieve this stuff that's written in the books from these masters. Like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, we've slipped into one of the extremes. We're out of the middle way my experience in talking to other meditators in a common thread when the the breakthroughs happen it tends to be when there is a deep relaxation in our being when we're really settled but also inspired and energized when we're just doing the practice diligently relaxed and aware and so that's really what i talk about all the time it's just this simple how to relaxed, aware, but also engaged.

Maybe some quality of interest or alertness. Kind of find that sweet spot. And this might sound obvious, but these breakthroughs, they also happen right now. Not after you've done another retreat, studied with another master, solved all your relational issues, or eradicated your anxiety. It doesn't come after any of that. It comes now. Liberation is talked about as a well-being independent of conditions. Independent of whether you fixed or resolved any of that stuff happens when you drop into the moment relaxed and alert, just present.

And so as I've shared in closing here, really my objective in teaching and in my own practice is just to help people establish and deepen themselves in the Noble Eightfold Path. That's really all this stuff we're talking about these weeks is just that. And so if you just practice that, the good things naturally follow. You're on the path to liberation. So I'll pause here and we'll see you all in a bit.