Greetings,

I want to start by apologizing for the delay in sending this blog out. I was teaching a retreat in the high mountains of Colorado at the end of May and all my energy had to be focused on continuing to breathe. This month we will continue our exploration of the Eightfold Path with Right Intention. Right intention is defined as the urge before action. You could think of it as the motivation that causes us to act. It's sometimes called Right Thought. Buddha said whatever a practitioner keeps pursuing with their thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of their awareness. This means that whatever you think about becomes the focus of your actions. It's all you see. Right intention attunes or harmonizes one towards universal goodwill, harmlessness and renunciation.

Right intention works hand in hand with right view and the two make up the wisdom training of the path. Remember there are three trainings to the Eightfold Path: wisdom, ethical conduct and meditation (cultivation inner stillness). Although I mentioned it last month, it bears repeating, the wisdom aspect of the path is pointing to our perceptions, assumptions, and opinions, whether we are meditating or not. This is an important distinction to start with because oftentimes the focus becomes so much on our meditation practice that we flounder in our ordinary lives to make a connection or see how our meditation practice has anything to do with our everyday activities. To me, this is the significance of having the wisdom training be the first step on the path. By cultivating and investigating your view and your intention, from the start, the path is always relevant to whatever you are doing.

The three aspects of right intention are universal goodwill, harmlessness and renunciation. This is what we want to harmonize with. To me this means paying attention to what's in your mind - what are you thinking about? And is that "thinking" rooted in universal goodwill, harmlessness and renunciation. When you first start to look at the nature of your thinking, you might be surprised at how negative it is. This is not because you are negative. It's because our natural human conditioning has a negative tilt. The negative tilt is a warning system that protects us from danger. The types of danger we need to be protected from is like big animals and wildlife. We humans have pretty much insulated ourselves from any kind of natural dangers (not to dismiss the increased danger we are creating with climate change). Basically we are in very little danger in our normal, day to day lives. The practice of right intention supports us in attuning towards the truth of what's actually happening vs. our primal projections on what's happening. But to do this, we need to know the nature of our thinking because our thinking is what propels us into action. If our thinking is based in worry and fear, our actions will be based in greed, hatred and delusion. Again, not because we are bad people, but because the worry and fear will propel us into reactivity to control the situation. If our thinking is based in trust, our actions will be based in universal goodwill, harmlessness and renunciation. Not because we're good people, but because trust will allow us time for a thoughtful response.

My shorthand to practice this was to ask myself constantly if I was being as kind as I could in the moment, if I was doing the least amount of harm, and if I was acting with restraint (my restraint was letting go of the need to always get my way). When I started this practice some 30 years ago, kindness and non-harm were not my go to words. I would use whatever level of force I needed to get my way and whether it seemed mean or caused harm didn't matter to me. I felt like getting what I wanted was necessary to keep me and my boys safe. I was not intentionally mean or harmful, but my intentional actions led to a lot of harm and meanness. The gift of Buddha's 2nd path factor is what saved me. I learned to trust the path factor of kindness, non-harm and restraint even though I couldn't see where it was going nor if it was even having an impact on my life. I just put my trust in the path factor itself and kept attuning with it and let go of putting trust in my own ability to control the outcomes in my life. I'm sharing this to explain the above picture.

I love this picture because you can see that this is a tunnel we walk through. The present moment is the foreground part of the image that is shrouded in darkness. The brightness at the end of the tunnel represents our future conduct and is what draws us forward. I want to make one thing clear here to interrupt any confusion. All present moment actions, whether based in right intentions or greed, hatred and delusion, are shrouded in darkness. It is shrouded in darkness because you can't see in the present moment the impact you are going to have in the future. Think of this darkness as representing the unknown nature of the present moment. Think of the brightness at the end of the tunnel as representing the known nature of the outcomes of our intentions. When we are attuned with right intention in the present moment, we can know that our future impacts will be based in kindness, non-harm and restraint. If we don't question or challenge our present moment thinking, our primal (ordinary) thinking will propel us towards a future impact based in the suffering of greed, hatred and delusion. The irony of this whole thing is that when we practice with right intention, we become clearer about the future impact of our actions in the midst of the unknown. We can clearly comprehend the future based on how we act in the murkiness of the present moment.

This month we will all begin to look at the nature of our thinking and see where we're putting our trust. Are you putting your trust in what you can control and/or make happen? What would it look like if you put your trust in something that won't actually have an effect on your present conditions? Do you think it's worth giving energy to something that you won't see the benefit from for possibly years to come? These are just some of the questions we can ponder this month as we explore right intention.

With a deep bow,

Tuere