Inexhaustible Energy

i.e. Viriya

Good people. Hello again. To those who celebrate, Happy Vesak.

Looking up, Siddhartha saw the morning star appear on the horizon, twinkling like a huge diamond. He had seen this star so many times before while sitting beneath the pippala tree, but this morning it was like seeing it for the first time. It was as dazzling as the jubilant smile of Enlightenment. Siddhartha gazed at the star and exclaimed out of deep compassion, “All beings contain within themselves the seeds of Enlightenment, and yet we drown in the ocean of birth and death for so many thousands of lifetimes!”

Siddhartha knew he had found the Great Way. He had attained his goal, and now his heart experienced perfect peace and ease. He thought about his years of searching, filled with disappointments and hardships. He thought of his father, mother, aunt, Yasodhara, Rahula, and all his friends. He thought of the palace, Kapilavatthu, his people and country, and all of those who lived in hardship and poverty, especially children. He promised to find a way to share his discovery to help others liberate themselves from suffering. Out of his deep insight emerged a profound love for all beings.

Along the grassy riverbank, colourful flowers blossomed in the early morning sunlight. Sun danced on leaves and sparkled on the water. His pain was gone. All the wonders of life revealed themselves. Everything appeared strangely new. How wondrous were the blue skies and drifting white clouds! He felt as though he and all the universe had been newly created.

Old Path White Clouds by Thích Nhất Hạnh

This week we continue our exploration of The Seven Factors of Awakening. For those just joining us for the first time, this is the third installment of a series of essays exploring traits that any effective change-maker would be wise to consider cultivating. The idea to offer these essays came in response to several readers who reached out to me asking what my thoughts were regarding the rise of protests in the U.S. Having been engaged with social movements for the better part of 30 years, I have harvested a few observations from time spent on the front lines. What is being shared here thus pertains to what I have noticed in that time to mysteriously manage to slip by well-intentioned do-gooders who show up to fight the good fight. We might be wise to consider Gandhiji at this point, who supposedly said once, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Simply put, this means we cannot expect others to do the work we haven’t ourselves yet done.

We are not investigating (yet) what actions we need to take outwardly. We aren’t interested in starting a revolution. We have seen what aggression does and we are exhausted with dealing with the endless cycle of war. We will no longer fight. What we will do, is change. We will creatively alter the way the game is run, from such a core level that the old rules will no longer have a way to function any longer. This is post-activism, and it starts with the self.

Already we have explored the importance of deep awareness and insight, of mindfulness and cultivating an ability to see deeply and re-member details. Now we must contemplate how to sustain our nobel aspiration. Thus we consider viriya, i.e. energy.

Energy (viriya)

Energy, or vigor, is an aspect of wise effort that brings the passion and dedication we have for the path into skillful engagement with our meditation and daily life practices. Energy is vital because the habitual forces of inertia, boredom, disengagement, giving up, and becoming overwhelmed are so strong. Energy can take the form of a powerful desire for liberation called saṁvega, which is present when we bring determination, devotion, and dedication to the path. Wholesome energy can be developed through physical practices like yoga or qigong, emotional practices like devotional chanting or prayer, intellectual practices like study, or through any aspect of practice that inspires us to dig deeper. Pleasure increases energy, and energy itself is pleasurable, which becomes a foundation for the deeper joys of meditation and stillness.

-Sean Oakes

Energy is required of everything. We know this. Food requires fire. Those cool old time trains need steam. Our iPhones need electricity and our cars run on gasoline. Walk into any gas station and most of what you find inside is but a wide assortment of energy. Caffeine, calories, over-the-counter Viagra knock-offs and a hundred choices of colorful, sugary energy drinks. But the kind of energy we need for the work future generations are asking us to engage in now is something altogether different. No amount of coffee or woke hipster mushroom mix will keep us alert in the fine-tuned way that can sustain the hospicing of modernity.

Ever been in love? Remember your first attraction to another? Remember how some curious longing managed to keep you up late into the night with the flickering hope of something indescribable? Ever had a baby? Ever managed to find a way to, against all odds, muster up superhuman strength, without sleeping for days on end, having eaten next to nothing, surviving off little more than a single-pointed aspiration to keep this beautiful being alive? This is akin to viriya.

Viriya is not the angry motivation to defeat the opposition. Virya is not adrenaline or brute power. Viriya is something subtle, the inexhaustible flame that is ignited when the artist merges with the muse. After training daily for decades, the Shaolin monk wakes one day and realizes the answer to the riddle. Waking from a close encounter with death, a Hollywood star suddenly acknowledges fully that fame mean nothing. With little effort and an indomitable spirit, the rest of his days are spent living humbly in service to others, with a drive more profound than all days prior.

Did you ever find yourself, high on Redbull late one night in those foggy university years, wondering why the hell you were studying what you were studying, desperately trying to stay awake? When you are properly engaged in the act of investigating something of eternal importance, not merely memorizing “facts” or, better yet, when you are actually embodying Truth in real time, dancing with Shiva in the middle of a starless night…. no RedBull will be necessary. You will be awake. You won’t be able to not be. For viriya will have been triggered and The Wheel will have been set in motion.

Most of us are tired because modernity has hijacked all that truly matters. A life lacking purpose, without real community or deep kinship with eARTh is exhausting. What is needed now is a return to Right Relation. Viriya is needed for this.

When was the last time you danced? Have you been to a forest within the last year? Have you made love… I mean, really made love, deeply, with wild abandon, within the last decade? I’m not talking about a one night stand, or a scheduled encounter with your equally exhausted partner and I’m sure as hell not talking about whatever you do with porn. I’m talking about real LOVE making, with another person. Slowly. Fully. Better yet… Have you danced naked in a torrential rainstorm in an old growth forest while ecstatically embracing your beloved? This is akin to viriya.

Modernity has it all inside out and upside down. Most spend hours each day, days each week, years on end committed wholeheartedly to mastering skills that ultimately are of no benefit whatsoever. This kind of dedication is fueled by illusion (maya) and it’s flame dies easily. It is a rare thing indeed to cross paths with someone who is fueled instead by viriya. But, dear reader, I assure you, access to such clean, eternal energy is available to all. And if you are sincere about your desire to live not merely for what you want or out of fear of what you don’t want, but instead live fully for what the children need, what Earth Loves, what She finds beautiful… than you aren’t too many false summits away from igniting a truly useful blaze.

Some New Age types would suggest that this is the Kundalini serpent erupting through the spine and that now life is but one forever-orgasm. What do I know? Maybe that’s true. Life contains multitudes, as they say. But that certainly hasn’t been my experience. I can say I have tasted viriya. But it hasn’t resulted in life being without sorrow, without moments of tiredness or even boredom. Life just isn’t that rosey. Life is full, it is deep, wide and complex. Beautiful yes, and filled with wonder, but we cannot escape suffering. And we need to grow a profound capacity for understanding what this entails, how to remain alert and energetic even when life’s inevitable losses weigh us down, if we are ever to make it across the great river in-tact, capable of mirroring to our children what real maturity looks like.

I am currently on a remote island in the Andaman Sea. I am about as far from a modern metropolis as one could get. Yet even here, the seductive glare of modernity has most of the population sucked into that all-too-familiar apathetic state of disengaged sloth. When my wife and I cruise about, trying to find kids for our daughter to play with, more often than not we are met with the usual scenario of a group of exhausted parents lying on store/home floor, not talking to each other, staring eternally into their phones while their kids sit in the corner watching cartoons and eating lays potato chips. The whole scene bearing a strange resemblance to the opium dens of old. This is not parenting, with all due respect, with the deserved, empathetic understanding of how tiring parenting is. I get it. And to be fair, given the cards all have been dealt, they actually aren’t doing all that terrible. Heck, in most villages we frequent, the parents are usually drunk, but by no means are these phone-addicted parents engaged. They are too tired to be. Like most of us. The life force is gone.

Life requires energy. Sitting on our asses and consuming kills this. People often complain that there aren’t enough righteous leaders nowadays. They look to times of old and romanticise about the great heroes of the past. Those were very different times I’m afraid. And we need to be real about our modern condition. People are exhausted. Eating shit food and living in lonely boxes. Modern life has wore the f*ck out of everybody. Too much information, not enough wisdom. Too much entertainment, not enough being of service. Too much everything, not enough rest. no surprise really that burnout is the prevailing energy of this strange bardo. Except for the billionaires, who don’t actually do anything. They miraculously manage to just keep going and going and going like that annoying energizer bunny. But this is not life force. They are simply bossing their minions around and stealing shit. That won’t last. Nothing heroic there. And nothing even coming close to resembling viriya.

The only way we are going to generate the sustained, pure energy needed to fully activate our determination, devotion, and dedication to the “good fight” beyond those blazing teenage years, is if we are willing to commit the same effort to transforming our views that we have committed to earning money, keeping up with “the news”, aligning with our party, acquiring shit or whatever else we deem worthy of doing. We have to find the cracks, and allow seeds to find their way into the unknown places where never-before-seen things can grow. We have to learn how to see differently. This takes viriya.

It’s not easy to be truly woke. Being woke is more than being anti-war or “open minded”, it’s about possessing Right View. Which isn’t something one can easily understand much less actualize. It’s knowing what is beyond “right” and “wrong”, beyond “good” and “bad” and being able to penetrate deeply into Wisdom. It takes incredible dedication. But it is possible and it is essential if we are going to transcend beyond merely another “social movement” and leap forward instead into an entirely alternate landscape, one capable of birthing an actual Culture of Life again.

Dear reader, once you get even a small taste of what I am suggesting here, you will know it. You will feel it. Like a small vibration at the back of your skull, a slight electric shock between your eyes, or a wave of joyful sadness that passes over you like a haunting breeze. You will know then that your efforts have not been in vain. Just don’t think about it too much. Breath and Smile and get back to washing the dishes. Instead of rushing out to “find yourself” best to make sure the kids have someone to play with them.

Call your mother. Let her know you love her.

All blessings.

OR… :)

you can always simply…

THANK YOU FOR SPENDING TIME WITH ME AND ADDING TO THE BEAUTY.

#maypeaceprevailonearth

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