Making Resolutions and Commitments
อาจารย์ สุจิตโต
This morning I was talking to the community about making resolutions and commitments.
It’s a big part of our practice, but we need to learn how to cultivate them in the right way; there’s some subtlety in it. You can make an intention or a resolution to look at where you’re stuck or where you’re getting habitual, stale or compulsive: ‘OK, let’s determine to do that – or to not do that.’
You get a feeling for where you’re blind, compulsive, swept away or resistant to things and you think, ‘Let’s check that out!’ You’re making some kind of resolution to stop or to look at it more clearly and then you’re looking at the results.
It gives you a sense of establishing a foundation, a sense of direction and depth, because you start to go through the surface currents of the mind: its thoughts, feelings and opinions. You put a block on the basic inclinations of the mind, like the inclination towards sense pleasures, and say, ‘Let’s see what happens when I don’t do that.’
For example, you decide to give up music or smoking, or limit your food intake. Here in the monastery it’s standard of course – we don’t have music and don’t eat after noon – and you get so used to it that it’s hardly a commitment any more; it’s just ordinary. So, sometimes you decide to only eat once a day and see what that does.
You can check these things and also start to look into the attitudes you have. Sometimes you might get compulsive about how little you need or get attitudes of what is called vibhava-taṇhā, which is not wanting to be with things, not wanting to be moved or touched, or experience anything – or the opposite: getting caught up in things. You look at your attitudes. You might not want to do this, not want to be part of that, not want to get involved with this; you just want to be left alone and quiet.
Or you really want to get involved with everything; you want to have an opinion or get yourself into something. You see these kinds of tendencies and you look at what they’re about. You want to get involved with everything because you feel that otherwise you’ll be left out, sidelined or dismissed. Somehow you feel you’ve been made small or insignificant. Or you want to get out of it all because ‘I want to be small and insignificant. I want to be left alone.’
These underlying currents in our lives are fundamental because to a certain extent we are steered by them. They’re not necessarily unskilful, but they can become compulsive. There’s a skilful sense of wanting to get involved with something because it brings up skilful mind-states. There’s a skilful sense of wanting to get out of something or not be involved with something because it brings up unskilful mind-states.
This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the book, The Most Precious Gift, (pdf) pp. 229-230.
