We’ve all seen it: a new convert gets super excited and does everything their new faith has to offer only to burn out after a few weeks; or conversely the person who’s been on the outskirts of the community for years and decades but who hasn’t seen any change in their life of faith. This problem of effort — in which both too little and too much create problems — is at the heart of the element of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path we’ll be looking at today: right, or skillful, effort. I think we can all agree that mental, spiritual, and energetic effort is required in the life of faith: but what that looks like so it’s beneficial to us can be very elusive. As usual in this series, we’ll start by looking at how this plays out in Buddhist teaching before turning our attention to what, if any, correlates it has in traditional Christianity.
Right Effort in Buddhist Thought
Once again, by ‘right’ effort, Buddhism isn’t talking about ‘morally correct’ effort, but rather skillful, beneficial, and effective effort. Right effort is effort that gets us where we want to go. In this case, the Buddha outlines for interrelated goals:
- to prevent undesirable states (i.e, dukkha, ‘suffering’, ‘unsatisfactoriness’) from arising
- to end such undesirable states that already exist
- to facilitate the arising of desirable states
- to further develop and perfect those desirable states that already exist.
Simple as they are, these goals are elusive. They’re really nothing short of the goal of the whole field of therapeutic psychology! But looking at them, we see how connected they are to effort: if we put in too little effort, we don’t get anywhere, creating a state of unsatisfactoriness. If we put in too much effort, we get tired and perhaps even harm ourselves (as the Buddha found out in his own extreme asceticism before finding his middle path), creating a state of unsatisfactoriness.
In an encounter with a frustrated disciple named Sona, the Buddha compared it to tuning a musical instrument:
“What do you think, Soṇa? When you were still a layman, weren’t you a good player of the arched harp?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When your harp’s strings were tuned too tight, was it resonant and playable?”
“No, sir.”
“When your harp’s strings were tuned too slack, was it resonant and playable?”
“No, sir.”
“But when your harp’s strings were tuned neither too tight nor too slack, but fixed at an even tension, was it resonant and playable?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the same way, Soṇa, when energy is too forceful it leads to restlessness. When energy is too slack it leads to laziness. So, Soṇa, you should focus on energy and serenity, find a balance of the faculties, and learn the character of this situation.” (Anguttara Nikaya 6.55)
This analogy is helpful because it demonstrates that right effort is not like a switch we turn off and on, but something that needs constant calibration. Just as the strings of a guitar need to be tuned after the instrument has sat for too long, has been played for too long, or even due to external factors like changing weather conditions, so must we be intentional about tuning our spiritual efforts to fit the needs and circumstances of the day. If the ‘strings are too tight’ — if we are trying too hard and are putting ourselves under too much stress — our practice won’t produce the results we want and we might easily snap. But if the ‘strings are too loose’ — if we’re not putting in enough effort — likewise we won’t produce the desired results.
Christian Response
At the start of this series, I said how I think one of the benefits of looking at other religious tradition’s teachings is how, because they ask different questions, they can point out areas where our own may be unhelpfully silent. And this is a perfect example of this. The problem of effort — either not caring enough or trying too hard and burning out (or burning others out by our intensity) — is one anyone who’s spent any time in a church community recognizes. But, as far as I can tell, it’s not something our Scriptures address. And while there may be some teaching about how sacred practices such as as prayer and fasting may be calibrated to one’s circumstances in consultation with a priest or spiritual father, on the whole those traditions that emphasize such practices tend to make a one-size-fits-all assumption about what is appropriate.
Conclusions
We as Christians tend to treat the question of right effort as an afterthought, if we give it any thought at all. I think the lesson here for us in the Buddhist offering of right effort as one eighth of its path is that we would do well to give proper time and space to thinking about our effort and how best to calibrate our energy so we’re neither doing too little nor too much. It’s about becoming intentional about our life of faith, and I think we would benefit from putting it into practice.
Matthew Root 