One of the interesting things to me is that there are many different instructions on the

spiritual path. In fact, it said that the Buddha gave 60,000 different types of meditations and

strategies and approaches to waking up. And his basic theory is one size does not fit all,

though we all have different body minds, there are some common denominators, but

so there's all these different ways. But the ground of all of them, one of the elements that

every one of them includes is called wise effort, that any practice, any form or strategy of

paying attention takes a certain amount of energy, and I'm using the word energy, directed energy,

and effort interchangeably. So you'll find in the Buddhist teachings, for those that are familiar,

there's these different lists that you'll see regularly, and whether it's the eightfold pass

or the path or the five spiritual faculties or the ten perfections, there's these different lists,

wise effort is in each one of the lists, because the understanding is that's what uses us, that's

what keeps us waking up alive and engaged. And there's a paradox here, and if you listen to Dharma

talks regularly, you'll know the paradox, which is as much as we talk about, yes, we need this

energy, this effort, freedom arises in the moments truly when we're not identified with any doing

at all. Total allowing, total receptivity, I sometimes use the word radical acceptance as being

quality, not any sort of effortful attempt to get somewhere. So this paradox is really something

that we start encountering and it can be really juicy. I remember when I was in teacher training,

and Joseph Goldstein, who's one of my teachers, was leading a kind of workshop with, and those days

our teacher training group was I think six people, and we were together for about five or six years,

and Joseph was doing a piece on wise effort, and he said it didn't matter whether you were at the

very beginning of the path or extremely experienced, it still is right at the center of our inquiry,

of really how do we move? How do we move wisely? So I found this to be true. I found in my experience

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