What does it mean to make right effort in our practice? You probably know some of the Buddha’s own advice on this. He tells us: it is like the strings on an instrument. If they are too slack, they will be out of tune when we try to play. Too tight, though, and they are liable to break. To make music, strings need to be not too loose, and not too tight, but at just the right tension in between.¹

This is precious teaching and I’m going to look at it a bit below. But I’m also going to introduce another approach, rooted in Sōtō Zen practice, in which it can be said that right effort is no effort at all.

The Buddha gave the teaching about tuning the strings to a monk called Sona, who had been practising relentlessly: doing walking meditation until his feet were blistered and bleeding, chanting without sleep until his voice was sore. Finding that all this hard work wasn’t getting him anywhere, Sona had started to think that he may as well give up practice entirely, when the Buddha, who heard the strain in Sona’s voice, intervened. Using the metaphor of the instrument’s strings, he advised Sona to know his capacities and not do himself harm by overreaching them.

In a way the teaching is straightforward. In practice, it is important not to underdo it. When we slack – by skipping meditation periods, say, or by letting ourselves off the hook of the precepts – consistent practice habits may stall and they can be difficult to restart. And we may feel regret, both right away and in the longer term.

It is just as important not to overdo it. Pushing ourselves too hard – by doubling the time we sit on the cushion, to make up for the meditation periods we skipped, or by tying ourselves up in knots trying to scrutinise our speech for rightness – will lead to exhaustion and discouragement. If we don’t recognise that we’re overdoing it, we can think that there is a problem with our practice of the Buddhadharma, or with the Buddhadharma itself.

Either way, we obstruct for ourselves the fruits of practice.

It’s fortuitous for us that Sona’s story illustrates in particular the problem of overexertion. Even if not so many of us are fanatic enough to chant all night, or would have energy enough even if we wanted to, we come from a culture where effort is easily understood in terms of hard or difficult work, and it can be seen as morally virtuous to work without regard for our own wellbeing. The flip side is that guilt is attached to easing up. To put it coarsely, it can feel as if the message is: if you’re not overdoing it, you’re not doing enough. With this in the background, it’s easy to think we are not giving enough to practice, just because the string is not yet tight enough to break.

But the Buddha’s message is different. For one thing, it doesn’t have a moral subtext, it’s straightforwardly practical teaching. And it’s not concerned with ideals, but instead with concrete situations. We are asked to be aware of the real state of our effort as it is right now, and discern for ourselves: is this string too tight, too loose, just fine? Then we adjust as needed.

There is another way to think about right effort, which is not so much about how much we do, but more about how we do it. It has to do with the strain that the Buddha observed in Sona, and the harm that he warned Sona against. What had brought that strain about? Had Sona been eager to show his devotion, or hoped to impress? Had he set himself a target and become fixed on reaching it? Of course we can’t know. But when there is strain in our action, the harm we are in danger of is more than just becoming wearied. It is the harm we do ourselves when we repeat, and thereby strengthen, the karmic habits that so easily drive us.

To consider right effort in this way in everyday life means reflecting: what is giving rise to my activity, and am I being driven? In my actions of body, speech and mind, is there a harshness, an insistence, a ratcheting up or resisting? Do I detect the workings of aversion and grasping? As with Sona, my outward activity is not always a guide to what’s going on. Doubling the time I spend on the cushion may simply be a needed and helpful adjusting of the string, but it can also come from grasping (greed for polishing my image) or aversion (a wish to punish). It’s not always obvious what exactly is driving us, but fortunately it doesn’t matter one bit. It’s when our action is driven at all that we know something isn’t quite right.

So what is right, in the realm of effort?

When an instrument’s string is too loose or too tight we adjust it the other way, and the ability to do this is useful, indeed necessary, for our effort in practice. But being driven by one thing isn’t remedied by being driven by any other. Instead, we need to surrender momentum completely. Staying unmoved within the grip of desires, holding our ground amidst our own angers, we can know the still point and find that action does come forth from that. We will still feel the momentum, often powerfully. But when we let it be, without letting it drive our activity, it ceases to be harmful to us and instead we become beneficial to it because we bring an end, however small, to this particular iteration of the karmic habit. In the words of Great Master Dōgen,

When the Buddha does all, and you follow that doing effortlessly and without worrying about it, you gain freedom from suffering and become, yourself, Buddha.²

Seen this way, right effort isn’t something we need to generate, it isn’t something ‘I’ can do. It is something we give way to – or rather, it is the giving way itself. This is the surrendering of momentum. Action does arise from it, but unlike tuning a string we are not calculating how much activity in which direction is needed. Rather we are allowing our activity, our effort, to come from a different place. We do not know what the outcome could be – and it may be that we retune a string. Practising effort in this way takes more willingness than will, and paradoxically enough it may well involve hard work – it’s effortless in the sense that ‘I’ am not trying, but it’s not necessarily easy. It can take practice to recognise the momentum, let alone withstand it. And yet: right effort can be no effort at all.

Notes

1. Paraphrased, see Sona Sutta: Anguttara Nikaya 6.55.

2. Great Master Dōgen, Shōji. Rev. P.T.N.H. Jiyu-Kennett, trans., in Zen is Eternal Life. Shasta Abbey Press, 1999, p.197.