Exploring how our meditative life strengthens the outer and our external life sharpens the tools to go within
By Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
See the video here.
We all know individuals who don’t connect their inner life to their outer life. They give meditation a high priority when they sit to meditate and want to go within. Outside of meditation, when they are at work or school, they don’t apply the same level of willpower and concentration. Some even belittle ordinary life, taking a “whatever” attitude: “It doesn’t matter as much. The inner life—that’s what’s important. The outer life—that’s something to be endured.” What’s wrong with such an attitude?
What’s wrong is that it’s the same us. There aren’t two of us. There isn’t one us that meditates and another us that works or goes to school. It’s the same us—the same mind, the same soul. We don’t become a different person when we turn within to meditate and then come out to meet our responsibilities, our dharma. We are the same person, inside or out.
Concentration is focusing the mind on a single object or line of thought, not allowing it to wander. If we seriously focus on our inner goals when we meditate and then come out and don’t strive to control our thoughts at work or school, it’s counterproductive. It’s like exercising intensely for one week and then not exercising for three weeks. Is the one week going to benefit us? Not so much! If we go within and meditate and successfully concentrate our thoughts for an hour and then come out of meditation and go to work or school for eight hours and let our mind wander where it will, is that one hour of meditation going to do us any good? Some, of course. But just like in the exercise example, not as much as it could!
For spiritual progress, we need a continuity of effort between our inner life and outer life—between what we do in meditation, and what we do when we are actively and positively engaged in the world. Conversely, if we pay attention to what we are doing at work or school throughout the day—if we concentrate and don’t allow our mind to just wander because it can, because we know how to do what we are doing—then we will enhance our progress in our outer activities and that adds power to our meditations.
Take driving, for example. We know how to drive; we could think about anything as we do. We are washing dishes; we could do it blindfolded, while pondering all kinds of things. But if we don’t allow ourselves to do that, if instead we concentrate on what we are doing, that helps our inner efforts. That enhances our restraint of the mind which tends to meander. It’s a continuity of effort. When we don’t draw a line between the inner and the outer, the control gained in our meditative moments stabilizes our emotions and mental prowess, and the willpower gained by harnessing the mind during the day adds to our focus during meditation.
Having concentrated on what we are doing in the external world, when we sit down to meditate, what happens? The improvement is cumulative. We have controlled our mind during meditation and we have controlled our mind during work or study. Each day our concentration will improve, similar to exercising. If we exercise every day, what happens to a muscle? It has to get stronger. It has no choice. That’s the way the body works. If we control our thoughts when we meditate and when we work or are at school every day, our ability to concentrate has to improve. It works the same way.
Let’s look next at willpower. Willpower is the channeling of all energies toward one point for a given length of time. An example of lacking willpower is the student who wants to get up early to study to do well on a test, but then sleeps in anyway. The desire is there but the willpower isn’t strong enough.
Willpower is an interesting phenomenon. Generally, the more you use something, the less you have. If you spend money, your bank account decreases. You go into the kitchen, you take some food, you cook it, you eat it and the amount of food in the kitchen goes down. Willpower isn’t like that. The more you use, the more you have to use. It’s like having a $3,000 bank account and spending $2,000 only to find the balance increased to $5,000. Why is that? Willpower is like a muscle. The more we use it, the more we have to use.
Another interesting aspect of willpower is interest. My guru, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, says that awareness, energy and willpower are one and the same thing. If we are doing something we don’t enjoy, it never seems to end. It may only take five minutes, but it seems like an hour. When we are doing something we love to do, an hour seems like five minutes. That’s awareness, energy and willpower being the same thing. The more we are interested in something, the more energy we draw out to do it, and it seems effortless. The less we are interested in something, the harder it is to do. If we can find a way to be engaged in whatever we are doing, it’s a lot more fun and we are a lot more focused. If we are bored, then it seems to take forever and distractions are abundant. The energy comes when we draw on it; the energy increases when we are interested.
How do we strengthen our willpower? First of all, it’s easier to cultivate it in external things. That’s one of the advantages of not dividing life into external and internal and thinking about the internal in a very precise way and the external in a very undisciplined way. To sit in meditation for an hour and concentrate and control our thoughts is difficult, because it’s abstract. To do a physical task well is a lot easier. To study a subject and do well on a test is also a lot easier, because it’s not abstract; it’s concrete. This makes it easier to strengthen our willpower and improve our ability to concentrate when involved in outer tasks. That’s why external tasks are important and not to be neglected by the meditator. We are developing our concentration and willpower, which will be available when we sit to quiet the mind.
Gurudeva gives us a simple key for strengthening willpower. He taught: “Finish every job you start.” Sounds easy, right? But we don’t necessarily do that. We all have things in life we start and then give up. Why? A major reason is starting things impulsively, not thinking them through before we begin. Perhaps our friends are doing it, our neighbors are doing it, so we’ll do it, too. That’s not necessarily a good enough motivation to finish a task, because when they give it up, maybe you will as well.
Clearly, we don’t want to be impulsive when we start something, because then it’s likely we will not follow it to completion, and that would create a negative habit pattern in the mind. To avoid that, it’s good to give adequate thought to a project before you embark on it to maximize your chances of finishing it. Each time you complete a task or a project, you strengthen the pattern, you set the stage for completing the next one and the next. Such positive habits are worth developing. A second statement from Gurudeva on strengthening willpower adds this idea: Do it well. But he doesn’t stop there: Do it even better than you initially planned. Then you are using a little extra willpower, more than you normally use to get by, and that strengthens your willpower.
In summary, get rid of any conceptual division you have between the external and the internal. Keep in mind that a great deal of our spiritual progress is made in the external world. It’s where we learn to concentrate and use our willpower. Those abilities are needed to control our thoughts when we sit down to meditate and succeed in going deeply within.
Ideally, we don’t stop meditating when we open our eyes; nor do we stop worshiping when the puja ends. The most advanced practice is controlling awareness throughout the day, not just when we are sitting quietly. We want such continuity. Gurudeva took it even into the night, saying restraint of our mental movements eventually extends even into our dreams, so we do not go where we don’t belong, even on the astral plane. That’s an advanced state we can work toward. In the meantime, take each moment to practice; use each moment to develop the willpower needed to achieve your spiritual goals.