1) Desire (chanda)
2) Energy (viriya)
3) Having your mindset / intent correct (citta)
4) Ingenuity (vīmaṃsā)
1) Desire: For Jerry Segers, Jr. building desire starts with a wish. As you build desire, apply the teachings in parts 2, 3, and 4 to help with building the desire. If you feel you need more instruction, let me know and I will try. Jerry<at>ShareABrainWave.com warning, I’m not regular at keeping up with e-mail.
2) Energy: Energy comes from faith. Never use anger, fear, hatred, etc., those set you up for failure. Sadness is very tricky to use. To do this, think to yourself “When will I become an Arahant!?!?” using the sadness. Properly tuned faith makes smooth useful energy. The most useful faith is confirmed faith in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. This touches on part 3 (mindset / intent). Confirmed faith requires that you have proven something to yourself that counts as evidence that your faith is wisely placed. The more evidence that backs up your faith, the more unshakable it is.
Doubt in your faith makes it difficult to impossible to create the smooth, useful energy you want. Doubt can be fed and / or starved. Feeding doubt of this sort is unwise, but—to avoid feeding it you need to know how it is fed. Doubt is fed by wrong attention to thoughts that act as the grounds for doubt. To understand the last sentence, you must use part 4, ingenuity. You can prevent the feeding of doubt by adjusting your attention (difficult), refusing to think thoughts of that sort (easier), replacing the thought with a known wholesome thought (easiest), or whatever means your ingenuity and past experiences give you.
Doubt is starved by realizing that there are skillful and unskillful actions. There are blameworthy and blameless actions. There are inferior and superior actions, actions that side with light and those that side with darkness. Repeatedly sorting actions in this way starves doubt in your ability to succeed. Don’t believe me until after you test it and see for yourself! This info on feeding / starving comes from the Āhārasutta (SN 46.51)
3) Mindset / intent: Use your current methods and your ingenuity. Try to practice the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma, not in line with your preferences. I can also say that the most useful mindset / intentions are careful to harm no living beings in the pursuit of their goal. A useful test is, if you think you are “getting away with” something, you made a mistake on this step. Last thought: harmless generosity is never wrong to add to your mindset / intentions. It always helps.
4) Ingenuity: Ingenuity is basically a combination of refusing to give up, and trying something different for the next attempt. Some people access ingenuity by bouncing ideas off of other people. If you need a formal solo method, I recommend the scientific method. It is a well codified method for accessing ingenuity. From the Kahn academy website:
1) Observation
2) Form question
3) Form hypothesis
4) Make prediction based on hypothesis
5) Test the prediction
6) Use observations from the test to make new hypothesis or predictions. (Iterate until you have a workable method)
For further study see Saṁyutta Nikāya chapter 51 (yes, the whole chapter):
https://suttacentral.net/pitaka/sutta/linked/sn/sn-mahavaggasamyutta/sn51?lang=en
© 2024 Jerry Walter Segers, Jr. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported license. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities.