The Magic 8-fold Path: Right Intention
A waterbed or a shot gun
This is a series exploring Buddhism’s foundational and well-loved frameworks. Like flat, stark bangs being teased into full, sexy three-dimension by the right amount of Aquanet and the perfect comb, I will attend to these ideas with TLC and some razzle dazzle. If you’ve been curious about Buddhism or yourself in relation to the world, or if you need any kind of buoy at this time, this is for you.
We start with the Eightfold Path. Catch up on part 1.a (Right View) here and part 1.b (Right View continued) here (both with audio!).
Hello friends,
How are you? We are not OK. That’s OK, that’s OK, but yeah, we’re aren’t OK.
The chaos blizzard of the last many months (decades?) has broken our hearts open and unlocked access to greater aching realities that have been for some time: the state of the earth; the state of humanity; and so on and so forth. So much of it is very personal and very specific, and yet it’s also very ubiquitous and universal.
An abundance of suffering whose interconnectedness serves to amplify it far beyond what the mind can comprehend.
I’m having conversations with neighbors here in Los Angeles who remain devastated from the fires — worried about the land, the air, and the oceans, and wondering “is this still my home?” “Should I stay?” “Where would I go?” To even ask those question means you are already uprooted in some way.
Uprooted is a challenging state in which to exist.
It’s hard not to feel under attack right now, or to feel justified in what’s happening because you’ve felt under attack at some other time. Whatever you’re feeling is a real feeling, but it doesn’t need to send you tumbling off one edge or another of either/or. Win or lose. Yay or what the fuck. Soft landing or hostile ending. Can you stay, stay, stay for the muddy in-between. The space of grief. Just a little bit longer?
The muddy in-between is a lot. And when everything’s a lot, we can come back to basics. If you get dizzy, sit down on the earth. If you are sea sick, look out toward the unchanging horizon. What’s grounding for me right now, and might ground you:
Outdoors. Whatever the weather, wherever you are, go outside. Take a deep breath and exist in the environment as it is, even for a few minutes.
Comedy. I’m watching a lot of SNL’s 50th coverage. Stand-up specials. Old episodes of Seinfeld. A funny looking carrot. Whatever makes you laugh. Humor is magic.
Plants. Make a connection with a plant or notice something in the natural world around you, touch earth.
Connection. Send or listen to a voice note. Hug an animal. Chat with a neighbor.
Hot water. I am on a huge hot water kick right now. Maybe it’s lame. But try it!
Buddhism. Ancient wisdom gleaned from ages of hard times and suffering, reminding us that we are not alone and we can keep moving forward.
Fortunately, we’re on the Eightfold Path, baby. Slowly but surely we’re sauntering. We’re on the second step now. We explored the first step, right view, which is the spacious grounding perspective for all the subsequent steps— the perspective that there aren’t just two sides to a story, there are actually none at all. Right view is a commitment to allowing things to be just as they are.
From right view, emerges right intention, the second step on the Eightfold Path. Right intention is how we show up in space.
Right intention, sometimes translated as right thought, is about how our views foster the energy we bring into a situation, and subsequently, our actions, speech, etc.
It’s the speed we carry into a curve based on our judgment of our driving capabilities plus our assessment of the road conditions plus how we expect the car to perform. It can be a loaded and complex assessment. Hard to get right.
Intention is energy, intention is baggage, intention is power.
And if you aren’t grounded in right view, then you cannot really show up in right intention. This checks out if you think about it.
If you live under the heavy specter of a narrative that people always fuck you over; or perhaps that no one ever really understands / sees / appreciates you; and you see people as for or against you… then you’re bringing that energy, that intention, everywhere you go. To the laundromat, to the hotel lobby desk, to the altar as you get married, and even to the grave unless at some point you decide to drop the story and poke your head above the surface of delusion and say, ‘wait just one minute here, things are more spacious than I ever knew!’
If your world view is skewed and stark, rigid AF, then that’s the tone you’ve set for everything else in your life. It must all start with right view.
You know people like this — who carry their stories with them everywhere. We might even be people like this. As Lama Rod Owens’ perennial wisdom reminds us, if you don’t do your own work, you become work for someone else.
So again we’re reminded that practice, practice, practice — meditation or perhaps some other form of consistently, courageously clearing space to be honest and aware with yourself (sobriety, hiking, stand-up comedy) — is THE source of wisdom.
Remember “wrong” view is an over-tendency toward conceptualization. Wrong view is when we freeze situations and people with stories that they cannot escape. [Watch Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, Danger of a Single Story] If you are in “wrong” view, then it follows you’ll be in “wrong” (or “ordinary” as Trungpa Rinpoche calls it) intention — prepared to react to any situation from that narrative place. In The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, Trungpa writes of “wrong” intention:
“Having conceptually fixed the person, now you are ready either to grasp or attack him. Automatically there is an apparatus functioning to provide either a waterbed or a shotgun for that person. That is the intention. It is a thought process which relates thinking to acting.”
A waterbed or a shotgun. Damn.
Sounds like another Quentin Tarantino movie I do not want to watch.
This isn’t to say that shitty things don’t happen to you and to other people that you shouldn’t be aware of and smart about. Of course there is wild injustice and true devastation for no discernible reason. Riiiiiight this very moment. Heartbreaking, almost literally. But just because you are choosing not to essentialize life to these experiences does not mean you’re erasing or permitting them.
Right intention, rather, means staying in the openness that comes of that heartbreak. As Trungpa writes:
“Means not being inclined toward anything other than what is. You are not involved in the idea that life could be beautiful or could be painful, and you are not being careful about life. According to Buddha, life is pain, life is pleasure. That is the samyak* quality of it—so precise and direct: straight life without any concoctions. There is no need at all to reduce life situations or intensify them. Pleasure as it is, pain as it is—these are the absolute qualities of Buddha’s approach to intention.”
*[Samyak is the Sanskrit term which is translated as right on the Eightfold Path, which Chogyam Trungpa explains to mean direct or pure — straight up.]
OK. So, being in right intention is basically showing up, awake, self-aware, with energy of openness and cheer because you are not stuck in the mire of this is so this or that is so that. There is a positive experience to it, or inherent cheerfulness (though not necessarily 'happy’) because things simply are as they are.
Right intention is an act of devotion to spaciousness and curiosity, and a deliberate turning away from shriveling judgment. In this way, right intention is generous.
It’s generous not in that it’s giving anything literally in particular — because gift-giving can be agenda-laden, conditional, and about the giver themselves. But rather right intention is generous in the sense that it is simply and fully allowing. It enables a continued direct relationship with life exactly as it is.
Right intention is “giving” cheerful awakenedess; it’s “giving” the allowance of emptiness.
And there’s a particular slant toward the benefit of others and the greater collective when we show up with this energy. As Tibetan nun and teacher Pema Chödron frames it, right intention is orienting yourself in such a way as to benefit others and foster kinship.
To me, fostering kinship is about seeing, making, and nurturing connections of all sorts, and generally being in the awareness of interconnectedness which transcends friendliness or personal preference. Kinship is the natural state of things.
What does kinship stir up for you? What does kinship feel like in your body?
You might be thinking this sounds kind of idyllic. Like good for you if you can walk into situations and through life with true openness — I guess nothing shitty ever happened to you, or maybe you’re a little bit of an idiot? Get ready to be walked all over!
Well don’t worry. Right intention is not about having the memory of a goldfish with an addiction to toxic positivity and just bopping along as if everything everything is a blank slate for goodness. Listen, I am a Scorpio rising and I know a thing or two about grudge holding.
But let us not fall off the either/or cliff! Remember we are sniffing out the middle way here. Remember we are sauntering the Eightfold Path, which is about organizing yourself to live ethically, minimizing suffering of all and orienting yourself toward enlightenment. In the next part, time we’ll talk about idiot compassion, karma, and skillful means.
More specifics and specific examples of what is meant by right intention may be helpful here. In some Buddhist traditions, right intention is further illuminated in three parts: renunciation; good will; and harmlessness.
Renunciation is about refraining from clinging, grasping, and addiction of any sort. Renunciation refers to renouncing the habit of getting sucked into or caught and controlled by any one thing: alcohol, sex, work, weed, self-help. Be honest with yourself about what’s catching you because it’s got its claws in your energy and how you show up. Don’t be a pinball or a pendulum. Be like a mildly sagging helium balloon softly suspended amidst it all.
Good will is about giving away your old clothes. Just kidding. But kind of. Good will is about genuinely wanting the benefit of others and all — all sentient beings which includes our natural world. I saw something the other day that said, “if you do not see God in all, then you do not see God at all.” It is truly not easy to cultivate well wishes for others (that are not your own desires!) and especially well wishes for all others. People you don’t know; people you hate. But that’s what good will is.
As Lama Rod Owens so beautifully puts it, I can love you and want you to be free and also not like you. Bingo. This is tough, let’s just say that. That’s OK. It is something to practice at and cultivate, over and over again. You can cultivate good will, or compassion, sometimes called loving-kindess or metta for yourself, others, and the earth. Check out this 10-minute loving-kindness meditation led by the wonderful Sharon Salzberg.
Harmlessness is about remaining aware of our impact on others and the earth, and being mindful to avoid actions that may cause harm. While this is very simple in one regard, I find this very tricky the more I reflect on it because harm can be so subjective and situational. Sometimes the most harmful experiences are those we absolutely did not see coming. Mindfulness-awareness and good intentions alone cannot protect against ever doing harm, as we humans conditioned in this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks) know, so that is a really tough thing. I am continuing to think about this. We’ll have to dig deeper.
We’ll continue next time, but I want to leave you with this: delusion wants you to do its bidding. Delusion is delicious and everywhere. But you need not meet delusion with delusion. You can meet delusion with lucidity. Feet on the ground, blink your eyes clear, take a deep breath. Clarity is right there. Take care of yourself and each other right now. Love ya keep going.
