Effort Never Ends

A truth about effort…

We are a bundle of atoms as a host to our life. This machinery of atoms and life is on a journey to discover its truth. On this journey, effort is paramount.

The effort to get up in the morning.

The effort to eat.

The effort to learn.

The effort to pursue a goal.

The effort to love.

The effort to meditate.

We change our effort relative to the goal we set. More effort or smarter effort is needed for chasing higher goals. We set goals and if we fail we try again or we set a new goal. Even if we are not focused on setting a goal, our natural machinery is always putting us on some goal or the other. We always get bored and will act to do something.

The completion of a goal leads to learning, experience and realization. A new goal may be of a higher standard or a lower or negative standard. Behind all effort is our physical and mental body. For the conscious goal, there is always a result associated and the hope of successfully achieving the result has a sense of pleasure and contentment associated with it.

Buried deep inside our goals is this desire for no more effort. After this goal, my past effort will no longer be needed. Even committed spiritual seekers are chasing the goal of samadhi with an inherent imagination that the state of samadhi is one where no further effort is needed. This imagination and desire for no more effort are false.

We must not give up the effort we put in every day and we must continue this till the day we die. We may retire from work and our physical body may deteriorate but our effort must continue.

As we learn meditation, the ability to put effort into meditation is possible in any state of physical condition. We may be in severe pain but we can put in the effort to meditate. The effort never stops. The effort never ends. In fact, we need to keep getting more and more efficient with our effort to be able to achieve more goals.

In meditation, we can measure all stages of mental development and continue our effort and never stop. For those of us who can claim to have reached samadhi, the real effort of this life begins after that. The effort needed never ends for anyone.

Keep working…