Steady Progress

By Category: Meditation & PracticeTags:

If you keep your practice steady,

morning and night, summer and winter,

there is nothing you can not do

and nothing that can harm you.

— Upasakasila Sutra

The Importance of Being Steady

Laziness and fear of work will get you into trouble no matter where they appear. Laziness is a basic animal tendency that must be confronted the moment it starts. Once you begin to allow yourself to be lazy, it will be hard for you to do anything successfully. Fear or dislike of work leads to a weak state of mind that tries to make quick profits or exploit the labor of others. You may get a leg up in the samsaric world once in a while by avoiding work, but eventually you will bring great harm to yourself. This world is the only place we have in which to practice Buddhism. If you are not practicing Buddhism all the time in everything that you do, you are not really practicing Buddhism, you are playing at it.

It is good sometimes to stress the difficulties of Buddhist practice. Having said that, let us remember as well that every gain made in understanding Buddhism pays back the effort put into it tenfold.

Buddhism is practiced at the point where the mind meets life; and it is practiced in the mind as the mind is stimulated by life; and it is practiced in life where the mind learns everything it knows. We must not let ourselves become inattentive, dishonest or lazy in our practice. There is much for all of us to learn and not one of us will succeed without a steady application of energy to the task.

The Sutra of Bequeathed Teachings says,

If you make a steady effort to progress, you will find that nothing is too difficult. This is because steady effort is like running water; it can even cut through stones. Contrariwise, if you frequently abandon your effort to progress, you will go nowhere. You will be like someone who tries to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together but stops before the wood gets hot. You may desire to start a fire, but you will never succeed.

The Mahaprajnaparamita Sastra says,

Steady progress is the source of all goodness. It gives birth to all good practice of the Dharma which ultimately leads to anuttara-samyaksambodhi [the highest enlightenment].

Steady progress is based on determination. The Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana says,

Generally speaking, there are three kinds of determination: determination born of faith, determination born of understanding and practice, and determination born of proven realization.

What Is Progress?

Progress in Buddhism is not something that can be judged or determined in samsaric terms. There is no equation between success in this world and progress in Buddhism. To progress quickly and with as few distractions as possible, a Buddhist should always look to what he is doing, not to what he is getting or how others are treating him.

The Yogacarabhumi Sastra recognizes five basic stages of progress in Buddhism:

  1. The “shielded stage” during which the ambition to progress in Buddhism first appears. It is called the “shielded stage” because the practitioner must be careful to protect himself from temptation and misunderstanding.

  2. The “increased stage” during which the practitioner strengthens his resolve and begins to make vows.

  3. The “stage of self-esteem” during which the practitioner becomes certain of the correctness of his path and does not fear what others may say about him.

  4. The “independent stage” during which the practitioner is able to make steady progress no matter what circumstances he finds himself in.

  5. The “stage of insufficiency” during which the practitioner realizes that he must give his whole heart to his practice and that anything less would be insufficient.

Progress can also be measured by consulting the Fifty-Two Stages of the Bodhi Way or the Thirty-Seven Conditions Leading to Buddhahood. See the Agamas for a good description of the Thirty-Seven Conditions or the Avatamsaka Sutra for a description of the Fifty-Two Stages.

In the end, compassion is the most valuable measurement and guide for all Buddhist practice. Compassion is itself the highest awareness and the highest practice. If you feel any growth in compassion or toward compassion, you can be sure that you are progressing on the path toward enlightenment. 

Taking no thought of the body and firm in wisdom and mind,

steadily progressing in the Dharma,

the practitioner will find that he achieves his goal

and that nothing can obstruct him at all.

— Mahaprajnaparamita Sastra

This article was originally published in Being Good, written by Venerable Master Hsing Yun.

Image from Pixabay.

More Featured Articles

How Buddhism Views the Mind
The analysis of the mind in Buddhism is both multifaceted and sophisticated. As a spiritual practice, Buddhism contains numerous descriptions of the nature and function of the mind and instructions on how to search for, abide with, and refine it. In this regard, Buddhist psychology has much to offer, as does Western psychology.In the beginning, “psychology” referred almost exclusively to “a science that explains the Read more
Greed: The Cause of Suffering
Though the worlds that we see are fundamentally a product of our own minds, they usually do not appear this way to us. Like images in an intense dream, our perceptions appear to be wholly real to us, and not to have been generated by our own mental activity. For this reason, the Buddha taught many ways to help us comprehend the true nature of Read more
Healthy Emotions, Healthy Love
Our emotions are a very important part of our everyday life, and they star in a leading role on the stage of relationships. The ability to feel and our freedom to act upon these feelings give us both joy and sorrow, and it is imperative that we maintain our emotional well-being to minimize the potential for suffering within relationships. Emotions are the glue that bind Read more
Careful in Speech, Controlled in Body
Control of the body means that we know when to act, and when not to act and that we know how to behave with moderation. Read more
Walking, Standing, Sitting, and Resting
"Walk like the wind, stand like a pine, sit like a bell, and rest like a bow."This basic etiquette not only applies to Buddhists; everyone should practice it as well in daily living.When we first meet a person, we can tell the level of his/her education and cultivation by his/her manners. We know how refined a person is by the way he/she speaks and conducts Read more
Repentance
It is only through loving-kindness and compassion that we can find room in our hearts to forgive others. It is only through our willingness to let go of resentment that we can find a way to magnanimity.  Read more
What is Meditation?
One of the great advantages of sitting meditation is that you can take it with you wherever you go. Whether you are in a forest deep in the mountains or beside a stream among the grass and reeds, you can develop meditative concentration just by sitting down and crossing your legs.But what is meditation? Does it come from sitting, standing, or lying down? Huineng, the Read more
Not Lying
Trustworthy WordsIf you lie, you will not be trusted. If you cannot be trusted, you will be ineffective in your own life and useless to other people. Lies hurt others because they damage their trust and their sense of what is right and wrong. This is a very serious kind of damage; it wastes time, frightens people and causes them to doubt their basic intuitions Read more
Healing the Body
Technological progress and advances in modern science have led to material improvements that have enhanced the quality of people’s lives on many levels. Yet, no matter how much we have progressed or how advanced our technology is, there still remain fundamental problems in life that science will never be able to solve.Two of the greatest problems people face are birth and death. No sooner are Read more
Born into Tribulation, Raised in Adversity, yet Experienced a Lifetime of Joy
People often ask me, “What ad­versity have you experienced in your life?” And for a moment, I can­not come up with an answer. I have always maintained the attitude of taking things as they come, as in the sayings “When the soldiers come, de­ploy the generals to fight back; when there is a flood, use earth to stop it” and “When encountering a mountain, cut Read more
Transcend the Ordinary and the Sacred
What, exactly, is the meaning contained within this gong’an? For instance, some have asked, what are people like? This is a very difficult question to answer because if there are things they are like, then there are things they are not like. If we answer that people are like ghosts, then there are also people among ghosts. If we say ghosts are like people, then Read more
The Unsurpassed Value of Impermanence
Birth and death are realities of life. Regardless of who we are, we cannot escape either one. While birth is celebrated, death is feared by most. In order to cope with our fear, we often seek comfort in religion. Although each of the world's major religious traditions has its own teaching concerning death, Buddhism is the only one that promotes the doctrine of impermanence as one Read more