Motivation -Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Shambhala

Duration: 6 minutes and 46 seconds

Year: 2008

Country: United States

Language: English

Genre: Instructional

Posted by: cmontone on Apr 2, 2010

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, spiritual head of Shambhala, on the value of motivation in meditation practice. http://sakyong.com . http://sakyong.com/videos.php?id=15 . Produced By Centre Productions, Creative personnel James Hoagland, Johanna J. Lunn and Ethan Neville.

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So this morning I rose and one of the first important elements of my morning is motivation.
And motivation is, I think, one of the key elements in terms of meditation, Buddhism,
moving and orienting our life in a forward direction.
And one of the most important elements of motivation is that
we are taking our mind in the direction that we want to go.
So, a lot of times in life, I think we get up randomly.
Whatever pops into our head is just the way we kind of go forward.
So if we wake up and we’re feeling slightly irritated or depressed, worried…
so automatically, I would say the motivation of that day is worried or irritated.
So motivation is a key tool and it’s orienting the mind.
And I like to think of it as “inspired”, you know, we inspire the mind.
In Tibetan we say “kung lung” and that’s what brings our mind up,
or what enables our mind to come forward, or what inspires us, essentially.
So when we get up in the morning, I think we all need to be inspired.
And it doesn’t need to be a world changing inspiration,
you know, but I think maybe even just simply I feel inspired.
Maybe in the morning, you know, when we wake up, and we’re like,
“I’m inspired by my coffee” you know, or “by my newspaper;"
“I’m inspired to meditate” whatever it may be, we have the moment.
And I think what’s important is, if we divide our day up,
in terms of morning, afternoon, evening, what is the morning period?
It’s a period where we can orient ourselves.
So within the tradition of meditation and within Shambhala,
if we’re going to rise as a warrior or as somebody who’s on a journey, on a path,
we need to kind of be aware of that first moment of the first rising and we may sit in bed.
Maybe, if we have a meditation cushion, you know, we may take our posture.
We may relax our mind, just breathing.
And then begin to just say, “What is my motivation?” I think it’s a good, important question.
And then we can ask ourselves what do we want our motivation to be.
So here we have the choice of, is it a selfish motivation or is it a beneficial motivation?
Is it a motivation that is limiting? Is it a motivation that expands ourselves?
And for the theme of motivation is that…
the way I like to think about it is motivation is the flag-bearer.
If we were to march up a hill, you know, like they have in the movies
where you have the person carrying the flag, that’s motivation.
It’s like, if you put the flag up there, everyone is going in that direction.
If the motivation is down in the valley, that’s where everyone is going to go.
So motivation is this blend of you inspiring yourself, orienting yourself,
but the reality is that once the mind moves in that direction, everything will begin to follow.
So I think in a simple way in the morning, I find it helpful to clear the mind.
To just reflect, “What is my motivation?” I have a motivation.
And, you know, the thing is, by the end of the day, if we are very busy
and tired at the end of the day, we realize, oh, our motivation was not focused.
You know, we were anxious or whatever it may be.
So to switch, switch the direction and to be motivated.
And I think what’s important here is the way the mind works.
The way it kind of...just the mechanics of the mind,
the mechanics of how it kind of goes forward is that the motivation is the leading edge.
So it’s very, very important.
So, for example, you cannot meditate without some kind of good motivation,
or clear motivation, or appropriate motivation.
If you just sit down without any motivation or clear motivation,
you’re just wasting time, in a sense.
You’re taking a period out of your day where nothing has been gained, as such.
And what I mean by that is that if our motivation is compassion;
if our motivation is self-reflective looking at what we have done,
how do we develop the qualities of generosity or patience,
or whatever our theme may be; we want that to be there.
So I would encourage everyone to wake up, you know.
And to motivate themselves to have motivation...
to sit up, you know, even in bed, even as people watch on the computer, and just reflect
“What is my motivation?”
And then we may have a lot of thoughts at the beginning, “I don’t know what motivation is”
and then it begins to settle away and there’s some kind of basic theme.
You know, what is..."Why am I doing this? What’s happening?"
And so then to pay attention at that moment and realize,
oh, that’s just not a mild thought; it’s a very important part of our life.
I think what happens is that, with motivation, if we don’t direct in the right way,
we find ourselves in a situation where we kind of feel like we’ve lost our inspiration for life.
We’re not sure why we’re doing something; we’re just kind of going through the motions.
Conversely, if we have a moment of motivation, it just makes anything very interesting.
So, all of a sudden, just the simple aspects of life become very brilliant and clear.
So motivation is important, and I think, again just taking a good posture,
and sitting down, breathing.
And in this case, I’m going to be meditating on compassion.
So just changing my mind a little bit,
just focusing on myself and extending it out, saying, may others be of…
may I be of benefit to others.

Motivation -Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Shambhala

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