Meeting discipline in our meditation: the joyous or the neurotic?

As it turns out, the Buddhist teachings have quite a bit to say about this. Discipline is one of the six paramitas in Buddhism, which means the six transcendental actions: those actions that are to be cultivated by a bodhisattva to make progress on the path to enlightenment. It is often translated as "taking delight in what is virtuous, positive, and wholesome." To be able to make progress on the path to enlightenment, and more simply, on the path of meditation, you need to have some discipline so that you'll actually sit down on your cushion periodically and practise. Moreover, you'll need to remember to not only practise on your cushion, but even to be aware of your thoughts and emotions during everyday life. Now that requires a lot of discipline, and because of that, can feel like a burden. It can become yet one more items on our list of things we have to do. But that only happens when we forget the purpose of our practice, and when we lose sight of the happiness it could bring to both ourselves and others. I feel that that is so easy to forget in our fast-paced world! Maybe that is why a lot of meditation teachings start with discussing the benefits of meditation, so that we can remember that more easily.

Similarly, someone recently wrote on their Facebook wall that "discipline is an order that sets you free." This may be yet another way of seeing it. Even to simply imagine that discipline is not a burden but a tool to make us develop, quickly softens it and makes it something that helps us, rather than a prison. I think discipline really only becomes a prison when we use it as a tool to impress others. When we feel the discipline makes us better people than people who do not have that discipline, then it suddenly becomes something we have to hold onto with all our might, and that we cannot escape. But when it is simple an order that sets us free, it's not such a big deal, it's merely a tool.

So what is the secret for developing discipline and not becoming neurotic? I think it may well be to focus on the positive things, on the benefits that observing our minds brings to us and others, and not to focus too much on ourselves. Then, bit by bit, we can feed our practice such that discipline arises quite naturally.