The Pendulum of Striving

People often cycle between intense self-improvement efforts and sudden collapse, confusing striving with virtue. Rest and ease can feel suspicious, leading to aggressive routines, ambitious lists, and constant attempts to become a different kind of person. The Sanskrit concept viriya is commonly rendered as effort or persistence, but it can be better understood as diligent enthusiasm. A Buddhist story about monk Sona shows the danger of swinging to extremes: luxury to exhausting asceticism. The Buddha uses a lute metaphor to explain that music emerges only when strings are properly tuned, not when they are too tight or too loose.

"We tend to live like malfunctioning windshield wipers. Frenetic motion. Sudden collapse. Frenetic motion again. One week we are downloading habit trackers, ordering supplements with names like Alpha Brain Thunder Powder, and telling ourselves that this is the month we finally become the kind of person who answers emails within 24 hours. We wake at dawn. We stretch. We hydrate aggressively. We make ambitious, sprawling lists in multiple notebooks. Then comes the recoil. We dive under the duvet. And we stay."

"Somewhere along the line, many of us absorbed the idea that if we were not straining, we were failing. Rest became suspicious. Ease suspect. Recently, on my podcast Fifty Words for Snow, where my cohost Emily John Garcés and I explore words without direct English equivalents, we discussed the Sanskrit word viriya with head teacher at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, Katherine Senshin Griffith. Viriya is often translated as effort, right effort, persistence, or diligence, but Katherine doesn't feel any of these quite capture viriya. Katherine prefers "diligent enthusiasm.""

"The Buddhist tradition contains a story about a monk named Sona who understood extremes very well. Before becoming a monk, Sona reportedly lived a life of luxury and sensual pleasure. After entering spiritual practice, he swung violently in the opposite direction. He became so determined and ascetic that he pushed himself to exhaustion. According to the story, he walked meditation paths until his feet bled. Still, he believed he simply needed to try harder."

"The Buddha eventually asked him about a lute. When the strings are too tight, can it play beautifully? No. When the strings are too loose, can it play beautifully? No. Only when properly tuned does music emerge. That image has survived for thousands of years because it describes something central about being human. Most of us do not know h"

Read at Psychology Today