Resource

Effort in meditation

Meditation takes some effort, but not the straining kind. Too much, and you tense up and tire. Too little, and you drift or doze. The skill is finding the amount that lets you stay with what you’re doing.

The same question helps outside meditation, whenever trying harder has stopped working. Before you give more effort, ask what the effort is for.

Not too tight, not too loose

The best-known teaching on this comes from the Buddha. A monk named Soṇa had practised so hard that he was ready to give up. The Buddha asked him about his old skill, playing the vīṇā, a stringed instrument. When the strings were too tight, did it sound good? No. Too loose? No. Only when they were neither too tight nor too slack. Effort is the same, he said: “When energy is too forceful it leads to restlessness. When energy is too slack it leads to laziness.”

Effort is part of the Buddhist path itself. Right effort is one of its eight parts. In a sitting, balance looks like this. When your attention strains, ease off. When it drifts or goes dull, gather it a little. You’ll adjust many times in one sitting, and that adjusting is the practice. There’s more on coming back without force in Meditation for beginners, and on easing effort when you’re sleepy in Meditation to stay awake.

Effort can even work against you. Sleep researchers describe how trying hard to fall asleep can keep you awake. Sleep meditation has more on that.

Give the effort a job

Here’s what that can look like. Imagine you’ve carried a boxed bookshelf up three flights of stairs, and it catches in your doorway. You push. Nothing. You put your shoulder into it. From the other end, a friend says, “Maybe turn it.”

That’s hard to hear when you’ve just shown so much commitment to the bookshelf. But the doorway has no opinion about your effort. It has a size. When you set the box down and look at what’s catching, the question changes. It’s no longer how hard you can push. It’s what needs to move.

“Try harder” doesn’t say where to put the effort. Imagine learning a song on the piano. One jump between notes keeps defeating you, so you start again from the beginning every time. The opening gets more and more polished. The hard jump gets one hurried attempt every few minutes.

Now change one detail at a time:

The jump is hard. What helps is practising that movement on its own, slowly, so you can notice what your hand does. Research on skill points the same way. Focused practice on what you can’t yet do, with feedback, helps build skill. A large review found it explains less of the difference between people than was once claimed, but it still matters.
A key is broken. An afternoon of practice leaves you with the same broken key. You need a repair, or another piano.
You can’t tell if a note is sharp. You could practise a hundred times and still not know what you’re practising. You need a clearer copy, or someone who can read it.

The same frustration can come with all three, and the same sentence: “I’m terrible at this.” That sentence gives you nothing to work with. A movement to learn, a key to fix or a note to check each gives you somewhere to start.

How to find the next step

Some ways, from the shortest:

In meditation, adjust. Ease off when you strain, and gather your attention when it drifts. Notice which way you tend to go.
Set it down and look. When pushing isn’t working, stop for a moment and look at what’s actually catching.
Ask what the next attempt is for. “What am I asking this next try to change?” If it’s your skill, make the practice specific. If it’s something you don’t know, find out. If it’s the conditions, change one. If someone is waiting on you, ask what they need.
Finish one sentence. “The next thing that might help is…” Make it an action you’d recognise: ask for a missing detail, practise one movement, change an arrangement, send a correction.
Let some awkwardness come along. Imagine you’ve emailed a group the wrong meeting time. People need the right one now, not once you’ve stopped feeling embarrassed. You can send the correction while you still feel it.

These are examples, not a test or a set of steps. A situation can need several at once. Back at the doorway, the box is still heavy. But now you can see the corner that was catching. You lift one end, turn it, and try the angle together. This time it fits.

If it doesn’t go as you expect

You’re not sure what the obstacle is. Make a reasonable guess and see what happens. Someone else may see what you’ve missed.

The problem is time, money or help. Some obstacles need resources you don’t have right now. Naming that won’t produce them. It can stop a missing resource from turning into a story about what’s wrong with you.

Effort itself isn’t the problem. Effort and ambition aren’t mistakes. Some things really do take patience and another try. The question is only where to put the effort.

Nothing needs fixing. Not everything is a problem to solve. You can sit at the piano and play something silly, for the fun of it. Sometimes a wrong note gives you an idea.

In these meditations

Coming Back practises returning, gently, each time your attention wanders.
Start to Study helps you settle before beginning a particular task.
Afternoon Awake gathers your attention when it’s slack.