These notes are from Curt Fish’s October 13, 2024, Dharma talk.
Right Effort is effort directed at cultivating the skillful and abandoning the unskillful. Here’s a description of Right Effort from a post on Quora:
Right effort—is such a great limb of the path—such a key spot, internally, in our practice. It’s this beautiful place where joy and determination meet. Right effort drives so much of our practice. The idea of Right Effort shows us the optimism of Buddhism—that we are not hopeless victims of circumstance or past conditioning—rather, we embrace the full reality of our experience, and our individual capacity to work with it. The Buddha said that through right effort, we can transform the whole structure of our lives.
It can be helpful to think of Right Effort in 4 broad categories:
First, we want to prevent unskillful states of mind from arising. We guard against the arising of unwholesome states. One good way to do this is to use the practice of guarding the sense doors. Pay close attention to what’s presenting at each of the sense door. Open to it and maintain a perspective of curiosity. The sense doors are our window to experience, where our experience of the world begins.
Second, we want to abandon unskillful states of mind already arisen. Unskillful states of mind will arise no matter how closely we guard the sense doors, so we will have to recognize them and work to abandon them. Here we can think of the 5 Hindrances (desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt) and the RAIN practice: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and know it as Non-self.
Third, we want encourage the arising of wholesome, skillful states of mind. We take steps to put in place the conditions from which wholesome states of mind arise. Here we can think of the Brahma Viharas, the 4 divine abodes: We encourage the arising of Metta (lovingkindness), Caruna (compassion), Mudita (Sympathetic Joy), and Upekkha (equanimity).
Finally, we want to continue the cultivation of already-arisen wholesome, skillful states. We can simply look at the direct experience of these states and come to know the benefits wordlessly. As a more worldly practice, we can practice with the 7 factors of enlightenment: Mindfulness, Investigation of Reality, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration and Equanimity. We can practice with bringing each factor to mind, opening to it and directly experiencing what arises.