Wisdom starts with listening to the teaching. It continues as we use our natural wisdom, our ordinary intelligence, to reflect on what we have heard. Then we use our cultivated wisdom to put what we have learned into action.

 

We may hear a teaching that says that renunciation is the first step on the path — that to begin to do what we need to do to put an end to suffering for ourselves and others, we need to stop seeking refuge in things that will harm us. Money, sex, status, leisure and food will not bring us happiness. Generosity, patience, morality, effort, meditation, and wisdom will. This is not obvious. This is a teaching. You just heard it.

 

We are fortunate to hear it. But to do anything with it, we need to think about it. Examine it carefully. See if it’s true. See how it might play out. That is contemplation. Step two.

 

If we are convinced, then we can practice what we understood. In action. In speech. In deep meditation. In insight. That is step three.

 

You can’t understand it if you never heard it. You can’t do it if you don’t understand it. Even if you think it’s a good idea, if your understanding is shallow, under pressure, you will not have the determination or courage to do the right thing.

 

There are people who say, ‘Just do it.’ The line was borrowed by Nike from Zen teaching in California in the 60’s. It was as misunderstood in athletics as it was in Buddhism.  At that time, there were many undisciplined hippies attracted to the Zen movement, the way young middle class boys are attracted to hip hop now. Sag your pants and you are in. There is nothing needed, nothing demanded, nothing to do. You are good enough as is. It failed them, of course.

 

Then as now, if you are an untrained person getting up to spar with an experienced, well-trained martial artist, and you ‘just do it,’ you will just get your ass kicked. If your mom is dropping you off at middle school, someone will surely see through your gangsta act and steal your weed or your lunch money.

 

If you take your seat at the Zen center and just do it for an hour or a weekend or a week – without any preconceptions, or training, or intention – then all your untrained habits, expectations, and mental chaos will accompany you.

 

There is a time for spontaneity. But spontaneity is not the same as impulsiveness. If you have been playing the saxophone assiduously for 20 years, you may be able to get on stage with a band for the first time and just do it. If it’s the first time you picked up a horn, you will barely be able to wet your reed.

 

Putting an end to suffering forever for yourself and all other beings is more difficult than jazz improvisation. How can people be persuaded they can just do it? Musicians don’t believe that, pilots don’t, athletes don’t, but the credulous and the poseurs who want quick answers to difficult problems do.

 

And leaders of religious groups want followers, and will pander to that inclination.

 

But that won’t help us.

 

What will help us is doing the work. Hearing the teachings. Contemplating them. Manifesting them in our body, speech and mind.

 

Because we live in a bankrupt nation in a decadent time, we are surrounded by juvenile behavior. Impulsiveness, self indulgence, self centeredness, and emotional volatility rule the public discourse and rule the economy too – from the entitled, to the demanding, to the drug dealers, to their slaves.

 

Children were not admitted to the Buddha’s community.  2500 years ago in India a young person had to be at least 20 years old to be ordained, and that was in a time when youth was much shorter than it is today.  Children were excluded because they did not have the emotional stability or maturity to focus on a difficult a long term goal, one which requires a persistent willingness to sacrifice comfort and change ones inclinations to meet the demands of difficult and worthy life.

 

People who have not entered into adulthood, regardless of their age, should be excluded from the community today as well, unless they are willing to mature.

 

Maturity requires consistent cultivation. Many parents have abdicated this responsibility. Schools have abdicated it. Commerce, politics, culture, and drug dealers, legal and not, have abdicated that responsibility and, in fact, pander to the juvenilization of our people, especially of young men. 

 

It wrecks them as people. It disqualifies them as spiritual practitioners.

 

But if we, as teachers and as practitioners, take the responsibility to demand diligence and discipline from ourselves and the people we work with, no one will be disqualified. Everyone can enter the community.

 

We can’t ‘just do it.’ But we can do it. And we need to do it now.