Imagine yourself five hundred years ago. The Emperor has handed you a message. It is urgent. You need to deliver it across the empire, half a world away. If you succeed, he tells you, you will receive a great treasure. If you fail, you will die.

In this case, you will take your mission seriously. Under this circumstance, you will do whatever it takes to succeed. You set out. Along the way, you will encounter all sorts of terrain. There will be lush regions. You will be tempted to stay, to enjoy the comforts there, to delay.

You will have to cross hostile terrain. You will come upon difficult, dangerous regions that are inhospitable to life. You will be tempted to give up. To turn back.

If your comfort is foremost in your mind, you will never complete your mission. All will be lost, and you will die. If, however, you never lose sight of your ultimate goal, if the urgency of your mission is always clear in your mind, no matter what your outward circumstances, you will never be distracted by the changing scenery around you. You will notice your environment, of course. It will matter. You will have to adjust to accommodate its demands. But the immediate conditions will never be as important as fulfilling your mission.

Our lives as practitioners are like this. There will be attractions along our way that may distract us and tempt us to wander from our path. There will be times when our practice will feel barren and arid, not satisfying, not delightful, not even interesting. We will be tempted to delay or to give up.

If we recognize the ultimate purpose of our training — the purpose our practice serves us daily, and the ultimate reward that it offers us, the complete fulfillment of our potential and our mission as human beings — we will never be distracted by the shifting scenery of our lives.

Free from distractions, we can travel the paths of life freely, energetically, firm in our conviction that what we are doing is right, and utterly essential.