So earlier, I talked briefly about desire, and the importance of it in practice. And I wanted to continue because this teacher teaching and desire is part of, of fourfold teaching. That the tradition puts a lot of importance on because it's, sometimes what the Buddha taught is been summarized under a list of lists called the 37 Wings of awakening. And there's something like seven or eight lists that are within that. But they're all practice lists, the eightfold path, the five faculties, the seven factors of awakening different things. But one of them is called the four bases for success. That's one of the ways of translating it. And so these four bases is these four foundations for success, how to succeed and things, as a wonderful teaching, that can be supportive for accomplishing you what you need to do in life. Sometimes, if we don't have these four things, it's hard to succeed and what we set ourselves up to do. And so they're considered very important for practice, or weren't part of the, this list of 37 Wings of awakening. So the first one is desire. And is to have a focus on desire that supports the whole engaged way of, of practicing being engaged in our practice, supported by desire. And, and as I said earlier, that sometimes desires usually treated as something unfortunate that we're worse and Buddhism and you're not supposed to have desire. But there's certain kinds of desires, which are problematic, the ones that involve compulsion, the ones that involve a kind of craving, or thirst or clinging, but there are clinging free forms of desire. And to be clear, or this is what I want, then things can organize around that we can, we can follow up with that we can put ourselves behind that, if we don't have any desires, then, you know, we just kind of bumble around and like, everything is okay, and I'll just kind of bumble around and somehow things will work out, okay. But to have a desire, doesn't have to be with attachment. But it does become an organizing principle. And in in when people do this practice, or any kind of spirituality, sometimes to really realize, oh, this is important for me, I have this desire to be part of this practice to do this practice. I have a desire to be part of the spiritual tradition, for example. And so that desire, organizes okay, then what does that mean? What do I do now, because of that, oh, it means xy and z, it means like, you know, that I sit, meditate every day, or I come to IMC, or I, or eye, you know, things can then now can fall into place. Because we have clarity about what our priorities are. So there's a place for desire. And to be clear about what is it we want? What do I really want? What do I really, really want? Is one of the really great questions. What is my deepest desire with my deepest wish, my deepest intention? And, and then to reflect on that you can go down through layers and layers. Sometimes you figure out the first one, that you come up with an answer, when you keep looking, really what's below that was below that or something. Interesting way of reflecting on this is, I say what my I think I have this really big desire for whatever. And now if I succeeded in that desire, what, what would my desire be then? So for example, My desire is to meditate. What if Yeah, what if you succeeded to meditating regularly so that you're fulfilling that desire? Now what's the deepest desire? Oh, now the desires to meditate? Honestly, I just want to be really honest when I meditate. And then if you discover how to do that, then what's your desire? So you find you go deeper and deeper to something.
So his whole reflection about desires are and having designed being clear about it. There's a lot of things this world wants you to do. There's a lot of billboards of advertisements that want to tell you what you should desire. There's no shortage of people who wander, are paid a lot of money to get you to desire in a certain way. For you to kind of be clear about what you want, is a very helpful thing in a wise life. The second of these four bases is for success, is it's one thing to wish for something, it's another thing to act on it. So the second one is act on it. Engage in the process of following up on it. And the word that is used for this, you know, act on it. Paul, the word is viriya. And viriya can also mean courage. Courageous effort, and sometimes what's needed is kind of a kind of a certain degree of courage a degree of, yes, I'm going to do this, I have this desire this wish, I'd looked at it, it's a healthy wish, it's appropriate wish, it's my heart's wish. And now, you know, it's gonna go against everything I ever learned from my family or whatever. But I'm gonna do this, and it takes some courage or, you know, but they have to, you have to act on their wish to have a wish. And, and say, Well, you know, it's not going to work, so I'm not gonna even try, well, then it's true doesn't work. That's you, it'll prove itself. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. But once you act, engage, it's a new world we enter into, and who knows you could, things will happen that you couldn't have predicted that will support you and find your way around that desire. The third basis of success is be reflective. Think about what you're doing. Don't just do things because you have the desire could be done selfishly. Don't just do things because you have a desire, because it feels good. Or you have an intuition. Don't just engage, you know, act on it in some barrel ahead and not betray me Spencer, be reflective, live a contemplative life, reflective life. Think about the desire, think about the actions, the choices you make, how to live it best to think about the context for having this desire. And how does this desire fit the context? And is it appropriate? And? Or is there different ways to expressing that desire different ways of following up on the desire depending on the time of day and the weather or the context you're in or the people you're with? So this idea of desire, or they will go the book further? And then the fifth one, the fourth one is, review, investigate, inquire about how it's going with it. In other words, there's a action reflection cycle, you act, and then you reflect on the consequences of your actions. What happened? What do you learn? I have a desire, I acted on it. And now that I've acted on it, what were the consequences of acting on it? What can I learn from that? Because sometimes we act, we act in the wrong way, and we made mistakes, that didn't work. And we need to see that sometimes we see that, you know, oh, this didn't work or this work partially and in this worked for what I wanted to do in the world, but actually I exhausted myself in the process. It wasn't good for me the way I did it, it's maybe I can find another way of doing it. So the idea of learning from experience is that is the fourth basis of success. Or action reflection is what white people call a call about it, you do act and then you reflect on it. You get your your investigate the impact the consequences, and then you can make course corrections and change what you're doing and all this. So these things some of these things are are not something that practitioners often understand. In fact, it's almost like we understand from the teachings. These are things you're not supposed to do. You're not supposed to have desire. You're not supposed to put Have courageous efforts just cool, chill relaxed, they'll try too hard.
And you don't think, you know, meditation is not about thinking we were told, right? Don't think. And there's some truth to that we have to learn how not to be caught in the grip of thinking that meditating. But we're supposed to think we're thinking beings are reflective beings. And so there's a time and place for thinking about things in deep ways. And then, and then this reflection part, some of it has to do with reviewing what happened. And that's looking back in the past, even if it's two minutes ago. And some people say, Well, I'm supposed to just all I'm allowed to do is be present, be mindful and present, right? And past the future. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not allowed to reflect. That's true. When we practice in some contexts, if you're practicing on meditating, maybe that's true. If you're doing walking bases, maybe that's true. If you're in retreat, maybe you don't, it's has some truth to it. But we were more than that we're allowed to think we're thinking is actually a very important part without thinking well, about things we'd get in trouble. And then, so reviewing, thinking all these things are, are things that may be the way this instructions are often given, are seem to be things we're not allowed to do. But in fact, these four are part of the collection of practices that are on the path to awakening 37 Wings of awakening. So desire, action, thinking, and reviewing or reflecting about what just happened. These are the basis of success. And there's a long tradition of Buddhism that, and like in Thailand, where these are understood to be useful for any endeavor you do in daily life, cooking, working in a job, or whatever you're doing, to have these four. So to be clear about the desire, be clear that they have to act on it, be clear about thinking it out carefully, and be clear about doing their review of it too. So we can learn. We can learn from it. Maybe we will learn from our mistakes. So maybe this is an interesting thing for you to consider. And that maybe there's a time and place where these four bases assess AppSec success will support you to a nice way. So we're gonna stop now.
