A Sense of Adventure
October 20, 2007
As you embark on the practice — and as you stay with the practice — it’s best to think of it as a voyage of discovery. After all, the Buddha says that the goal is to see what you’ve never seen before, to realize what you’ve never realized before, to attain what you’ve never attained before. So you’re going into the unknown. This means that you’re going to have to deal with risk and uncertainty, which require an interesting mix of attitudes. On the one hand, you need a certain amount of confidence. On the other hand, you need humility. The confidence is confidence in your ability to deal with unknown factors as they arise. The humility is the realization that you can’t expect everything to follow your preconceived notions. The path is going to stretch your imagination and ask more out of you than you might originally be prepared to give. So you need the confidence that Yes, you can do this and Yes, this is a good place to go. And you need the humility to realize that No, you don’t know beforehand what it’s going to be like. You have to be willing to learn.