Effective Decision Making and Time Management

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Effective Decision Making and Time Management

By Rod Lee

Meditation is one of the main practices of Buddhism. But, why do we meditate? What's thepoint? It is to get a hold of the mind, to understand something about it. Our minds areunruly monkeys, unruly elephants. We don't have control. We think we have a bit ofcontrol but have you ever got into a cycle of worry and you can't stop, and have you everthought thoughts you don't want to think? Have you ever had negative thoughts? Allthose things come from an unruly mind, a distracted mind. We spend most of our time outin the world using our mind doing things, thinking, but very rarely do we ever bring ourmind home, do we ever actually get a hold of our mind, and (forms of) meditation is theonly process where we can actually work directly with the mind. Every other process weuse in the greater world is out there, and although we are using our mind, we neveractually ever get a hold of it while we are out there. Meditation is a chance to get a hold ofthe mind, to understand its function. We can't necessarily understand its function like,"Oh, I think a thought," and so on" and we're not talking about a verbal dialogue, but toactually get a realization of the way it works. By meditating, we experience the minddirectly. We find that the mind is slippery, elusive, sometimes difficult, sometimes quiet,sometimes up and down, and we need to know this, because if we don't know this thenwe have no chance of getting a hold of it. We have to know the parameters of the mindand with meditation, we're actually able to just get a hold of it.How do we get a hold of the mind in meditation? We can create a central point of focus,now within Buddhism there are many central points of focus but generally one of the mostcommon forms is watching the breath. By focusing on a central point, we then watch themind do back flips, when it gets disinterested in doing that, when it gets too interested indoing that. We allow the mind to be concentrated and watch what it's doing and we startto get a handle on what's happening. Every time it runs off and does something else wegently bring it back to the point of focus.When I was growing up, meditation was an escape…ah, you sit down, you close youreyes, bliss out and everything's perfect! I soon came across Buddhist meditation and soonfound that it was quite a bit of work, but very enjoyable work! And it's wasn't to do withcoping out actually, it was to do with becoming responsible, actually becomingresponsible to yourself and finding out how the mind works.So, breathing meditation! We focus on the point of breath…when the mind wanders, wedon't beat it up, we don't give ourselves a hard time, we don't criticize ourselves, werecognize that the mind has wandered, and we bring it back to the point of breath. Whensomething fantastic happens out in our mind when we are doing breathing meditation, welet the fantastic go, another distraction! We bring it back to the point of focus. If somethingnegative arises in our mind, we let that go and bring it back to the point of focus. So all thewhile, we are watching, some part of our mind is watching what it's doing but we're notbuying into it, we're not buying into the process of this distraction, we're not gettingcaught up in it. We always get caught up in the process of distraction, that's our nature,not our inherent nature. That's our nature to get caught up in distraction. If we look at

television and there's ads, it appeals to our sense of...discursiveness, I guess we would callit. So we're going against the flow a little bit with meditation, we're allowing our mind tobe central and focused, and so using the process of breath is one way of doing it. Ok, soI've spoken enough, let's do some!It's important to have the back straight, and allow the free flow of energy through thebody. Tongue touching the roof of the mouth, just behind the teeth, slightly open, mouthclosed. Head tilted forward slightly so that the neck is straight. Close our eyes, and firstlyrelax our body completely, allow the body to relax, and let go of all the thoughts of todayand the week, and let go of the thoughts of the future and tomorrow. Bring ourselves intothe present, into the process of our breath, going into our nose and coming out of our nose.And using the breath as our point of focus to let go of distraction. When a thought arises,we just note that a thought has arisen, and then return our attention to the breath. We dothis as many times as necessary during the whole process of the meditation. We don'tnecessarily try to be still or try to be peaceful, we just continue with the process ofwatching the breath. And that allows the mind to relax. So we'll begin… So, it was your first time meditating, how was that? Was it hard? Was your mindbouncing around and jumping to everywhere else? It's the same for all of us, our mindswander. Meditation is not the achievement of, "Okay, now my mind does not wanderanymore," I mean it is eventually I guess, but for most of us it is the process of learning todo that, and then gradually over time it gets easier. And gradually over time we notice thesubtle distractions more. In the beginning there are big gross ones, but after a while westart to tame that down, so you've graduated if you've brought your mind back to thebreath once, you've already passed the meditation class, okay? All you have to do is tocontinue the process.In the ninth century, a very famous

bodhisattva

by the name of Shantideva, from India,wrote a text called The Bodhisattva's Way of Life. Quoted that, "If it can be remedied, whyworry? If it cannot be remedied, why worry?" So that's your stress management (ha-ha!). Tonight's talk on time management and effective business decisions...well, when I lookedat the topic and I thought, 'It's going to be very interesting. People walking past theUNIBUDS Dhamma Talk, and they're looking at this topic: Time Management andEffective Business Decisions'. They are going to say that, 'What's happened to thosepeople? Where's the spiritual direction going? Why aren't they talking about spiritualthings?'But, the truth of it is, if we are trying to maintain a spiritual practice, we can't divorce ourlife from everyday work spiritual practice. We can't do that. That's not part of theBuddhist process. Even if you're living in a monastery, if you are abbot of a monastery,you still have to make decisions and business decisions on the welfare of that monastery.Therefore, whatever we do, we have to make decisions. Whether we call them businessdecisions or whatever, we still have to make decisions. A decision is what precedes all our

actions; to do anything, we have to make a decision. Is that not correct? All our actions arepreceded by a decision. We have to make a decision.Now, interestingly enough, in the process of creating

karma

- cause and effect - that karmagenerated by a decision, by a mental decision, and then through that decision we create anaction, and through that action we are creating karma. So if we make bad decisions, andnegative actions, our result will be negative results. If we make, good decisions, positivedecisions, beneficial decisions, then out of that our actions will be positive and beneficial.Making a true decision means also committing to achieving the results of that decision.And, it's interesting, again it can be a mind training, this is where you take your Dharmapractice into your everyday life, this is where you integrate. If we're the kind of personwho makes a lot of decisions, starts to carry out the action and then falls apart, we'retraining ourselves in not being effective, in both business and inour spiritual practice. It'snot that we have one person for spiritual practice and the other person for business andeveryday life, it doesn't happen that way. I mean, I guess some people in this world try todivorce the two: they're very pious when they're involved with a religious situation, andthey're crooked and corrupt when they're working with a business situation. I don't thinkthe Buddha wanted us to do that.So, I thought firstly what I would just discuss is from the main text of the Bodhisattva, it iswhat's known as The Six Perfections of a Bodhisattva, and I was going to try to link thoseup with decision-making. In the process of becoming a Buddha, they are known in theMahayana and Tibetan texts as the Six Perfections, the way of perfecting one'sconsciousness to be able to proceed to the more refined levels of Nirvana andEnlightenment.The first of the six perfections is Generosity. Generosity is any actions of body, speech andmind that are motivated by the virtuous thought to give. When we can give completely,fully and purely, without attachment, then we can perfect the art of generosity. They saythat the great bodhisattvas were able to even give their bodies without fear. In the storyabout the Buddha in a previous life, He virtually jumped off a cliff so His body could beused for the food of a lion cub. This was one of the extreme practices of generosity. Thereis a caution here, though: don't get carried away! We can only give what we're able to give.I don't want to hear of mass suicides in front of lions after this, it's not the idea of the text!That's the perfection of it.The second perfection is Ethics, we could call it Morality. Ethics is the thought to abandonboth harming others and the thoughts which are the basis of harming them. So, in otherwords, not causing other people grief. Now that doesn't mean even when we're actingvirtuously, that some people disagree and are disappointed...this does happen. Even theBuddha's cousin thought that He was up to no good. The Buddha was doing thesewonderful teachings, creating the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, and Devadattathought that He was a charlatan. So, even when we're doing the best we can, some peoplewill see that we're harming them. That is unfortunate, we have to be true to ourselves inthat sense.The next perfection is Patience. This is the virtuous mind that can remain indifferent toany form of harm inflicted by others. Now there's a certain quality in there that I've often

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