Dharmette: Wholesomeness (5 of 5) Right Effort

Welcome to this fifth talk and last talk on kusala, K-U-S-A-L-A, which is the Buddhist word that we're translating.

I'd like to translate as

wholesome

and sometimes translate it as skillful.

And sometimes it's good to understand the word means ethical when it involves how we behave interpersonally.

And it's a rich thing that what is internally wholesome becomes externally ethical when we see it in relationship to the world around us.

Of course, we don't have to use the word ethical, but it's just wonderful that the word that what's wholesome within is concerned with the welfare of others and not causing harm.

And it has interpersonal implications.

So today I want to emphasize again that this word kusla, wholesome, is really one of the very important concepts in the Buddhist lexicon, in the Buddhist teachings.

And one of the places where it's really held up as being kind of central to it all is in the Eightfold Path.

The sixth step of the Eightfold Path is called, usually translated into English as Right Effort.

And it wouldn't be wrong, I believe, to translate the word sama, translated as right, to be translated as complete or consummate or full.

And so where the fullness, the wholeness of who we are is represented by these four ways of participating in this world.

four ways of being engaged in this world.

So the four right efforts, the four complete efforts, the four wholesome efforts.

And so there's four, and each of them is explained from the point of view of either what's wholesome or unwholesome.

And so here in the Eightfold Path, In order to really live the Eightfold Path, we have to be able to know how, for ourselves, to recognize what is wholesome and unwholesome.

You don't go to a Buddhist manual and get the list of the wholesome, a list of the unwholesome, and then just follow, live your life by the lists.

It doesn't work that way, partly because in some occasions what is wholesome might in other occasions be unwholesome and vice versa.

It has a lot to do with the whole ecology of our inner life and the purpose we live, the meaning we assign, and the outer life and what the context is.

It's a very dynamic world, this whole world we live in.

And so we want to be able to kind of really be able to feel and sense, not to read carefully the evidence within and the evidence without.

And this both directions is important.

And I think it's actually quite important that the word kusala can mean both something deeply personal, like what is wholesome, what feels healthy within, and is ethical.

It has to do with the world around us.