Satya Robyn teaches right intention, the second step of the Noble Eightfold Path, explaining how to choose actions that reduce suffering and increase compassion. She contrasts monastic and lay practice, showing how arranging your life conditions—from avoiding chocolate to attending a practice center—shapes the intentions you can actually keep.
Human beings are a little bit like plants and flowers. If you put us in the right conditions, we thrive. If you put us in the wrong conditions, then it's much harder for us, and sometimes we don't make it at all. And the Buddha talked about right intention, the intention to put ourselves in the conditions that lead us to having a good spiritual life, that lead us to having less suffering and more compassion for ourself. And for others. And in the time of the Buddha, his, his basic advice to most people was, if you can become a monk or a nun, come and join me in the forest. Let go of your possessions, just have one robe and one bowl, and spend lots of time meditating and listening to teachings and offering teachings. And it— and those are really good conditions for some people to flourish in.. And for many of us today, either that's not available, or we've got too many responsibilities, or it's just not the right choice for us, or not the right choice for us where we are in our lives now. But we can still be curious about what are the conditions around me that support me to live a good life, and what are the ones that make my life more difficult and maybe less available to others. And it might be that this group of people I get more, uh, entangled with, and life is more complicated, and my compulsive behaviors come out more. And this group of people, I find that I'm more relaxed and I'm more stable. And we can think about, where do I, where do I want to hang out? Or it might be like, oh, when there's loads of chocolate in the house, I eat it all, so better not to have any in the house. It might be when I'm doing a regular Buddhist practice or going to a Buddhist center, those things support me. So we don't have to have the intention to become a homeless monk or nun in the way that the Buddha was advising 2,500 years ago. But it is good to pay attention to the choices that we make in life because those choices make our life easier or more difficult, both for ourselves and for the people around us. So this is the second item on the Eightfold Path, right? Intention. The intention to choose a life that supports us to be more loving to ourselves and to others.
