Lojong Practice Journal: All activities should be done with one intention

The 59 slogans through a social justice lens

Intention is an interesting subject, and in the case of this slogan, ‘one intention’ is the intention to be of benefit. But I’ll come to that in a moment. First, I want to go over what intention looks like and how it plays out in actions.

Within a Buddhist context, intention often carries more weight than action. For example, giving to charity would seem like an unquestionably good act. We consider being generous to be altruistic, but that depends on the intention behind our generosity. To illustrate this, I’m going to use an example from when I was working at one charity in particular. Each week we would receive thousands of pounds in donations. We had a practice of printing and posting thank you letters for every donation we received. One day I worked out that sending thank you letters was costing us roughly £3 each go. This number was based on the accumulative cost of paper, envelopes, printing and postage, but also the time of the staff members who had to log the details of the donation, set up the thank you letter template, print it, fold it and stamp it. Having reached this conclusion it seemed sensible to send a thank you via email for smaller donations.

Some people were fine with their email acknowledgements, while others were not. Some people kicked up a big fuss because we hadn’t written them a letter, and some continued to complain even when we explained our reasoning and that this meant more of their donation could go to funding actual research.

Obviously, I can’t know the intentions of the donors, but I know from my experience when my intention is to contribute to something bigger than myself — to be of benefit — I’m not so fussed about personal recognition. But if my intention has been to get some validation or to have my ego stroked, I tend to get irked when I don’t get the recognition I think I deserve. So while the donors were all generous, some gave with the intention to give, while others seemed to be giving with the intention of getting a reward for it.

This isn’t to say it’s wrong to feel good about doing something to benefit others. An altruistic act is not diminished if you feel good about doing it. And this is where I come back to the slogan and the ‘one intention’ it is referencing. When we act with the intention to be of benefit in everything we do, it’s not that won’t also benefit from it. It’s that the benefit we feel is the icing on top, the sprinkles that go along with contributing to something bigger than ourselves and our ego-clinging.

Doing everything with the intention to be of benefit can seem, for most of us, a pretty tall order. It can be sticky if we assume it involves some sort of action. In the past I have had a bad habit of falling into idiot compassion, establishing poor boundaries that are easily violated and giving my time, energy or effort in ways that left me drained and didn’t benefit anyone. I thought I had to have answers or magically fix things and when I couldn’t, I felt like a failure and often the person I was trying to ‘fix’ felt worse because they picked up on my expectation and how they’d failed to be ‘fixed’.

It’s been a long journey and one I’m still on, so I’m not saying that I’ve got it figured out, but I have come to understand what it looks like to be of benefit. Often, it doesn’t involve action or having an answer. Often, being of benefit can simply come from refraining.

Coming back to my example of working in charity — while I found myself frustrated when I had to deal with people who felt slighted because we hadn’t sent them a letter, I knew taking my frustrations out on them, or any of my coworkers, wouldn’t change the situation. Choosing not to cause harm, not to rage about it, was something I could do to be of benefit. It wasn’t always easy, but recognising refraining as a choice I could make and carry out was easier than trying to think my way to some pithy statement I could say to an angry donor.

I also used to think the world would be so much better if other people were different, but taking a path of changing others is an impossible one that will leave you frustrated and can quickly lead to cynicism, nihilism and despair. Don’t doubt the benefit of owning your shit and working to clean up your little patch. We can learn to recognise our implicit biases and choose to work with them, to question what we have been taught and if it truly matches our experience. We can change our hearts and minds, live with flexibility and curiosity. Because we are in relationship to all other things — we as an individual are a component part of our community, our culture, our society and our world — we begin to see how what we do matters. How we think matters. What we don’t do matters too. And the people around us will start to see this. Our actions lead the way and act as signposts for what it means to live compassionately, to live with one intention.

Being of benefit can be as simple as asking ourselves these questions, or ones like them, every single day:

Do I want to add to the aggression in the world, or do I want to add to a sense of belonging and community?

Do I choose to work with my mind to the best of my ability or do I choose to shut down?

Knowing that death is certain and the time until death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?

This slogan isn’t about being perfect or having answers. It’s about choosing to be better, every single day, even if it’s only incremental. In my experience, it’s pretty impossible not to become a better person when we set the daily intention to be of benefit by committing to not causing harm and doing all we can to take care of each other.

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Originally published on Medium.

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Thank you!

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