What Should Ten Years of Buddhist Practice Make Possible?

“Most likely, you will never attain enlightenment.”

When I said this, a brief silence fell over the room. Some of the students sitting before me had been studying the dhamma with me for three years, others for fifteen. Their surprise was understandable. When a person gives years of their life to a path, they naturally want to believe that somewhere at the end of it, there is a place to arrive.

Of course, my intention was not to discourage them. Quite the opposite. I wanted to protect them from the obstacle created in the present by focusing too much on a future reward.

I did not say this because I believed enlightenment was impossible. I said it because making the entire value of the path depend on enlightenment can make the path almost impossible to walk.

A student who has devoted years to studying the dhamma but has still not reached the goal they desire will naturally ask that classic question with the impatience of a small child:

“Are we there yet?”

If enlightenment is one of the greatest gains of the dhamma, the second great gain is the path leading to that goal. It is not easy to walk this path without understanding that the path is as valuable as the destination.

I often ask my students a simple question:

“How will you know that you are enlightened?”

It may be interesting to consider the answer to this question, but there is another, more important question:

“Are you enjoying the view?”

It is quite possible to postpone our happiness until the moment of enlightenment and overlook the qualities we have already gained. Sometimes, after three or five years of practice, a student comes to me and says:

“I am trying very hard, but it is not happening. Perhaps I am not suited to this path.”

I usually ask that student:

“Do you remember the things in your life that troubled you when you first set out on the path?”

I remind the student, for example, that they were troubled by their anger, complained about their distracted mind, or were unhappy with the way they behaved in their close relationships. Then I ask whether any of these things have changed.

“Yes, they have changed,” the student says. “But I don’t know. I still haven’t reached the place I want to reach.”

Sometimes we become so focused on the goal, and make it so unreachable for ourselves, that we forget to enjoy the gains along the path that are carrying us toward it. Yet the road is long, and we must preserve our breath. One of the best ways to do this is to enjoy the view.

There may be many explanations for why we fail to appreciate our practice and what we have gained from it. But one of the strongest answers arising from lived experience is found in the brahmaviharas. The brahmaviharas introduce us to the fruits of our practice here and now.

Take the brahmaviharas out of the dhamma, and it becomes like a bird trying to fly with one wing.

The brahmaviharas are among the most powerful ways of experiencing a happier existence. Their second strength is that they bring us gradually, gently, and without frightening us toward an understanding of anatta (Pali: not-self).

The illusion of self is not undone only by dividing the body into parts or watching sensations arise and pass. The self is also created wherever we place the rest of the world outside ourselves and call it “not me.”

The brahmaviharas show us how this boundary is built, and how it can become more and more permeable.

When teaching metta, I advise my students to focus on one very simple question:

“Are beings safe around me?”

If they are safe, where does that safety end? Does it include only those who agree with me, love me, or have never harmed me? How much further can the boundary be widened?

Perhaps one of the clearest results of ten years of practice should be that more beings are safe in our presence.

With karuna, the wall between my suffering and yours begins to grow thinner. Other beings suffer as we do. They worry about those they love, fear loss, feel hurt, and seek happiness. This is not merely something we understand. It becomes something we can no longer ignore.

Mudita gives us another kind of wealth: the ability to be happy because another person is happy. Their success is not proof of our failure. Their peace has not been taken from our share. Their happiness is not the enemy of our own.

Once, our own life was the only source of our happiness. Now the happiness of countless beings can also nourish us. The stream we call “me” begins to lose the hard banks that separated it from the rest of the world.

Upekkha is where love and compassion are freed from personal possession. It allows us to see suffering without turning it into “me” and “mine.”

Without upekkha, even our compassion may still be driven by self-concern. Your suffering hurts me, and I want to end it so that I can be free of my own pain. The action may look selfless, yet a hidden reward remains inside it.

Upekkha teaches us that we do not have to turn another being’s pain into our own mental suffering in order to see it clearly. The compassion of an awakened mind is like an ocean. It carries the suffering of beings without drowning in it.

As the brahmaviharas deepen, another mistaken idea begins to lose its hold: that the fruits of practice belong only to some future self who will one day become enlightened. We begin to see that the path is already bearing fruit in the kind of mind we are becoming and in the way we relate to other beings. The teaching of karma shows us why this fruit does not appear only in the future.

Karma does not simply mean cause and effect, and not every good or bad event is a karmic result. Karma waits for conditions in order to ripen. Its result is also shaped by the mind that receives it. An untrained mind adds a second arrow to a small pain and turns it into great suffering, while a wise mind can carry a greater pain without being consumed by it.

According to the Buddha, karma is first and foremost intention. Intention does not shape only the future. The moment it arises, it changes the mind and prepares the ground from which future intentions will grow.

An unskillful action makes the next unskillful action easier. The discomfort we first felt begins to fade. After a while, we no longer merely perform the action with less difficulty; we begin to see it as normal, necessary, even justified.

The same is true of skillful actions. Generosity makes generosity easier. Goodwill makes goodwill easier. Clear seeing makes clear seeing easier.

Every intention not only creates a result in the outer world. It also determines what kind of mind we are becoming.

The real question is not only what our actions will bring us later. It is what our actions are turning the mind into now.

This is why the real question is not only what our actions will bring us later. It is what our actions are turning the mind into now.

The Buddha describes the dhamma as beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, and beautiful in the end. Sometimes it takes us ten years to understand what those words mean.

Imagine that you are deeply in debt and no longer know what to do. Then a wise and compassionate friend shows you that there is a way out. Your debt is still there. You have not yet followed the method or received its results. But you have good reason to believe that freedom is possible.

I imagine you would feel great joy.

The dhamma is like this.

At first, we discover that the suffering of life is not a sealed room. There is a door. We are not free yet, but we have seen that freedom exists.

This is why the dhamma is beautiful in the beginning.

Then we begin to practice generosity, goodwill, restraint of the senses, compassionate speech, awareness of the body and feelings, and the ability to observe mental states without being carried away by them. We are still far from awakening, but we are no longer a leaf blown about by the wind. We have taken the reins of our life into our own hands.

This is why the dhamma is beautiful in the middle.

And when the work is complete, we reach the other shore. The debt has been paid. There is nothing more to be done.

This is why the dhamma is beautiful in the end.

For a student who has practiced for ten years or longer, success in meditation—or the ability to speak wisely—is not the true measure of purification.

A person may be deeply calm on the meditation cushion, yet when life catches them unprepared, all that calm may disappear in an instant.

The true measure is how they respond at that moment.

What happens when they lose something, when they are hurt, criticized, frightened, betrayed, or faced with a pain they never expected?

After ten years, I would hope that a student can meet pleasant and unpleasant experience without running away or being swept away; calm and gladden the mind when needed; rise after falling; witness fear and grief without becoming lost inside them; receive criticism without treating it as an attack; place truth above the need to be right; begin again without fear; give generously; and carry a goodwill that does not discriminate.

I would hope that more beings are safe in their presence.

These are the true signs of practice.

Sometimes we fix our eyes so firmly on the destination that the destination itself becomes the greatest obstacle in our path, keeping us from seeing the beauty of the landscape we are already passing through.

One of the greatest obstacles to enlightenment may be the very idea of enlightenment.

There is something I tell my students from their first years of practice:

“We do not become enlightened in order to be happy. We become enlightened because we are happy.”

By happiness, I do not mean that circumstances always go our way or that we live in constant pleasure. This happiness comes from a mind that has become skillful, open, safe, and able to live without clinging.

When the dhamma deepens, the happiness experienced here and now becomes a steadier ground beneath our feet.

When this happiness takes root here and now, enlightenment stops being a future prize, an expectation, or something to cling to.

To stop searching for enlightenment does not mean abandoning the path. It means that we stop trying to force the flower open with our hands. We continue to work the soil, plant the seed, and water it, but we understand that we cannot force spring to come.

Perhaps we come closest to enlightenment when the desire to turn it into a personal achievement finally comes to an end.

After that, as Zen master Dogen said, we simply sit.

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.