If we live without self-discipline – without clarifying aspirations, forming intentions, or training ourselves – our lives are unlikely to go in the direction we would like them to. Unfortunately, self-discipline is notoriously difficult! In this episode I will discuss the importance of self-discipline and some of the mistakes we make when applying it. In the next episode (Part 2), I’ll talk about what skillful self-discipline looks like.
Quicklinks to Content:
The Concept of Skillfulness
A Parable about Discipline
Gentleness without Self-Discipline
Self-Discipline without Gentleness: Causing Damage
Self-Discipline without Gentleness: It Doesn’t Work
The Concept of Skillfulness
When it comes to self-discipline, most of us tend to vacillate between two approaches: 1) striving for more self-discipline in a way that creates stress and encourages judgmentalism, and 2) giving up on more self-discipline in frustration. When we give up, we often try to convince ourselves we never really wanted whatever it was we were working towards anyway. In so doing, we may repress some of our deepest, most sincere longings.
One of my teachers, Kyogen Carlson, describes a profound motivation for making deliberate choices about the way our lives get shaped over time (this is from the book You Are Still Here):
A lot of impulses for selfish activities are slightly warped expressions of a deeper seeking. Just about everything we desire is, in some way, a desire for the deeper truth. When we undertake a term of practice and make vows, it is not to be more like Dogen or Hakuin or Moses or the Buddha. Rather, the point of our practice is always to be more clearly, authentically ourselves. We want to draw breath like a newborn, completely and wholeheartedly. Then we can take care of our lives as they are, not as we would have them be.[i]
Whatever motivates your aspirations, learning to be more skillful at self-discipline is extremely valuable. I’ve discussed the term “skillful” on the podcast before, and it essentially means “effective” when it comes to dealing with living beings. Skillfulness involves a sincere desire to be of benefit, and this desire inspires us to be creative, sensitive, and attentive. We end up being effective not because we’ve managed to impose our will on beings (or on ourselves), but because we’ve tailored our approach such that the beings we’re dealing with follow our lead willingly.
For example, as I discussed in Episode 40 – Being Beneficial Instead of Right: The Buddhist Concept of Skillful Means, we almost never convince other people to do something simply by loudly and repeatedly telling them it’s the right thing to do. On the other hand, it may be possible to influence someone’s behavior through skillful means – perhaps by confessing how sad their behavior makes us feel, or by introducing them to a friend who might be a positive influence (without mentioning our subtle agenda), or by buying them a membership to a gym which also offers the opportunity to soak in a nice hot tub. The concept of skillfulness applies just as well to self-discipline as it does to trying to beneficially teach or influence others.
A Parable about Discipline
I want to offer you a parable about discipline that illustrates three different approaches, including two that are less than skillful.
Three people were given small trees in small pots and instructed to produce bonsai of a particular style within two years. Bonsai are created from seedlings of full-sized trees. These seedlings are placed in a tiny pot to restrict growth and are carefully pruned and shaped to resemble a beautiful, aged example of their species – but in miniature. Because of the small pot, keeping the tree healthy can be very tricky. And even though they are trained to remain physically small, the trunk should be thick relative to the size of the whole tree, so it takes a long time to produce a stunning bonsai; the finest specimens are hundreds of years old. However, it’s possible to create an attractive miniature tree in a shorter amount of time with judicious pruning and wiring of the branches.
The first person in our story to receive a tree seedling for creating a bonsai was determined to honor the natural life of the tree. He took it out of the pot and planted it in the garden, letting the tree get watered by the rain and fed by the naturally rich soil. He couldn’t bring himself to cut any of the branches, and to wire the tree into a particular shape seemed cruel to him. At the end of the two years his tree was healthy and growing vigorously, but certainly did not resemble a bonsai in any way.
The second person was very determined to make create a beautiful bonsai as quickly as possible. She could picture the classic form this little tree could be shaped into. She watered and fertilized the tree at least once a day and put it out where it would get lots of sun. She pruned many of the branches off and bent the remaining ones into the classic horizontal position of an older tree and wired them into place. If any of you have tried to raise bonsai before, you’ll probably guess the outcome. Her tree died.
The third person – always the luckiest or wisest in this kind of tale – hoped to produce a bonsai but understood that this was a delicate process that required a great deal of patience and commitment. She paid careful attention in order to learn to recognize when the tree needed watering or feeding and did not give too much or too little. She made sure the tree received plenty of light but shielded it from direct sunlight that could burn it. When it seemed well-established, she studied the tree for a long time before choosing which branches to prune off. After the tree had recovered from pruning, she wired a few branches and bent them just a little bit; every couple months she would bend the branches a little bit further. At the end of two years, she had a respectable baby bonsai.
The first person in our story, the one who planted his tree in the garden and let it grow naturally, is an example of no discipline being applied at all. The second person, the one who killed her tree, is an example of discipline without gentleness. The third person demonstrated skillful discipline – that is, discipline balanced with gentleness, guided by clarity of purpose, and driven by calm and patient determination.
Discipline is training imposed on a living thing in order that it will develop desirable or beneficial behavior or form. It makes no sense to talk about applying “discipline” to a stone, or to a robot, even if you’re actively working to achieve a certain form or program a certain behavior. Discipline involves trying to get a living being – with its own life force and tendencies, and in the case of sentient beings, freedom of choice – to more or less go along with a deliberate plan. In addition, the ideal is that, after some application of discipline, the living creature will continue in the chosen direction without a huge amount of ongoing struggle against the plan.
Because discipline involves living things, it requires some measure of gentleness, which is the quality of having a kind manner, being moderate in force or degree so that the effects are not severe; not rough or violent.[ii] Discipline with no gentleness at all is simply the application of force, and enough force can alienate or destroy the subject, or even backfire and make them resistant or rebellious.
Gentleness without Self-Discipline
To many of us, gentleness sounds great, while we associate discipline with authority figures imposing their will on others. However, what would life be like with only gentleness and no discipline? The first person in our parable planted his tree in his garden and let it go wild. From one perspective, this is great. It’s letting go of control and appreciating the natural life force of the tree. It’s letting go of any idea about how the tree should or could look.
However, isn’t there a way in which creating a beautiful bonsai is also appreciating the natural life force of the tree? There’s something very intimate and educational about getting to know a tree so completely, gradually bringing out its character and enhancing its beauty, and having its very survival dependent on you.
Bonsai may or may not appeal to you, but if we turn to discussing people it should become obvious that gentleness without discipline is not necessarily a compassionate or beneficial thing. For example, children appreciate having boundaries and expectations. Skillful discipline can help them thrive and develop capacities they otherwise would have lacked, such as emotional regulation, the ability postpone gratification, or being able to read.
When it comes to self-discipline, planting our tree in the garden is simply letting our lives unfold according to karma (behavioral cause and effect) and chance. We settle in for the ride and don’t attempt to move in any particular direction. This is not morally wrong, but it does mean that we’re unlikely to fulfill our deepest aspirations. Negative habits have their own energy and almost never change on their own, while positive habits seem to weaken and disappear without regular maintenance. Without effort, our tendency is to slip into laziness and the pursuit of pleasure. With no self-discipline at all, we’re unlikely to learn new things, maintain our health, explore activities we’ve always wanted to experience, or have a significant positive impact on the world around us. When we err on the side of gentleness, we may be shortchanging the potential of the being in question (including ourselves).
Self-Discipline without Gentleness: Causing Damage
What about self-discipline without gentleness? For one reason or another, this tends to be the “go-to” approach for many of us. It may be because we’re motivated by frustration and disgust about our behavior, so we engage in self-discipline with some degree of anger or a desire to punish ourselves. It may be that we’re simply ambitious and figure we’ll achieve our goals quicker if we come on really strong. Or it may be challenging to trust a more gentle or gradual approach because it doesn’t give us an immediate sense of progress. Or maybe we just don’t know any other way to apply self-discipline.
The drawbacks of discipline applied without gentleness are numerous. The biggest drawback is that it can cause damage. Discipline, as discussed earlier, is applied to living things. Living things generally have great resilience, but always have their limits. There is only so far you can push a living thing – including ourselves – before it gets damaged or breaks, whether that’s physical or emotional damage.
Even if it’s difficult to inflict too much damage on ourselves as the object of self-discipline (we’ll probably just resist and then drop the self-discipline before that happens), there’s another kind of damage we’re doing to ourselves simply by employing judgmental, cruel, severe, unreasonable, or even violent means to impose self-discipline. The first moral precept of Buddhism is not to kill. As I discussed in Episode 22 – How Buddhists Should Behave: Evolution of the Buddhist Precepts Part 1, doing our best to keep the precepts is the fundamental prerequisite for spiritual practice. In the context of our current discussion, you might think of the precepts as reminders that “ends” do not justify the “means.” To indulge in anger and violence, even for an ostensibly good reason, compromises the peace of mind we need to progress on the spiritual path.
My lineage’s commentary on the first precept includes words from Dogen and Bodhidharma: “Do not kill – cultivate and encourage life. In the realm of the everlasting dharma, holding no thought of killing is the precept of not killing. The life of buddha increases with life; no life can be cut off. Continue the life of buddha; do not kill buddha.”[iii] What is a thought of killing when we are trying to apply self-discipline? Wouldn’t you like to be able to kill – to end, to destroy, to remove – the part of you which keeps being drawn to a negative behavior, if you could? All it takes is the thought of killing. Indulging in inner violence can also take the form of strong self-criticism or shame. Even giving up on self-discipline can be violent, when it’s based on a conclusion that you, or part of you, is hopeless or irredeemable.
Self-Discipline without Gentleness: It Doesn’t Work
The other major drawback to self-discipline without gentleness is that it usually doesn’t work – and even if it does, it doesn’t work for long. Kyogen Carlson describes this scenario:
Every vow and intention creates an equal and opposite resistance. This is Newton’s third law, the one of spiritual action and reaction. It is a perverse antiwisdom. Resistance does say something true: “You don’t have to do that! You don’t have to do it this way.” That’s true! You don’t have to do it this way. This insight is difficult to argue with, and it can lead to confusion. You may feel a loss of energy: “What was I thinking? This is kind of dumb.” Or you vacillate: “I will, I won’t, I will, I won’t.” …You can’t over-power resistance because you’re wrestling with yourself.[iv]
Self-discipline without gentleness springs from a delusional and inflated belief in the power of our perceived “Executive I.” We believe – or sincerely hope – our conscious sense of self is in control. It sets the agenda, makes the requests, and disciplines the unruly parts of ourselves when they don’t comply. When we find ourselves reaching for a second slice of cake even though we’re supposedly on a diet, or indulging in malicious gossip even though we intended not to, our illusory “Executive I” may end up disappointed, disgusted, or even enraged. Like a parent with misbehaving children, we may wonder why we are cursed with such ridiculous or hopeless aspects of ourselves, or why they insist on disrespecting our authority.
The thing is, both Buddhism and modern science point to how our sense of “Executive I” is empty. It’s a real phenomenon – we really do have a sense of “Executive I” – but it’s not the inherently real thing we think it is, and it certainly doesn’t play the role we think it does. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Robert Wright’s 2017 book Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (also quoted in Episode 124 – The Buddhist Practice of Vow: Giving Shape to Our Lives):
The conscious mind – the conscious ‘self’ – isn’t special in the way we commonly assume it’s special. It’s not calling as many of the shots as we think it is. It’s less like a president than like the speaker of the US House of Representatives, who presides over the votes and announces an outcome but doesn’t control the votes. Of course, the speaker of the House may do some behind-the-scenes nudging and so exert some influence over the votes.[v]
I like the comparison of our “Executive I” to the speaker of the US House of Representatives because it acknowledges both the importance of our conscious sense of self and its limitations. In the US, the speaker of the house is considered an incredibly powerful position and he or she is second in line to succeed the president, after the vice-president. However, the speaker’s greatest power lies in indirectly influencing the overall process of committee selection and legislation. Effective speakers know all 435 members of the house, their voting patterns, values, and agendas. They are able to negotiate with, cajole, convince, and pressure congress people into voting for – or at least not opposing – certain pieces of legislation.
Someone who was too gentle and retiring wouldn’t make a good speaker of the house, but neither would someone who was too pushy, arrogant, insensitive, inflexible, or obviously judgmental. If the speaker refused to engage with unreasonable congress people, they wouldn’t be able to get their job done. If all they did was bully people and look for ways to force them to comply, their effectiveness would quickly wane and there would probably be a revolt in the ranks.
Similarly, when we apply self-discipline without gentleness, we are woefully overestimating the power of our sense of “Executive I.” In reality, we are composed of many parts. The one who once again opts to stay on the couch instead of getting up to exercise is part of us. The one who speaks angry words we later regret is part of us. When it comes to self-discipline, an effective “Executive I” doesn’t simply lay down the law and expect that to be the end of the matter.
So, what does skillful self-discipline look like? I’ll talk about this in the next episode – how we can work on a nice balance of discipline and gentleness, and also how it’s important to maintain clarity of purpose and patient determination. I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening!
Endnotes
[i] Carlson, Kyogen (Sallie Jiko Tisdale, editor). You are Still Here: Zen Teachings of Kyogen Carlson. Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, 2021. Page 11.
[ii] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gentle
[iii] https://brightwayzen.org/bodhisattva-precepts-resources/
[iv] Carlson, Kyogen (Sallie Jiko Tisdale, editor). You are Still Here: Zen Teachings of Kyogen Carlson. Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, 2021. Page 8.
[v] Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
Picture Credits
Bonsai: Image by Ilona Ilyés from Pixabay
Spruce Tree: Image by Gosia K. from Pixabay
