All human activity can be viewed as an interplay between two contrary but
equally essential factors -- vision and repetitive routine. Vision is the creative
element in activity, whose presence ensures that over and above the settled
conditions pressing down upon us from the past we still enjoy a margin of openness
to the future, a freedom to discern more meaningful ends and to discover more
efficient ways to achieve them. Repetitive routine, in contrast, provides the
conservative element in activity. It is the principle that accounts for the
persistence of the past in the present, and that enables the successful achievements
of the present to be preserved intact and faithfully transmitted to the future.
Though pulling in opposite directions -- the one towards change, the other towards
stability -- vision and routine intermesh in a variety of ways and every course
of action can be found to participate to some extent in both. For any particular
action to be both meaningful and effective the attainment of a healthy balance
between the two is necessary. When one factor prevails at the expense of the
other, the consequences are invariably undesirable. If we are bound to a repetitive
cycle of work that deprives us of our freedom to inquire and understand, we
soon bog down, crippled by the chains of routine. If we are spurred to act by
elevating ideals but lack the discipline to implement them, eventually we find
ourselves wallowing in dreams or exhausting our energies on frivolous pursuits.
It is only when accustomed routines are infused from within by vision that they
become springboards to discovery rather than deadening ruts. And it is only
when inspired vision gives birth to a course of repeatable actions that we can
bring our ideals down from the ethereal sphere of imagination to the somber
realm of fact. It took a flash of genius for Michelangelo to behold the figure
of David invisible in a shapeless block of stone; but it required years of prior
training, and countless blows with hammer and chisel, to work the miracle that
would leave us a masterpiece of art.
These reflections concerning the relationship between vision and routine apply
with equal validity to the practice of the Buddhist path. Like all other human
activities, the treading of the way to the cessation of suffering requires that
the intelligent grasp of new disclosures of truth be fused with the patient
and stabilizing discipline of repetition. The factor of vision enters the path
under the heading of right view -- as the understanding of the undistorted truths
concerning our existence and as the continued penetration of those same truths
through deepening contemplation and reflection. The factor of repetition enters
the path as the onerous task imposed by the practice itself: the need to undertake
specific modes of training and to cultivate them diligently in the prescribed
sequence until they yield their fruit. The course of spiritual growth along
the Buddhist path might in fact be conceived as an alternating succession of
stages in which, during one phase, the element of vision is dominant, during
the next the element of routine. It is a flash of vision that opens our inner
eye to the essential meaning of the Dhamma, gradual training that makes our
insight secure, and again the urge for still more vision that propels the practice
forward to its culmination in final knowledge.
Though the emphasis may alternate from phase to phase, ultimate success in the
development of the path always hinges upon balancing vision with routine in
such a way that each can make its maximal contribution. However, because our
minds are keyed to fix upon the new and distinctive, in our practice we are
prone to place a one-sided emphasis on vision at the expense of repetitive routine.
Thus we are elated by expectations concerning the stages of the path far beyond
our reach, while at the same time we tend to neglect the lower stages -- dull
and drab, but far more urgent and immediate -- lying just beneath our feet.
To adopt this attitude, however, is to forget the crucial fact that vision always
operates upon a groundwork of previously established routine and must in turn
give rise to new patterns of routine adequate to the attainment of its intended
aim. Thus if we are to close the gap between ideal and actuality -- between
the envisaged aim of striving and the lived experience of our everyday lives
-- it is necessary for us to pay greater heed to the task of repetition. Every
wholesome thought, every pure intention, every effort to train the mind represents
a potential for growth along the Noble Eightfold Path. But to be converted from
a mere potential into an active power leading to the end of suffering, the fleeting
wholesome thought-formations must be repeated, fostered and cultivated, made
into enduring qualities of our being. Feeble in their individuality, when their
forces are consolidated by repetition they acquire a strength that is invincible
The key to development along the Buddhist path is repetitive routine guided
by inspirational vision. It is the insight into final freedom -- the peace and
purity of a liberated mind -- that uplifts us and impels us to overcome our
limits. But it is by repetition -- the methodical cultivation of wholesome practices
-- that we cover the distance separating us from the goal and draw ever closer
to deliverance.
Revised: Sun 20 May 2001
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/news/essay03.html