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It seems like I’ve read a thousand lists of ways to achieve your goals. Many of these are worthwhile, and we will spend a little time reviewing them. But I also want to make an observation at the outset. Consider a typical listicle on the subject, this one from the Harvard Extension School, which includes five points:

1. Make the Goal Concrete
2. Identify the Requirements
3. Set Aside Time
4. Personalize Your Approach
5. Find Motivation

There’s nothing exactly wrong with any of these. Setting concrete goals is certainly essential for making and measuring progress. However, there is also one very common and absolutely critical omission here, namely that every item is something you do alone. 

The usual Western paradigm for setting and achieving goals is that of the heroic individual acting in solitude--the maverick inventor in the lab, the scientific genius cogitating in a dark room, the literary giant composing in a cabin far from civilization. Rot and nonsense. Nothing, nothing motivates the human animal so much as social expectation, and the first, second and last thing you should do to achieve your goals is to involve yourself with a community devoted to those same ends.

I’m frankly tired of people calling others lazy, or thinking themselves lazy, when any fast food restaurant is full of individuals working difficult positions with remarkable skill, grace and stamina. The primary factors in achievement aren’t talent, education, strength or beauty; they’re social expectation, social position and social reward.

This isn’t to say that personal aptitude isn’t real. Of course we all have our predispositions and genetic makeups. But these factors tend to be most relevant at the ends of the bell curve. If you know yourself to be average, congratulations: you have the potential for a high degree of mastery in most areas of endeavor, given the opportunity and support. By committing to a relevant community, you vastly increase both. 

In the spiritual realm, this means finding a community that shares your deepest aspirations and values. In other words, find a meditation center or church that resonates with you. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with like-minded people can and will elevate your whole being. 

And please don’t say that you don’t have the time. The truth is, the more difficult your circumstances, the more important your community is. I remember hearing someone observe that for a single mother moving to a new city, the best thing she could do is to join a church. This was true for my own mother, who after divorcing my father was left to care for four children. The church she joined, while I may not agree with many of its doctrines, helped her with child care, transportation, food and employment, and of course offered a large group of peers for moral uplift and support. 

Along similar lines, one cannot overstate the importance of finding a spiritual teacher or mentor. A true teacher can inspire you, support you, and hold you accountable. This is kalyāáč‡a-mittatā, noble friendship, and it’s foundational to a fulfilling and purposeful life. 

One of my own teachers, Robert Aitken, recommended beginning the day’s meditation with a vow when you first sit down, for example: “I vow to practice with my whole body here and now.” Naturally the vow might change and shift over time along with your needs, though it can also be good to commit to one resolution for an extended timespan—a month, a season, a year. In fact Aitken wrote a book of gathas, short verses expressing one’s resolve in various circumstances. Here’s one from The Dragon Who Never Sleeps:  

Preparing the garden for seeds
I vow with all beings
to nurture the soil to be fertile
each spring for the next thousand years.

In a similarly pastoral vein, elsewhere Aitken recounted a conversation he had about “holding the seed”:


 I was talking with someone on the Big Island who had just written a novel. I asked, “Do you have a publisher? Do you have an agent?” She said she was ho’ano and explained that ho’ano is a Hawaiian word meaning “holding the seed.” She wasn’t ready to talk about publishing. There are times when you must hold to yourself. As Dogen Zenji says, you wait for the appropriate time because your gift cannot be completely effective if you just dump it out. 

- The Practice of Perfection, p. 19

Each of us holds that seed, the seed of awakening. With steady cultivation it may grow into a great shade tree, like the enormous ficus that shelters pilgrims at Mahabodhi Temple in India, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment. But don’t be in too much of a hurry. We each have our own rhythm and process of maturation, and overaggressive watering is a sure way to drown a young plant. 

In practice, this means having patience. If we’re constantly focused on grandiose goals, we’re also likely to be constantly disappointed in our progress toward them. Even our aspiration for spiritual awakening can become one more expression of tanha, thirst, that leaves us feeling more incomplete than ever. 

Vows are integral to the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism: the bodhisattva (“awakening being”) vows to postpone their own final entry into nirvana until all beings are liberated from delusion. Meditation sessions in Buddhist temples frequently begin and end with the chanting of vows—Great Vows for All (the Four Vows), the Three Refuges, Ta Hui’s Vow for Awakening and many others. 

These vows are a way of strengthening our determination, but even more they are ways of clarifying and purifying our intentions. Our actions, after all, are effectively an extension of our intentions; intention precedes action and dictates it. Likewise, it may be said that our views (samyag drishti) precede our intentions; thus we see that intention forms a bridge between views and actions. In this respect, this limb is sometimes translated as Right Thought. It is the volitional impulse that follows upon understanding. In developing True Intention, we purify the source of action. 

In the usual way of the ancient Indian predilection for taxonomy, we can break down samyak sankalpa into component parts. Bhikku Bodhi writes, “The Buddha explains right intention as threefold: the intention of renunciation, the intention of good will, and the intention of harmlessness. The three are opposed to three parallel kinds of wrong intention: intention governed by desire, intention governed by ill will, and intention governed by harmfulness.”

Here the Buddha’s instruction again focuses on purification. In practicing samyak sankalpa, we seek to purify the root of our actions, which is to say, our motivations. If we are motivated by self-centeredness, this will invariably pollute our ensuing words and actions and skew the result toward harm. For truly effective action—that is, effective in reducing disharmony (dukkha)—we must renounce our egoistic aims and ideas. 

In this endeavor, however, we face a certain conundrum. If from the beginning our own motivations are polluted by destructive self-interest, how can we rely on our judgement of what is desirable spiritually and morally? 

In the Zen tradition, one formally enters the path with Jukai, wherein one commits to observing the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts, the ethical teachings of Zen. We look to the Precepts as a model of enlightened behavior--the ideal of the bodhisattva as practiced by millennia of monks and laypeople. These teachings include the Three Refuges (of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha); the Three Pure Precepts (to renounce all evil, practice all good and liberate all beings); and the Ten Grave Precepts, commonly phrased as vows, each with both a renunciatory and active aspect: 

1. I vow not to kill, but to cherish all life.
2. I vow not to steal, but to respect the things of others.
3. I vow not to abuse sex, but to live chastely.
4. I vow not to lie, but to speak the truth.
5. I vow not to abuse intoxicants, but to keep the mind clear.
6. I vow not to speak of the faults of others, but to recognize their virtues.
7. I vow not to praise myself while disparaging others, but to see our interconnection.
8. I vow not to be stingy, but to give freely.
9. I vow not to indulge in anger, but to exercise restraint.
10. I vow not to speak ill of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but to praise and uphold them.

On occasion these may strike modern readers as rigid or prescriptive. In a liberal society we are accustomed to thinking of morality as relative and fluid, and of course this is true in a limited way; every circumstance is unique and requires a unique response. Aitken Roshi describes the Precepts as “... archetypes, ‘skillful means’ for us to use in guiding our engagement with the world. They are not commandments engraved in stone, but expressions of inspiration written in something more fluid than water” (The Mind of Clover, p. 15).

Before wrapping up, we may look briefly toward to yoga practice, where we find sankalpa operating synonymously with the Buddhist meaning, as an expression of resolve. In most asana classes one will hear the teacher directing students to “set an intention,” often while standing with hands pressed palm to palm at heart center. Most important is that sankalpa arises from one’s hridaya, or heart-mind: it is the expression of one’s deepest yearning and most profound aspiration. This is distinct from ordinary types of goal-setting.

For myself, I like to use this moment as a kind of daily check-in. Rather than a prescriptive focus, I allow a phrase or image to naturally arise expressing my energy that day. Often it reflects something in nature: a tree sinking its roots in the earth, the full sun in a blue sky, a gentle rain. Other times it may be a simple phrase: true acceptance, finding the rhythm.

In yoga nidra, a practice of deep relaxation, sankalpa is set at the beginning, when the mind is settling, and again toward the end of practice, as one returns from a state of deep rest. The idea is that the mind is especially receptive in these liminal states, when our consciousness is more fluid and amenable to new possibilities and new forms. The sankalpa should be brief, affirmative, present, and vivid: “I am deeply rooted.” Whether or not you practice yoga nidra, you can experiment with this kind of intention-setting as you drift off to sleep or as you wake in the morning. 

We have so far focused on spiritual intention, this being the primary thrust of samyak sankalpa, but it is worth returning briefly to more conventional goal-setting in the vein of the recommendations listed earlier. Regardless of the nature of our goals, we still need to act effectively, to find skillful means of organizing our activity. Many of these amount to forming a clear and specific plan; breaking down larger goals into small manageable tasks; and scheduling those tasks along a clear timeline. 

Most important here, though, is that we have some plan. While we need not always be dominated by schedules and to-do lists, we also shouldn’t dismiss organizing our intentions step by step. This is living with purpose, and few things relieve anxiety more than clear and steady progress toward our goals.

Even in training the heart-mind, it is highly desirable to practice systematically. It is no accident that most Buddhist traditions offer extensive courses of study alongside less structured meditation practice. Rinzai Zen, for instance, has students engage with some five hundred koans (sayings and doings of past masters) to complete their formal training. Students in other traditions may take up years of scholastic study, mantras, visualizations, or art and writing practice. 

To circle back to where we began, it must also be said that the need for True Intention is not merely personal. In our communities, too, it’s of utmost importance to consider our true aspirations, both philosophic and pragmatic. This is especially true for spiritual communities and nonprofits in which the mission may be broad and the concrete goals unspecified. Too often I’ve seen organizations without even basic development plans, in which nearly everything of importance to growth was left unstated. This is a recipe for dominance by individuals—and for bitter conflict when their goals are in opposition. 

Writ large, a failure to engage deeply with intention ripples outward in waves of destructiveness. Consider Bhikku Bodhi again: “The cause for the endless competition, conflict, injustice, and oppression does not lie outside the mind. These are all just manifestations of intentions, outcroppings of thoughts driven by greed, by hatred, by delusion.”

Conversely, the seeds of peace, compassion and joy also lie within the mind. Today we prepare the soil.