BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #3 (Winter 1985)
                                  
                                  
                       VISION AND ROUTINE
                                  
                        by Bhikkhu Bodhi
                                  



   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.

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