Do all with one intention.
““Whatever happens, our commitment is to use it to awaken our heart. As one of the slogans says, ‘All activities should be done with one intention.’ That intention is to realize our connection with all beings.”
Years ago, a beloved teacher gave me a small gift: a box of compassion cards created by renowned author, teacher and Tibetan Buddhist nun, Pema Chödron. The idea with the deck is to use the cards to nudge daily practice.
You let the universe sort what part of improving you can or will focus on for a given day. You start by randomly taking a card from the middle of the deck. The card includes a teaching on the front side. On the back, it includes commentary on the teaching. You then “post” the card on the included small cardboard paper stand where the card’s teaching can catch your eye and mind throughout your day at that desk. My Compassion Deck and posting stand live on my work desk adjacent to my laptop where I can see them during my calls and meetings throughout the day.
I start every morning selecting the day’s card.
One of the first cards I pulled years ago, was one that admonished me to “do all with one intention”.
Pema’s point with this teaching about “one intention” is this: we have the opportunity to cultivate single minded intention to use our precious moments for awakening, improvement, and becoming, with compassion for ourselves and all beings.
I am far from perfect, of course. I am not even that great at keeping up with my daily commitment to meditate, learn and help. But I am trying. I am fairly consistent, however, with my use of these cards that help ground my intention for the day.
That specific “one intention” card I pulled from my deck years ago spoke deeply to me. The accompanying teaching evoked a sense of enormous daily opportunity: nothing is guaranteed to or for any of us—except now.
We can choose how we react to our past, our series of actions, reactions and responses, positive and negative. We can also decide how to imagine, long for, plan and start to build our futures, to the extent we get access to those futures and are able to live in them.
Nothing though about that future is guaranteed. We are guaranteed now, however. All of us absolutely have, without a single bit of hedging, this moment, right now. We can decide whether we intentionally stay with our present, in our now. We can notice that and decide to live here in the now, intentionally.
I love that idea, that sensibility. I am working hard to live with that one intention. Specifically, my intention is to cultivate compassion and kindness for and within myself. Only with that intention, am I also able to expand and expand and expand that yearning for and action toward compassion. By that I mean to expand my own individual compassion and sense of kindness outward to my community: to the slow moving school bus driver blocking my rush to work, my neighbors who set off fireworks all night, my friends who aren’t always there for me, individuals who say things I find appalling, and ultimately all beings on our beautiful planet.
Again, I don’t always get there, but I am dedicated to the one intention to try.
I am also at an exciting juncture in my own life’s journey. I have accumulated a lot of experiences and seen a lot, and I want to share some insights. I am eager to help others on their journeys, to the extent I can. That could seem like an audacious and presumptuous aspiration, but I am starting this journey with that intention. I am also coming to the journey and this opportunity with deep humility, gratitude and an extreme sense of privilege for the sacred honor when my clients place confidence in our relationship.
We live in a time that can feel dark, ominous and overwhelming. Humanity, with all its potential and beauty, living on this wondrous, miraculous planet also causes great harm to this place, our home, and to each other and the entire life force here.
We can choose a different path, a different way to be. We can lead each other with renewed commitments to grace, kindness and compassion. I know with my entire essence that includes my mind, heart and body, we each need to lead into our collective future with all the grace and compassion we can muster. We all need to get better, perhaps slowly at first but by building momentum, each day.
We need to get better at serving one another with this single minded intention: to awaken our hearts to our profound connection with each other and everything around us.
The time to start is now.
Please join me.
Nudge your future…
