It is said in the texts that “Everything rests on the tip of motivation.” According to traditional Buddhist teaching, every mind moment involves an intention. The second step of the Wisdom group in the Eightfold Path is Wise Intention. Each decision we make and every action is born of intention. Each movement, word and even thought is preceded by a volitional impulse, usually unnoticed. And just as drops of water will eventually fill a bathtub, so the accumulation of these small choices shapes who we are.

Our intentions–noticed or unnoticed, gross or subtle–contribute to our suffering or our happiness. Intentions are seeds; the garden we grow depends on the seeds we plant and water. Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of an intention remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness. If we water intentions of greed, anger, vengeance or hate, their inherent suffering will sprout; both while we act on them and in the future in the form of reinforced habits, tensions and painful memories. If we nourish intentions of compassion, love and generosity, that will be what grows in us, and the inherent happiness and openness of those states will become more frequent visitors in our life.

An important function of mindfulness practice is understanding the immediate and longer term consequences of our intended actions. This understanding will help us with our future choices by helping to ensure that they be wiser than those based only on our likes and preferences. I invite you to really begin to listen to that within yourselves, to listen to and see what is there in a situation when you act. What motivates you? For even if we act in ways of service or generosity, but not out of a spontaneous movement of the heart but out of guilt or fear, to please others, to feel good or righteous, or out of fear of rejection and loss, the actions will have a certain benefit but they won’t be lasting. We’ll burn out because they come from some idea of what we wish we were, or from fear rather than that deeper place of our basic and fundamental goodness.

Perhaps the most significant inquiry is to reflect carefully now on our deepest intention. What is your heart’s deepest wish? What is of greatest value or priority in your life? Mindfulness practice connected to one’s deepest intention will bear a different result than practice connected to more superficial concerns.