Right Effort
Sammā-vāyāma — the sixth factor of the path. Noticing what has arisen is the beginning; this is what to do next.
📜 From MN 20 · The Removal of Distracting Thoughts ↓“They will think what they want to think, and they won’t think what they don’t want to think.”
Noticing is not the whole of it
Seeing a craving clearly is the first move, and often it is enough — much of what pulls at us loses its grip the moment it is looked at directly. But not all of it does. Right Effort is the part of the path that answers the obvious next question: what do I do when I have seen it and it is still here?
The answer is not willpower. It is a set of skills, taught in a definite order, that you work through until one of them takes.
Restrain
Saṁvara-padhāna
Guarding the senses so that what has not arisen does not arise. Not shutting the world out — declining to get caught up in the features and details of what you meet.
- 📝 In daily life
- Noticing that the second look is where the wanting starts, and letting the first one be enough.
Give up
Pahāna-padhāna
Letting go of what has already arisen — not tolerating a craving once it is here, but putting it down. This is the effort the check-in leads to, and the five methods below are how it is actually done.
- 📝 In daily life
- The craving is already present. You are not trying to prevent it; you are working out how to set it down.
Develop
Bhāvanā-padhāna
Cultivating what is wholesome and not yet present — mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, stillness, equanimity. Abandoning alone leaves a gap; this is what fills it.
Preserve
Anurakkhaṇā-padhāna
Keeping what is wholesome once it has arisen, rather than letting a clear mind quietly slip away unnoticed.
Five ways to let go of a thought
From MN 20. The order matters: each is tried only when the one before it has not worked, so you reach for the gentlest first and escalate no further than you need.
- 1Turn to something wholesome. Give the mind a different object rather than fighting this one — as a mason knocks out a coarse peg with a finer one.
- 2Look at where it leads. Examine the drawback honestly: this is unskillful, it is blameworthy, it ends in suffering. The Buddha's image is unsparing — a carcass hung around the neck of someone who loves fine clothes.
- 3Turn away from it. Stop feeding it attention. As someone with good eyesight, meeting a sight they would rather not see, simply closes their eyes or looks elsewhere.
- 4Slow the thought down. Attend to how the thought is forming rather than to what it says — as someone walking fast asks why, and slows, and stands, and sits, settling by degrees.
- 5Hold firm. With teeth clenched and tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth, crush mind with mind. The Buddha gives this last, and only last.
When any one of them works, the sutta says the same thing each time: those thoughts are given up and come to an end, and the mind settles.
📜 The source of this teaching
This page is grounded in one of the Buddha’s discourses. Read it in full, in Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation.
MN 20 · The Removal of Distracting ThoughtsThe five methods in full, each with the Buddha's simile. The four efforts themselves are set out in AN 4.14.Read the sutta →