Right Intention: Switching the Mind with One Sentence

Morning, the elevator, coffee on the go. You decide firmly: today, no irritation. By lunch the decision is a vague memory, and by evening a faint sense of guilt.

Intention seems too simple to build anything on. You think “I'll be kind” — and then what? But in the Buddha's teaching, right intention is a practice in its own right, the second step of the Eightfold Path. And it works more simply than it looks.

Right intention — samma-sankappa — is the second link of the Eightfold Path. “Sankappa” is a Pali word. In Sanskrit it's “sankalpa”, a word anyone who does yoga will know. The sankalpa practice of modern yoga may well have come from the Buddhist heritage.

Here's the idea. We have wholesome and unwholesome qualities. Right effort means growing the wholesome ones and overcoming the unwholesome: letting the wholesome arise and last, and the unwholesome fade and not come back. Right intention aims exactly at that.

«The Buddha's teaching is almost always simpler than we think.»

It works in the most direct way. Say your aim is to be kinder to people. You put the intention into words, silently or even out loud: “Right now I'll be kind to people.” It's better to give yourself a specific stretch of time: “While I'm on my way to work, I'll be completely kind.” And picture that kind state itself — what it feels like.

It may not work the first time. But repeat it day after day, and sooner or later the intention starts to work. It's like a force that builds up with every repetition. And the further you go, the faster and more precisely it kicks in.

Evening. You get home from work wrung out and don't want to see anyone, but your family is there. They've missed you and want your attention. You do need to rest — sit quietly, meditate, let yourself recover. But before that there's dinner, conversation and “how was your day”. And all that time, inside, there's tiredness and irritation.

First, notice it. You can tell yourself: “I see this tiredness, I see the irritation.” You can even picture what it looks like in the body, or as if it were a separate creature. Say, a dried-out patch in your chest, or a hole covered in cobwebs. Everyone sees it differently.

Next, the intention: “Kindness is coming into my heart now,” or “May kindness come into my heart.” Gradually, sometimes quite quickly, that imaginary hole starts to close and turn into something that means kindness to you. A glowing flower, say.

And remarkably, the quality of the mind changes: you feel what it's like to be kind. It helps to recall someone you associate with kindness — a teacher, a grandmother, or the neighbor who feeds the whole building homemade cookies.

The mind has a strange property: under certain conditions its state can change instantly. Logically, if your battery is flat, it needs recharging, and that takes time. But sometimes the quality of the mind changes at once. It feels like: “Wait, you can just do that?” Turns out you can.

Sometimes it doesn't help. If someone is in such a deep, heavy state that nothing works, that's a warning sign: they may have pushed themselves too far, or a disorder may be developing. Then it's worth looking at separately, perhaps with a therapist. But when the psyche is in a normal state, right intention switches the mind remarkably well.

Right intention works in meditation and for changing your whole attitude to the world. The only question is how to phrase it and how often to renew it. Our view of the world lies deep, so to change it the intention has to be repeated regularly — many times a day, for many days — until it's “written in”.

Some things in meditation don't depend on us. But before sitting it's very useful to say: “I'm sitting down to meditate, and I intend to be as aware as I can — as far as my current state allows.” The qualifier matters: you may be ill or tired and simply not manage the awareness you had before. But as much as you can.

The further you go, the stronger it works. At some point the intention alone brings you into the right state: a pre-meditative awareness in which the surface mind quiets down. Like a well-tuned machine: you press the button and everything falls into place. Almost like a coffee machine, minus the line.

You can see something similar in the suttas. In one of them a monk falls ill with an infection and can't sit in meditation. So he asks another monk to recite to him the formulas of the seven factors of awakening: mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, energy, joy, tranquillity, collectedness of mind and equanimity. Again and again.

The sick monk listens and attunes himself to these qualities. In effect it's the same as an intention: he intends to bring them alive in himself right now. And gradually the monk, who had been lying down unable to sit up, sits with a straight back and enters meditation.

The suttas often say: “Monks, you should train like this…” In the Simile of the Saw (Majjhima Nikaya 21) the Buddha says that even if bandits were to saw off your arms and legs, you should train so as to feel no ill will towards them and to keep dwelling in loving-kindness.

This is intention practice too — real training. You sit, picture the scene and intend to stay kind towards those people. It's a very powerful practice. Though you can start with the neighbor and his power drill.

It happens: you set the intention in the morning, and at work, among people, it slips away. There's a lot of talking, and it's hard to stay with your inner state. You only remember in the evening — with regret: forgot again.

No need for regret. Better to think about what would help you remember. A reminder on your phone, a thread or a bracelet on your wrist — anything that keeps reminding you. You see it, you pause, and renew the intention. Again and again. It's a purely technical question.

Everyone's surface mind is the same: it keeps getting carried away by whatever interests it. And talking to people is one of the most interesting things there is for it. Your attention gets hooked, and that's it, forgotten. But you don't have to break the surface mind; you can outsmart it: come up with a trick that helps you step out of the conversation and remember your practice.

The regret is worth noticing too: “Aha, regret. I see it. Not needed.” And go back to the question of what would help you remember.

In general, a light, kind irony towards yourself, with a smile, is very useful. We take what happens to us far too seriously, including our own mistakes. It's one of the voices of the inner prosecutor. Over-seriousness fades when you cultivate kind irony: “Oops, I did it again. The mind's up to its usual tricks. I see it, I sympathise, but let's not. Better to think about what we can do.”

This attitude to yourself gradually spreads to other people and to the world. It's a good philosophical stance. A philosopher in the high sense of the word is always kindly ironic. Irony helps them not to drown either in the world's great dramas or in everyday bustle.

Right intention doesn't need a meditation cushion. Here's where it works every day.

Before a difficult conversation

Before you walk into your boss's office: “Right now I'll be calm and honest.” The conversation can go any way, but you don't walk in on autopilot.

In line at the bank

The line crawls, everyone's annoyed. The intention “for the next twenty minutes, no irritation” turns the wait into practice.

Getting the kids out the door

While everyone gets ready for school, the intention “I won't rush anyone by shouting” helps you notice when your voice starts rising.

Before opening social media

“Ten minutes, then I close it.” Your thumb will argue at first.

Before sleep

Recall the morning's intention and honestly note where it worked and where it didn't. No prosecutor — with a smile.

And this isn't intention

“I must be kind, or I'm a bad person.” That's a demand on yourself: there's no gentleness in it, only fear.

Morning, the elevator, the decision: today, no irritation. By lunch it's forgotten. No big deal.

The bracelet on your wrist will remind you. Pause, breathe, intention — press the button, and the mind falls back into place.