About This Teaching
How should a Buddhist make a resolution or aspiration in a way that supports the path? Venerable Ajahn Dtun explains that a wholesome determination should be directed toward the highest goal rather than becoming another form of attachment to worldly or heavenly existence.
If one is not making the long aspiration to become a Buddha, Ajahn Dtun recommends dedicating the development of pāramī toward Nibbāna. Until that goal is reached, one can also form practical wholesome wishes: may there be birth in a favourable realm rather than in states of deprivation; may one have the health and lifespan needed to continue creating good causes; and may one have the opportunity to keep practising within the Buddha’s dispensation.
He speaks particularly about the value of human birth. If another human life is necessary, one can aspire to be born in a place where the Buddha’s teachings are available, with a body and circumstances that allow practice. One can also wish to meet wise people and noble practitioners, to develop right view and wisdom, and to continue moving in the direction of liberation.
Ajahn Dtun cautions against losing sight of the goal by becoming fascinated with very long-lived states of existence. A refined or pleasant rebirth is still within saṃsāra. The purpose of a Buddhist resolution is therefore not simply to obtain more pleasure, status or duration of life, but to secure conditions that support further cultivation of virtue, meditation and wisdom.
The teaching also shows why a resolution is more than a hopeful sentence recited in front of a Buddha image. A determination has meaning when it guides conduct. Aspiring to Nibbāna should encourage the practitioner to build the causes for Nibbāna: generosity, precepts, meditation, patience, effort, truthfulness, right view and continued learning from the Dhamma.
This short answer offers a clear framework for adhiṭṭhāna, the perfection of determination. Aim high, keep the direction wholesome, and use every favourable condition not merely for comfort but for the continued development of the heart until liberation is reached. In this sense, aspiration and effort belong together. A resolution made before a Buddha image has value when it repeatedly reminds the practitioner how to live: avoid lower causes, seek wise companionship, cultivate right view and use health, time and human birth as conditions for Dhamma rather than as opportunities for further heedlessness.