Do not BLUFF ourselves

Right Effort is crucially needed as PEOPLE DO NOT drift toward holiness.

"This Dhamma that I have attained is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in worldliness. It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, namely specific conditionality, dependent origination and stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, nibbana".

Apart from the guided life from Right View, and hence Right Thoughts, people do not gravitate toward a Noble life, aspirations, keeping the Precepts, faith, and delight in letting go instead of more Greed and Cravings.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance;

we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom;

we drift toward superstition and call it faith.

We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation;

we slouch toward mindlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have freedom of thoughts;

we slide toward the satisfaction of sensual greed and convince ourselves we are happy.

Hence the noble path starts with Right View where we learn the basics of the Truth, from there our Thoughts are guided to the Right "ones", abandoning or letting go the unwholesome thoughts which arises due to our unenlightened state.

A life guided by the 5 basic moral precepts keeps us within Right Speech, Action and Livelihood.

And it is the constant surveillance of Right EFFORT, MINDFULNESS and CONCENTRATION that keeps us on the path, steering us back on track whenever we so often drift aside.