The second version has a man standing on a street corner snapping his fingers continually. When asked why he does this, he replies, “To keep the elephants out of the city.” When told that there are no elephants in the city, he says, “See?”

For a while last year my meditation practice and the upheaval of my life seemed to be in lockstep. The more I studied, read, and sat, the more seemed to be happening in my world. It was a period of breakneck speed of change, perfectly coinciding with the meteoric learning curve that happens whenever anything is new. In short order I moved cities, put a career back on track, re-established every aspect of my personal and social life, changed representation, went back to school, and all while developing my spiritual practice.

But when the pace settled into normalcy, as it inevitably had to, my instinct was to wonder what was wrong with my practice. What are all these tigers and elephants doing here? I’m tossing the breadcrumbs and snapping the fingers, so what gives? Obviously, there’s something wrong with this whole sitting and meditating thing…

The premise, of course, is totally backwards. The practice is of awareness of what is, and a path to the end of craving. There is nothing in it that says that the externals of your life will change, there is no promise of job offers and development deals, new houses and cars, or eternal sunshine. If there is a promise, it is that through understanding things as they are, you will be happier. This could mean that absolutely nothing changes except how you feel about things.

But without even that simple understanding, that may not come true.

In a twist of irony, I may have been able to understand my causation/correlation snafu because of the practice itself. Having trained myself in awareness to a modest degree of proficiency, my mind was open to see what was happening. That, and a handful of conversations with fellow practitioners, whom I now thank.

So… if you’re confused, or stuck, speak with your friends, and continue to meditate, meditate, meditate. And if it comes to it, feed the elephants the breadcrumbs…

For the short-term, having the ability to stay “in it” is an actor’s lifeblood. I don’t do much theater, something I’m remedying these days, but if you can’t keep your wits about you for an entire show, all is lost. And while screen work offers the safety net of repeated takes, the concentration level can be just as intense over the course of a twelve hour day, if not more so. I recall times of having to keep myself at a low simmer for hours on set. It’s draining.

For the long-term, having the ability to focus on a career day in, day out, is the lifeblood of the business side of acting. This is perhaps even harder. With no “boss” down the hall, we are in a constant state of self-starting, and have to summon Herculean will to keep going at times.

So, how is this concentration cultivated? By concentrating. Just as you have to lift weights in order to lift heavier weights, Right Concentration is like a muscle. And how does this happen? Through the sheer force of will, or by using Right Effort, to create Right Action, Right Speech, Right Intention and Right Livelihood, while maintaining Right View and using Right Meditation.

Simple, right? Actually, it is. It’s a beautifully self-contained philosophy. I continually marvel at its elegance.

I’ve seen my concentration come and go. Last winter I was nearly rabid in getting things done. So far this spring, I’ve slowed down, and have been as likely to go for a walk as read Variety, though I can feel the blood starting to tingle again. And yes, this exercise has been enormously helpful.

Sometimes you have to go back to basics. Thankfully in this case, there is such beauty in the basics that it’s easy to come back again and again.

It can all lead to a dubious relationship with reality, and I can see how ignoring Right Mindfulness has hurt me at times. My path has been a strange one: I have had experiences that flirted with stardom, from high powered meetings for leading roles with A-list directors, to being pursued by paparazzi through the streets of London and Tokyo, and yet on any given day a few people may point at me on the subway, but that’s about as far as it goes right now.

Still, it becomes tempting to think, “but I am this other thing,” when it is not the reality. It may be a reality, and while the things I alluded to did happen, they do not represent the whole. A healthy dose of clear consciousness to see things as they are is always welcome. It can relieve frustrations and make space for professional progress and personal happiness.

Years ago, I was fortunate enough to work with a wonderful actor who had once enjoyed great fame but had fallen to distinct B-list status. He never stopped smiling on set, and his good humor was infectious. Over drinks one evening I asked him bluntly why he was so happy, and he told me that he gets to make his living do what he wants to do, he has a wonderful family and home, and considered himself the luckiest guy on the planet.  He knew he was no longer a hot commodity, but he didn’t care. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was looking at a portrait of Right Mindfulness.

And if you look at the four foundations of mindfulness: contemplation of the body, of feeling, of state, and of the unknown, you’re reading the basis of every discourse on acting that’s ever been written, from Aristotle to Stanislavsky. We all might want to spend a little more time here on step number 7 of the Eightfold Path…

Tomorrow, Right Concentration, something that is being challenged to no end by modern technology.

Though Right Effort is classically understood to be about the mental effort of cultivating wholesome states, I have always thought of it as being about all effort, mental and otherwise. So, in my case, in one bold stroke, I left everything behind in order to start anew, and inadvertently jumped onto the sixth step of the Eightfold Path, actively cultivating a belief that has to exist in order to make any changes.

As with all the steps on the Path, there’s an ethical component to Right Effort. While training the mind may be commendable in the abstract, Right Effort is about the will to act in accordance with Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. So, if you’re clearing the decks to figure out how to sell more tabloids or drugs, you’ve missed the point.

In my work I (now) try to be in a state of constant improvement. I aspire to be the best actor I can be, the best person to work with, and keep my mind focused on what is possible. It is not easy, and I stumble all the time. More than a few hours and days go by when I see distinctly unwholesome thoughts rattling around my head and I do little to stop them. In fact, the brain being the brain, I often search for reasons to keep thinking the bad thoughts I’m thinking.

These things happen. My mindfulness training, though, reminds me that there is no “error” in stumbling or straying, but rather a chance to come back. And that is the greatest effort a person can make. That is Right Effort. And if we can consider Right Effort to be about attitude - will I make the effort to cultivate my thinking? – then it’s easy to see how big a role this can play in a career. Staying focused, staying positive, putting your best foot forward, eliminating the negative, these things matter greatly in what I do.

Tomorrow… Right Mindfulness, which I just alluded to.  (It’s all tied together in the end.  A thing of beauty, indeed.)

Yes, I am complicit in this.  I would be a fool to think otherwise.  Just as my tax dollars go to fight wars I don’t believe in and bail out bankers who defrauded pensioners, we are all involved with everything now.  Does this mean I am a murderer and a swindler?  Few would consider me such, but I am under no illusion, I am part of that system, and I willingly pay into it.

Right Livelihood is the only step on the Path that speaks directly to the point of this exercise.  And as much as I try to make my living in a “good” way, working on projects I believe have some artistic merit and can tell stories to make us think and feel, I know it is impossible to earn a clean dollar.  Even if I spent my life doing nothing but free plays about the life of the Buddha, I would be doing so within a system that is ethically fraught with trouble.  Would we have to get sponsorship from a corrupt bank in order to pay for the space and the lights?  If not a bank, then perhaps a private donor?  And where did he or she get the money?  And so on, and so on…

But I do have choice, and my responsibility is to make the best choice in any given situation, the one that I believe works towards ends I find worthy and morally defensible.  If somebody asked me to work in a film that extolled the virtues of racism, I would refuse.  The same goes for doing a campaign for cigarettes.  My livelihood is inexorably intertwined with these very things, in one way or another, but the degree of my involvement matters.

As an example, I was recently considered to be the voice for an alcoholic product.  I wanted the job, it would have paid a lot and freed me of immediate financial worry.  But it did occur to me that alcohol, while legal and consumed by yours truly, can be at the root of a lot of people’s troubles.  Should I encourage the public to knock a few back rather than keep a sober eye on life?  Is that “wrong?”  It’s hard to say.  But my mind was made up to accept the job if offered, and nobody would have blinked at my doing the work, I’m sure.

Hmm… this one is going to be an ongoing investigation, I can tell.  These are tricky waters to navigate…

Anyway, tomorrow we look at Right Effort.

I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the Path itself, and point out its elegance.  It started with the abstract, what do we think, what do we intend to do with ourselves, then moved into conduct, capping that section with a kind of “put your money where your mouth is” step, and will eventually end with a trinity of steps meant to strengthen the mind.  It’s a thing of beauty, it really is.

The on-screen/off-screen question I alluded to in the piece on Right Speech is also nearly identical.  Actions on screen and stage must have a purpose other than to harm, and if a piece has any merit, it will.  I have never done snuff films or pornography, both of which have scant claims to anything remotely ethical.  The worst I’ve been a part of are things that are lowbrow and poorly done, but their intention, misguided as it may have been, was to entertain, not willfully debase.

Right Action is often described in what is not to be done: don’t steal, don’t defraud, don’t kill, and so on.  Positively formulated, I suppose, it’s more like do good, lend a hand, give gifts, make people laugh.  And I’ve tried to do that in my life, and in my career.  I help others where I can, talk to students, mentor younger actors, and offer up my rollercoaster ride in the form of these musings so that somebody might hear something useful.

If there’s a recurring theme in this inquiry, though, it’s that my life and my work are one.  I am blessed to make my living in the arena of my choosing and thereby embrace my work as myself, but even if this wasn’t the case, it is ludicrous to think that how a person spends half of his or her waking life is something other than his or her life.  To believe that would require a high level of continual unconsciousness throughout the day.

But the point is to become conscious.  I am what I do, every day, in every moment, large and small.  And my best actions should reflect my beliefs, every day, in every moment, large and small.

Tomorrow, it’s Right Livelihood, an area that has always given me fits.

As an actor, my words are often not my own, of course, but I can choose to accept or decline a part depending on how I feel about the character and what he says and does.  More often than not, I accept even if I have minor reservations about what I’ll be voicing.  (I, too, have bills to pay.)

What would not be agreeable to me, however, would be to voice words, even in character, whose sole purpose were for the telling of falsehoods or meant to harm others.  Right Speech, in my line of work, should not stop at the sound stage door simply for the sake of money.

But you can do Shakespeare and say some pretty nasty stuff about the world, and I’m guessing that wouldn’t show up on anybody’s radar as a bad thing to be doing.  The best of our work edifies, and often we have to depict the unseemly side of humanity in order to do so.  It’s up to the individual to make the determination as to whether the speech in question is meant to harm or instruct, though some jobs are obviously without merit when it comes to Right Speech.

The other legitimate area of exploration in regards to Right Speech is in the commentary that goes on off set.  I have engaged in more than a few diatribes about how awful the industry is, how stupid people are, and how useless most of the people in the business can be.  And this needs to change.

As with Right Intention, I can’t help but think that while I’ve committed to the principle in daily life (though I still stumble, occasionally at inopportune moments) I’ve not made this commitment when it comes to work related matters.  As if somehow it’s okay to speak harshly about a production, but not of the guy blocking the subway door.  Why the division?

Happily for me, I’ve shifted my focus towards the work I want to do, and work more regularly with people I respect and want to work with, so a good deal of “wrong speech” has ebbed away simply for lack of fodder.  But I know there is still a lot of road ahead.

This is turning out to be a good exercise.  I highly recommend.  Tomorrow we’ll look at Right Action.

My goal in these eight days is to look at the Path specifically as it relates to my professional life and how I live it.  There’s an argument that I can’t separate professional and personal in this way, but it’s worth a try.  Perhaps the exploration will answer that question.

So, have I followed Right Intention as it relates to my work and career?  A brutally honest assessment comes to this conclusion: no.  Even if I am generally courteous, professional and mindful of others, there is little I can point to where I set my intention to improve myself in this way as it relates to my working life.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the subject as an individual, but I’ve not really thought about it as a professional.  But here we’re into the spillover area.  All that time on the cushion, in the lecture halls and reading the books must surely come forth on set and in meetings, but I confess to never having made that commitment to myself as I operate in the professional realm.

And I can do that, today, tomorrow and the day after that, but I don’t know that it will yield anything significantly greater than doing so “outside” of work.  What’s the difference, really?  Hmm… I can already see the writing on the wall: the personal and professional are one.  What we do, and how we do it, is who we are as much as anything else.

This is getting interesting.  Tomorrow, we tackle Right Speech.  That one could be a little easier to distinguish between work and life, but who knows…

Most people will acknowledge that the acting profession is more difficult than most, but most actors fall for the seductive trap that the profession itself is a means to salvation, that a life in the spotlight will be free of all ills.  The truth is that all the money and small statuettes in the world will not bring happiness.  If they did, the people on top of the profession would be dancing in the streets instead of endlessly complaining about their agents and drinking alcohol as fast as its being produced.

Perhaps it was from the sheer exhaustion of repeated disappointment, but I believe I’ve come to embrace Right View.  I still feel the erotic tingle of false expectation every time I get close to a part or a paycheck, but a steady diet of seeing things as they are has served me well.

And so the eight day journey begins.  Tomorrow I’ll look at Right Intention.  Things might get trickier…

I’ve said before that I believe in choice of focus.  And I do.  It’s not always easy, but we can decide what to think about, how to feel about it, and who to be.  Uncontrolled thoughts will arise, of course, this is perfectly natural, but what we do with them is largely an exercise in free will.  And like any other skill in life, it requires a learning curve, practice, failure and more practice.  But we must never lose sight of the fact – yes, fact – that the possibility for change exists.

I told a friend that I’m getting better at my focus, laying my success rate at “9 out of 10 times” for making the positive choice.  I went further and said that I’d like to get that up to “99 out of 100″ and then “999 out of 1,000.”  Since that seemed pretty darn good, I left it there.  But I took some delight that my instinct was to leave room for the one bad choice, or failure, or letdown, or whatever we want to call it.  For without the one, the 9, 99 and 999 don’t exist.  Without the one, there is nothing to learn from.  Without the one, we have no touchstone.  In a word, without the suffering, we have no shot at happiness.  Does this mean that those who suffer will be happy?  Not necessarily.  There’s the small matter of mindfulness in between, that is, the recognition of having the choice.  Eureka!  Awareness is all!  I must share this revelation with everybody!

(Pause.)

There’s a particular satisfaction in arriving at the same conclusions much wiser people came to 2,500 years ago.  You feel at once enlightened – “Hey, I got there, too!” – and a bit of a lovable dunce.

Emphasis on the lovable.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.