What Is the Most Important Thing?

NO SPIRITUAL TEACHER, NO MATTER HOW WISE, AND NO TEACHING, NO MATTER HOW PROFOUND, CAN BE A SUBSTITUTE FOR DISCOVERING WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU.

What is the most important thing to you? Not the top ten, not the top five, not the top three, not the top two, but the top. Is it awakening? Is it love? Is it peace? I could go on naming possibilities, but think about your spiritual life, the part of you that deep dives into the discovery of meaning. By “meaning,” I am not referring to the meaning of life—that ends up being theoretical. I am talking about meaning as that which gives us a sense of vitality, aliveness, inspiration, calm, and joy.

I have done some research on the idea of the most important thing, and I have looked at it from different angles, talking to executives, athletes, musicians, writers, artists of all kinds, and anybody who excels at something. For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in people who do things well. These people tend to have an ability to define what is most important, to know it within their being, and to rally their resources toward it. If you think about it, anybody who achieves unusual excellence—you could throw Warren Buffett, Miles Davis, Michelangelo, or the Buddha and Jesus and other spiritual figures in there—has a sense of direction and a genuine feeling for the most important thing in their life.

The Buddha’s most important thing was his recognition of the human condition, which involves suffering: sickness, old age, and death. He asked, “Is there any resolution to this immense issue of suffering for any human being?” He oriented his whole life around this question. He left his wife, his children, and his position in society. He walked away from it all and became a sadhu, a renunciant. Most of us are not going to do that. That is fine, because to copy what somebody else did is one of the mistakes we make. We should not say, “If the Buddha left everything behind, I need to leave everything behind.” What is more important than the renunciation is the Buddha’s focus, the sense that he found his most important thing. His act of leaving everything to pursue his question is unimportant; it is his response to the question that matters. For Jesus, I would say it was to put God first in all things—that was his most important thing.

There is a clarity that comes from finding out what the most important thing is to you. When I talk to people, especially when I am teaching, I often ask, “So what is your spiritual life all about? What is the focus? What do you want?” People answer, “Enlightenment,” to which I reply, “What does that mean to you? What is the enlightenment that you seek?” I explain, “I am not talking about the ‘sales pitch’ for enlightenment. I am not talking about what someone promised enlightenment would give you.” The sales pitch may promise eternal bliss, an end to unhappiness or suffering, and a life that is kind and benevolent, in which everybody loves and appreciates you. That has little to do with what enlightenment is.

I am asking people to tell me, not what they have been sold, but what they want. When they think about the most important thing they are seeking, what does that mean? Spirituality is my discipline, but you can apply this question to any area of life—to relationships, art, sports, or play. We are rarely taught to do this. Instead, our culture, family, and friends tell us what the most important things in life are, and we accept and absorb these stories without a lot of reflection.

If we never question, then we focus our life on whatever we are conditioned to focus on, until one day we realize: What I have focused on was not that important to me. A reorienting follows when people hit midlife, because it is a time when we have done enough, achieved enough, or run the rat race long enough to start to wonder if it is satisfactory. Is it enough? That is when we reexamine and begin to ask questions: Is that what I want? What is the most important thing for me?

When I ask people, “What is your spiritual life all about?” you would be surprised by how few have taken the time or imposed the mental discipline to define it. They read book after book, work with teacher after teacher, and even do years of meditation or other spiritual practice, yet they are chasing something that somebody else defined for them, thinking, That sounds pretty good. I’ll go for that. But they are not discovering the unique orientation that belongs only to them and their life. Nobody can give this to them. No spiritual teacher, no matter how wise, and no teaching, no matter how profound, can be a substitute for discovering what is important to you.

When I ask people about their most important thing, their eyes go up, left, and right as if they are searching their memory for an answer to this question, but if we know our most important thing, our reply is immediate. We do not have to think about it—it is there. Such people know what they are doing and why they are doing it. They know the most important thing.

When I look back and reflect upon this idea of the thing that orients my life, my source of inspiration and aspiration, I see that it was an unfolding of what was important to me at that time. We all have phases in life during which different things are important. There are aspects of us that sustain their importance throughout a whole lifetime, and there are things that play themselves out, leading us to move on to the next thing. You could apply this concept to any moment and ask, What is the most important thing right now? Not the thing that comes from your head or even from your heart, but from deep down in your gut. What is it?

I looked back at everything at which I ever excelled. When I was young I was dyslexic, and in first grade I had a hard time reading. I made a decision. I discovered my most important thing at that time: I was going to learn to read as well as everybody else. My parents engaged a tutor for me, and I worked, and I worked, and I had a focus. In less than a year, I was up to speed in reading. By the time I was in high school, I was reading at college level. This was because I had found the most important thing to me, knew it was important, and backed it up with action. Action is the second part of this process—doing something about the most important thing, not just thinking about and hoping for it.

Later in life I got into various forms of athletics. When I was eighteen, I raced bikes at a fairly high level, and for a time that became the most important thing. It inspired me; it drew upon my deepest resources. I focused on racing and was willing to do whatever it took to excel. I did not have problems with motivation; I did not have problems with wanting to train. At that time, I was riding my bicycle between 300 and 400 miles a week. Even when the weather was windy and stormy, I rode my bike in the pouring rain, sometimes for four or five hours at a stretch. To motivate myself I would think about how 80 or 90 percent of my competitors were not riding. Though they might work out on their indoor trainer for an hour or so, most of them would not ride outside in a storm. But I did. I used that as a motivation. I concentrated my desire on my most important thing, rode my bike in horrendous conditions, and because of that focus I excelled.

Everything that I excelled in throughout my life came about because it was my most important thing. I knew why I was there, what I was doing, what I was inspired by, and what I was looking for; I knew what the most important thing was. When it came to spirituality, I realized there are many different ideas about what a spiritual life should be. I found I had to disconnect from how others defined it and keep returning to what truly belonged to me. I avoided the sales pitch for enlightenment, as I was not looking to achieve a lot of the things we imagine spirituality is about. I wanted to know what truth was—the deepest, most fundamental truth of existence—and to make a positive contribution to life. What is this thing called truth, called enlightenment? This was my question and my driving obsession. This desire for truth has been with me in different ways for as long as I can remember.

What about you? What is the most important thing in your life? Do not assume it is the first idea that pops into your mind. Discovering it may take some real investigation and some serious contemplation. It will be worth the effort and can be a turning point in whatever area of your life you apply it. When you dig down, when you impose a mental discipline and do not settle for the quick, easy answer that you may well have learned from somebody else, you will find what nobody can give you and what belongs to you alone. I am not asking you to tell me what you believe I think should be your most important thing, because that is not for me to define for anybody. That is for each person to define for themselves. You need to impose discipline—and when I say “discipline,” I mean you may have to think this through and meditate on it for days or months to get a true sense of what it is.

As a spiritual teacher, I have seen that to define the most important thing is the most important thing. It is the first step. Until you do, your life does not even belong to you.