I’m using one of Māra’s (The Devil) greatest tactics against him!

How often has the Devil talked you into doing something you shouldn’t do with FITD?

Just one more piece of chocolate cake?

Just one more round of golf?

Just one more night of partying?

Just one more white lie?

I used to hate jogging.

When I was as kid, I hated it with a passion,

they used to make us run several miles a week in school physical education classes.

It was miserable, pointless, painful.

Then in my 30’s, I needed to get better cardiovascular conditioning,

and realized jogging was probably the best way to meet that requirement,

being free, no equipment, etc.

So I resolved to do 5 minutes a day.

Hated every minute of it, but I committed to it everyday.

I got FITD (foot in the door).

It was only 5 minutes, and it was good for my health,

so worth the pain.

As my cardiovascular conditioning got stronger,

it got less physically painful, then eventually no pain at all,

just mentally boring.

But getting physically stronger, then it became easy to increase the time from 5 min.,

over the years, to 10-15 min.

a day effortlessly.

Then I figured out I can do pāḷi chanting while I was jogging,

and then there was no pain, and all gain.

No physical pain because I was strong in conditioned,

and all gain in mental Dhamma and pāḷi skills from chanting.

I used to hate jogging, 30 years later I don’t hate it at all,

in fact I love it.

I like it as much as I like Jhāna, because I can tap into the same pleasure chemicals (sukha indriya),

the endorphines, the runners high.

Sexual orgasm, eating delicious food,

doing yoga stretching at just the right amount of tension,

ASMR, frisson, athlete’s “flow”,

it’s all the same nervous system getting stimulated as sitting meditation jhāna.

What did you think, that the human body has a separate nervous

system with special set of pleasure chemicals that are only reserved for yogis who can enter jhāna?

That would be mighty expensive and inefficient for the body to do.

It’s used as a metaphor for how people fail to react to harmful changes when they happen gradually rather than suddenly —

like slowly worsening working conditions, environmental decline,

or a relationship or situation deteriorating bit by bit until it’s hard to recognize how bad things have gotten.^*

man relaxes in frog soup 🎬🔗

A trio of suttas stating the doctrinal core: what one intends,

plans, and obsesses over becomes an object for the persistence of consciousness.

With that as a basis, consciousness becomes established,

and there is renewed production of future existence.

This is the seed from which the entire habit/personality discussion grows — intention,

repeated, conditions what comes next.

Uses an explicit agricultural metaphor: consciousness with clinging as its fuel is like a seed; craving is the moisture.

Given these conditions, consciousness

"grows, increases, and matures" into a new state of being.

One of the clearest canonical images for how a repeated pattern takes root and becomes part of who someone is.

Defines kamma explicitly as cetanā (intention) itself,

and analyzes kamma by root — rooted in greed,

hatred, and delusion, or in their opposites.

The closest thing in the canon to an explicit theory of what shapes character over time.

An important counterpoint to habit as fixed destiny.

A person who has developed body, virtue,

mind, and wisdom can dilute the effect of old habitual kamma

— like a crystal of salt dropped into a great river rather than a small cup of water.

Central text for thinking about habit change,

not just formation.

Lists the seven anusaya (underlying tendencies): sensual desire,

aversion, views, doubt, conceit, desire for existence,

and ignorance.

These function less like surface habits and more like settled

personality traits — the residue of repeated unexamined reaction.

Ties underlying tendencies back to feeling: unexamined pleasant,

painful, or neutral feeling breeds the corresponding tendency (desire,

aversion, or ignorance) over time.

This is habit-formation through repeated,

unreflective reaction to feeling.

Defines saṅkhāra (mental formations) by function: they

"construct the conditioned" — applied across form,

feeling, perception, and consciousness.

This is the abstract mechanics of why habituation happens at

all; saṅkhāra is the aggregate most responsible for patterning experience into recurring shapes.

The central sutta on papañca (conceptual proliferation).

Lays out the chain: contact → feeling → perception → thinking (vitakka) → papañca → the papañca-born concepts that then

"assail" a person with respect to past,

present, and future.

Mahākaccāna's exposition is the most detailed early analysis

of how perception spirals into elaboration and eventually conflict.

The Buddha's pre-awakening reflection: thoughts sort into those tending toward harm (sensual desire,

ill will, cruelty) and those tending toward welfare (renunciation,

non-ill-will, harmlessness).

Sustained attention to one category over the other shapes the

mind's long-term inclination — a functional description of how attentional habits form disposition,

without using the word vāsanā.

The practical counterpart to MN 18/19: five methods for stilling unwholesome vitakka once arisen — substitution,

examining its danger, distraction/ignoring,

tracing it to its source and calming it,

and forceful suppression as a last resort.

A practical manual of seven methods for preventing āsava

(taints/outflows) from arising or increasing — sense restraint,

reflection before use of requisites,

endurance, and others.

Effectively a guide to not reinforcing habitual tendencies before they entrench.

Contains a section on the arising and cessation of āsava,

tying the taints back into the same dependent-origination structure used in SN 12.38.

The most direct canonical framework for habit management: prevent unskillful states not yet arisen,

abandon those that have arisen, cultivate skillful states not yet arisen,

and maintain those that have arisen.

Lays out the "gradual training" (anupubbasikkhā) — starting

from basic ethical conduct and building step by step toward deeper practice.

The closest canonical model to structured habit-building.

The same gradual path in more detail,

from moral restraint through to meditative attainment.

"The layperson's code of discipline" — practical guidance on relationships,

work, and daily conduct.

Concrete lay-life advice: diligence in one's work,

protecting wealth, good company, and balanced livelihood as conditions for happiness in this life.

On the proper use of wealth earned righteously.

For tracing the arc from momentary intention to entrenched personality:

SN 12.38–40 (intention plants the seed) → SN 22.54 (the seed metaphor) → AN 6.63 (kamma-root theory) → AN 7.11/12 (underlying tendencies = personality) → AN 3.99 (mutability — habit is not destiny)

For the thought-proliferation side track:

MN 19 (sorting thoughts) → MN 18 (how thought becomes proliferation) → MN 20 (how to interrupt it)

FITD = foot in the door 🔗 technique

Probably not intended by the author, but the poem has added dimension when you interpret ‘noble’ as ariya sacca.

In that light, it’s a nice inspirational poem praising viriya and right effort on the noble eightfold path.

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,

  That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

  Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day’s events,

  That with the hour begin and end,

Our pleasures and our discontents,

  Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,

  That makes another’s virtues less;

The revel of the ruddy wine,

  And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;

  The strife for triumph more than truth;

The hardening of the heart, that brings

  Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,

  That have their root in thoughts of ill;

Whatever hinders or impedes

  The action of the nobler will; —

All these must first be trampled down

  Beneath our feet, if we would gain

In the bright fields of fair renown

  The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;

  But we have feet to scale and climb

By slow degrees, by more and more,

  The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone

  That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,

When nearer seen, and better known,

  Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear

  Their solid bastions to the skies,

Are crossed by pathways, that appear

  As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept

  Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

  Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore

  With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern — unseen before —

  A path to higher destinies,

Nor deem the irrevocable Past

  As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

If, rising on its wrecks, at last

  To something nobler we attain.

source: The Ladder of St. Augustine 🔗 (notes on the Dhamma, 2024-09)