This is a big job we are taking on here, rooting out the mind’s habits of causing suffering for itself and for the people around you. This means you’re in here for long haul, so try to have a mature attitude toward your goals, a mature attitude toward being on the path.

"You want to be willing to stay with the breath not only while you’re here, sitting with your eyes closed, but also in all of your activities as continuously as possible. After all, this is a big job we are taking on here, rooting out the mind’s habits of causing suffering for itself and for the people around you.

There’s another passage in the Canon where an elephant trainer is talking to the Buddha and says, “Elephants are easy; human beings are hard.” He says, “I can be with an elephant for a week and by the end of the week, I’ll know all that elephant’s tricks, but the human mind has lots of tricks, and it takes more than a week to get to know them.”

This means you’re in here for long haul, so try to have a mature attitude toward your goals, a mature attitude toward being on the path, even when it seems as if the path is endless. Actually, this is one of the few paths in life that actually have an end. Think of all the other endless things in life, the fact that, as long as you’re alive, you’re going to be eating every day, every day, every day, finding food, fixing food, cleaning up afterwards. There’s no end to it. Food, clothing, shelter, medicine: All of these are things that you have to keep finding. It’s as if you have the bottomless pit. You’ve got to keep throwing these things down into it, and it never gets full, it’s never satisfied. Those are activities that don’t have an end.

Even the work of the world that you have, whatever your job: It’s not that you stop working when the job is completed. It’s just that you get too old or too tired and sick of the work and you stop, but the work is not really done. Someone else is going to have to come along and take it on.

But the work of putting an end to suffering really does have an end point. So keep that in mind: that you’re working toward something that does come to an end, that brings about an end to all suffering. If you’re not on this path, you’re just going to be wandering around in the wilderness, totally aimless: That’s endless.

So you’re on a path that has a goal. It’s a lot better than being comfortably off the path but being allowed to stay still just for a few moments and then having to get up and wander around aimlessly and endlessly. It’s much better to be on the path. So always take heart when the path seems difficult: At least you’re on the path. You trip, you fall down, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go on."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Mind Like Earth"