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Revisiting Intention - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 18, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Revisiting Intention

Good evening. Checking voice here. Voice is working. Okay. It's lovely to see you all out on a kind of a messy night out there. Dark and wet and rainy. So, thank you. I'm glad that your intention brought you here. It warms my heart.

And the topic for tonight is in fact revisiting intention. But before we launch into that, I want to just bring two thoughts into your mind. So the first was something I wrote down that Gil Fronsdal¹ said years ago, not that profound but actually very useful. "How we think about things is more important than the thing itself." How we think about things is more important than the thing itself.

The second thought is the opening stanza of a poem by Thích Nhất Hạnh² who is a Vietnamese monk: "Life has left her footprints on my forehead. But I have become a child again this morning. The smile seen through leaves and flowers is back to smooth away the wrinkles as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach again. A cycle of birth and death begins." This poem is called Message.

So, how we think about things is more important than the thing itself, and the idea that life has left footprints on my forehead. When we think about intention, we think sometimes lofty intentions: "I want world peace." Sometimes we have small intentions: "I want to make it to the bathroom." Large intentions, small intentions. What we're talking about tonight are the intentions for practice. Why do we do this? Why do we meditate? Why are we in this process? What is it that gives strength and inspiration to my practice?

And the important thing is that intentions are not goals. They're not "I'm going to be that." They're not solid. They're not fixed. Often in our minds, we have kind of unspoken contracts, right? "If I do this, then this is what's going to happen. And so I'm going to do this, and my intention is to do this." So our intentions tend to set up expectations. "If I sit in this certain way under these kind of conditions, I am going to relax into meditation. Everything is going to be lovely." And then, of course, life happens, whether it's meditation or anything else, because in fact the conditions never are the same. No matter what our intentions are, the one thing we don't have control over are all the conditions.

As it turns out, we don't even have that much control over our intention. An intention is really a living, breathing, always-changing thing. Even though if you asked me what my primary intention was, I would give you an answer. "Here it is. This is my primary intention in my practice, hasn't changed for decades." But it's changed immensely. It's changed because I've changed, because the conditions of my life have changed. What I understand by my intention has changed.

One of the difficulties is when we have intentions, there's a real strong tendency to measure ourselves against those intentions. "Have I done it? Did I get there?" And so intentions also seem to be linked with judgment and blame. Now, judgment itself is not a bad thing. It's just judgment. But there's this blame: "It's my fault. I'm not good enough. I haven't got there yet." Or, "It's that person's fault. Look what they did. They made it impossible for this to happen." There's this essence of blame that goes along with expectation. "Oh, when I feel like I'm really meeting my intention, I feel great, right? Because I have done something." But the intention hasn't changed. No matter the intention, whatever the outcome, it's unexpected.

Any act of sitting down to meditate, or walking through the door, or speaking to another person begins with an intention, and then life happens, the experience happens. And because we don't control all the other conditions, it is what it is. Unfortunately, we become entangled in "my intention is..." and "that's what it looks like". So my primary intention is to be openhearted. If I'm openhearted, it's going to look like this: I'm going to be this smiling person that welcomes you. All whatever intentions are tied up with that. So if it doesn't look like this, I'm a failure. Whereas intention is never intended to be a brand or to be met with the measuring stick. It's the attitude of mind that we bring to whatever we're doing. That's the spirit of intention.

For example, given that my intention was to be openhearted, I sort of focused on that. It arrived out of conditions of my life where I was a pretty guarded individual—not to say stony, but pretty guarded, very cautious, very suspicious. And over time, although my intention didn't change, I came to understand that my intention really was about being open, that I just needed to be open, and coming to realize that that meant vulnerability. Which, of course, is what all those barriers were about. I wasn't going to be vulnerable, right? But the realization that there was a feeling that I needed to just say, "Okay, I can be vulnerable," that was my intention. And then over time, as I was thinking about that, repeating to myself, "Be open, be open, be open." Oh, this is really about being. In order to be openhearted, I needed to just show up. I needed to be present. I needed to be here fully and completely as me. The intention never really changed, but because it is a living, breathing thing, everything around it changed. The way that it inspired me changed. The way that I meet each moment has changed as an intention. It has changed because I've changed, because conditions have changed.

And now when I check that intention, I check whether I'm remembering it. I check whether it's really present for me. I check whether my mind habits have obscured that intention. Our intentions condition the next moment not by effort. "I'm going to be openhearted. I'm going to be openhearted." No, no, no. But by wisdom. Our intentions condition the next moment by wisdom. What am I? How am I changing? Am I aware of those changes? The wise effort in this case is not so much a tedious attention as it is just a perseverance. "Yep. Got to check back into that intention." How close is that intention to what I really intend? How are my mind habits supporting that intention or not supporting that intention? Not "how far have I come" or "how well have I done." No, it's "is it alive for me, this intention?" And if so, how is it feeding my heart?

If my intention is to be in a community where people are not fighting with one another, and I see one person as being the trigger for everybody fighting, and I point at that person and I say, "That person has to change," my intention toward peace in the community is blown to hell totally by my own actions. The ill will that I have generated toward getting rid of that person, or correcting that person, or making that person see. All of the outshoots from really good intentions need to be seen really clearly. If I want to live in peace, I have to be in peace. And when I am not, I have to see I'm not. There is an absence of peace here. What's my contribution? Can I find peace here?

We need to cultivate the idea, the confidence that this moment is not a mistake. Where I am right now, with my intentions right now, I'm speaking to you. My intention is to speak with you and to give you some idea of a way of looking at intentions that will be enlivening. This is an intention I have. But it's not the last word. I have to check and see, "Am I coming anywhere close to that? Am I just making obscure statements? How is it happening? How do I feel about that? Am I in this moment? Why are my hands waving? I'm stirring the air. Oh, okay. Energy. Yeah. Okay. I'm here in this moment with energy." Seeing this is how we use intention.

We have to have faith that our awareness in the moment will keep us to our intention. That we can visit that intention without judgment, without saying this is good and this is bad. But what's happening? Where am I with this? When we realize that we're living with an intention that lives in a world of impermanence³, where the intention itself is not always the same, where the conditions around that intention are not always the same, and we see things are arising, evolving, and passing away. This is what happens.

I can feel myself generating ill will and I can say, "I don't want ill will. I'm aversive to ill will." I see that. "Okay, I'm just making it worse." Well, and I breathe, and then I revisit what's happening. How do I behave in this moment? What's next? How do I use my good intentions and even my bad intentions to understand how my mind is creating this moment? We come to understand that we don't have to be afraid of ourselves. The whole thing about building up barriers had to do with being afraid of being hurt, being not seen, doing the wrong thing, responding in a way that makes it worse. But when we're more involved with just what's happening, we don't have time for all those judgments. We don't have to make meaning out of everything that happens. We don't have to be wed to "oh this means..." whatever mistakes we make, or harm that has come to us or to someone else, or frustrations with our effort arise. They just... we're not who we once were. So they don't have to repeat. Even in seeing it we're no longer the person we were.

One of the things I do is individual practice discussions. We have a sign up that you can do from the website where people can sign up for a half an hour talk with a teacher. And it's amazing to me how many people come with a problem and it's always about, "I must be doing this wrong. I must be doing this wrong. What can I do to make this better? How come my meditation is not as sweet as it was? Or what can I do about involuntary movement?" Everything comes as a form of "ah, something's wrong." Sometimes it's, "I don't know why I'm talking to you." I love that one. That gives me all kinds of space, and I don't have to overcome the idea that something's wrong. It just is.

I don't have to try to rearrange the past. The other day I had a dream. There are different forms of this dream that I have, where I will go to a place where I once lived where I was really happy, and I'm so excited to be there, and the plaster is falling off, or there's a leak, or something terrible has happened, or all the landscaping is now gone. So I had one of those dreams the other night, which is very disturbing to me. You go to a place that makes you feel good and happy, and it's just not the way it was. And I could feel myself even in the dream wanting to fix it. "Well, no, no, there must be something wrong with this." Like I was going to paint the wall in the dream, and I could feel that need. You know, 20 years later, things happen, right? Things are different.

But we sometimes confuse the issues, and we think that if we're going to be really in touch with our intentions, we really have to make things better all the time. And that sets in our mind the idea that things are not good. And intention isn't about what's wrong with now. It's meant to be an inspiration.

So, I have on my wall in my office a print that we magically found that depicts the Billings Library in Billings, Montana. Now, this library is really amazing. It's all stone. It looks like a castle. It has columns and turrets and it's really just a gorgeous building. And I have this memory when I was a little kid, very very little, just a new reader, that my mother took me to this library. And what's true about the memory is really all I remember was going up those steps. But whenever I look at that print and consider it, there is a story that goes with that print. And it's about how I'm loved. My mother loved me. My mother taught me to read. So I have this idea that my love of reading arose from walking up the steps of that building. That building is no longer a library. I think it belongs to the historical society or something. But every time I look at that print, I'm aware that sometimes I'm feeling loved, sometimes I'm feeling the loss of innocence. That my reaction to that print is determined by the conditions now, not then. So today when I looked at the print as I just gazed up, I realized there was a smile on my face and I felt soft and comfortable, and I thought, "Oh, good things are happening today." That's all. It doesn't mean that building has saved me or any other meaning that I can ascribe to it. It's simply an experience that I can notice, and I can be aware as a mirror on what's my attitude of mind today.

Conversely, shortly after that, gazing on the library print, there was a howling coyote outside my window. And if you're familiar with coyotes, they don't bark like dogs do. They have kind of a plaintive sound. It sounds like something's really being harmed. And I felt my heart go, "Oh dear." Not out of fear, but "Oh, what's wrong with that animal?" And then I realized, "Oh, it's a coyote." And then there was curiosity and excitement, and I'm going to go see the coyote, which I couldn't do. But then I said, "What am I doing? I need to get back to my talk." And watch how the mind flits around all of these things that are happening. But nothing was bad. I might have been postponing the talk a little, but that's just what I was doing. It's not like it was bad. It just was what was happening.

An experience may reside in your memory, but what you're feeling now is not what you felt then. You want to build a story around it and give it meaning. This is a very human thing. But what's important is what's happening now regarding that memory. That's the mindful awareness that we live in that we can check against our intentions. That's the place where we can discover how we're forming our ideas about the world, not in those memories. It's okay to enjoy a memory. I enjoy my memories. I enjoy that library, which is no longer a library. And I'm no longer a little five-year-old girl. And my mother died 65, 68 years ago. These are not realities in my present moment. But the memories are, and they have an ability to affect how I am in this moment. And I need to know what that is.

Joseph Goldstein⁴ describes the distinction between the establishment of mindfulness and the development of this establishment of mindfulness. In the development stage, he says the awareness of impermanence becomes even more predominant than the object itself. So if we refer back to what Gil said, that how we think about something is more important than the thing itself—how we are with the thing itself. It's the same idea that impermanence is more predominant than the object itself. That memory I have changes every time I tell that story. It's colored by something else I remember or something else I've added. Sort of like painting the wall of that destroyed house. We're constantly revising our memories, and how we relate to those is the movement from mindfulness of content to mindfulness of process. This relates directly to intention. It's not the content. It's how does it change as we are changing? How does it reflect how we are? How does it inspire us as we are? How does it inspire this moment?

Your intention to be here. "I made it. I'm here right now." I'm speaking. If I decided not to speak, if I changed my intention and decided not to speak, I would no longer be the person who is speaking. If I decide to step away from an angry response, I would no longer be the person with the angry response. Intention helps us to see the difference between how we could be, might be, used to be, and how we are. It allows us to not be trapped in the conditions, but to see the changing conditions and the fact that we can begin every moment again. It frees us from the world of negative judgments that we might constantly be living with. "I did it again. Oh. Oh, it happened again." If the intention stops, the action stops. That's really important. If the intention stops, the action stops. If I stop speaking, if I intend to stop speaking, I stop speaking. Can I catch judgment when it arises? "I'm not true to my intention." Can I stop that?

It turns out the intention to be present is implicit in many lofty intentions, because if we're not here, we can't follow through on that intention. That's what reactionary responses are about. We're not here. The mind does what it normally does or the body does what it normally does in response to some stimulus. But if we're here, if we're present, we have an opportunity to see and actually choose what we do in the next moment. I can only operate openhearted in the present. I can't be openhearted in the past. I can't be openhearted in the future. The only thing I can do is be open here and now. That's why that intention is so important. Because what I do now, what I think now, my attitude of mind now conditions the next moment just as my intentions do.

Memories, emotions, ideas, sensations arise, evolve, pass away constantly. It makes no sense to grab on to them and say, "Okay, I'm a person who..." What does that even mean? If I say "my thought" rather than "that thought", is there more weight on my thoughts? Are my thoughts more important than the thought? Try that out. When something arises in your thinking, try saying, "Oh, that thought arose." Not, "Oh, I'm thinking." It helps you not be so attached to the content and more aware of, "Okay, in the presence of thought, how am I? Where's my presence of mind? Where's my attitude?"

We think that intention will help us have control, but it doesn't give us control because we don't control conditions. But it sets the stage. It allows us to provide a condition, and you know, one is better than none, right? A little control. Okay. At least I can't avoid the rain if I go outside. But I can say, "Okay, it's raining. It doesn't matter that I just washed my car." Well, it matters, but it's just raining. It's just rain.

Our intentions are not fixed goals. They're ways of being. Our intentions condition the next moment not by effort but by wisdom. Wise effort doesn't mean trying harder. It means persevering.

So I want to read to you a poem by Amanda Gorman⁵, who was the poet that read at the Obama administration inauguration. That Amanda Gorman, and this book is called Closure. I'm sorry, the poem To Begin Again:

To begin again isn't to go backwards, but to decide to go. Our story is not a circle carved, but a spiral shed, shaped, spinning, shifting inward and outward. Ad infinitum like a lung on the bank of speech. Breathe with us. We disembark both beside and beyond who we were, who we are. It is a return and a departure. We spiral on, pushing up and out like a growing thing making its form out of earth. In a poem, there's no end, just a place where the page glows, wide and waiting, like a lifted hand, poised and paused. Here is our bond, unbordered by bone. Perhaps love is how it feels to breathe the same air. All we have is time, is now. Time takes us on.

How we are moved says everything about what we are to each other. Boy, I blew that. Let me try again. "How we are moved says everything about what we are to each other. And what are we to each other if not everything?" I love that line. "How we are moved says everything about what we are to each other, and what are we to each other if not everything."

In the beginning of the poem, "To begin again isn't to go backwards but to decide to go." So perhaps we can each adopt for a time the new intention to begin again. Begin again. Visit your intention. Be friends with your intention and begin again. Thank you.

Q&A

So we have time if people have comments, questions, suggestions.

I think it's not an easy thing to form an intention that you think is going to be really meaningful for your life without making it into something big. Which is why I like the intention to just begin again. Begin again with your intention. Begin again with finding an intention. Defining an intention. You have intentions. Befriend it. Befriend yourself in knowing your intentions. Just... Oh, look at that. When I leapt up to see that coyote, there was a piece of me that wanted to help. I wasn't going to do anything with the coyote, but it was interesting to feel that intention toward, "Oh, the sound evoked in me the memory of somebody is in pain." Oh, how interesting that that is there, and that there is an impulse to notice the impulse. "Oh, interesting."

So, yes.

Questioner: "So I have a question about something you said in the beginning, how we think about something is more important than what we're thinking about. So for example, what about if I'm thinking about stealing a candy bar from 7-Eleven versus thinking about the dharma? So it doesn't... still how I'm thinking about what is more important?"

Maria: "So repeat your question. I didn't hear it. So in other words..."

Questioner: "Just the how I'm thinking about what is."

Maria: "So in other words, like let's say one thought would be stealing a candy bar from 7-Eleven. The other thought would be about the dharma."

Questioner: "So it's still more important how I'm thinking about it versus what I'm thinking about."

Maria: "Yeah. So here's the context for that. It doesn't matter what I'm thinking about, where is my attitude toward how I'm thinking about it. So if I'm thinking about the dharma as a road map and I need to see things a certain way, and I'm attached to that view. I'm attached to that view, and I should know I'm attached regardless of what segment of dharma I'm talking about. I should notice I'm attached, that I have a fixed view, that I'm not leaving space for that to be something else, like my memory of walking up the stairs of that library. I'm not leaving space for the fact that sometimes it makes me smile and sometimes I am despondent because I'm no longer that innocent child with those simple thoughts. How I'm thinking about it."

"Now, if my goal is to resolve a problem and I'm writing down all of the issues so that I can choose between them, that's important. I'm trying to resolve some issue, or I'm trying to plan a solution or a trip. That's the content. That's what I'm doing. But how I'm thinking about that—'This is life or death. If I do this wrong...' all of that extra stuff is where the suffering is. In that sense, how we're thinking about it is more important than the content. Is that clear? It's not a judgment about the content. Now, when I was putting this talk together, I realized I had way too many thoughts going different directions, and how to make them come together required a lot of thinking. But the desire to be clear was more important than all of the phrases. Okay. Yes."

Questioner: "I initiated a conversation with my daughter this morning and when I think about it in the context of what you're saying, I had goals about what I wanted to have happen out of that conversation. And I wasn't aware of my... and I'm sort of puzzled by the idea of what it would have been like if I'd thought about my intentions instead of my goals, because I got into that reactive space where I wasn't thinking and I wasn't present. And probably being more present would have meant being more vulnerable. I don't know. But anyway, I'm just kind of struck by what the difference is."

Maria: "Yeah. Well, okay. So, we all do this. We all are aware of that. I'm thinking about a conversation I had with my husband today, and I don't even remember what it was about, but I do remember having the thought, 'I shouldn't respond to this. There's nothing to be gained by responding to this. I just need to listen.' Or a couple of days ago he was telling me about some ongoing managing issue he has, and I thought, 'Oh no, not again.' And I could tell he really needed to tell somebody about this, and he did not want my advice. And of course, what I was feeling was, 'Well, I see a fix for this.' And I had to just say—in fact, I told him, I said, 'I'm going to tell you, I have this urge to try to fix, and I know you don't want me to do that, and so I want you to know I am just here listening.' Okay? And he said, 'Yes.' You know, so it was very out in the open that he came with this thing because he needed to vent, but he didn't really know he needed to vent. He just came in with it."

"I needed to be there for that venting even if it was uncomfortable because I wanted to fix it, because it's an ongoing problem that I don't think he should have, right? All of the things, right? Just watch those thoughts arising. I was there. Now, I did not solve his problem. I didn't have a goal for that conversation, but he did, so I enabled his goal."

"And sometimes when we have goals, it's useful to ask what the other person hopes to get from this. And is there like a negotiation? You know, when I used to negotiate with people in business, I would try to find something I thought they wanted and be sure I gave it to them. And often I got more of what I wanted because I thought that way. It's the same thing. You know, life is kind of a conversation. We say something, we do something, we see what comes back at us, and if we're rushing toward 'I know how this comes out,' we're going to miss something that's going to be useful."

"My arm waving has finally knocked off this handy device here. [Laughter] So, when we enter a conversation that is difficult, where we know we're going to get push back, being really close to our intention and not what we think a good outcome has to look like gives us more resilience and more flexibility. So if we go in with the idea that success is going to look like this, maybe success is just getting the person to hear you for the first time. Maybe success turns out to be just overcoming one barrier. Maybe success looks like, 'God, I think they heard me.'"

"When we become too attached to the goal, the outcome, we don't have the flexibility to change on the way there. And so being really clear about what's my deepest intention, and not what a successful example of this intention looks like, can be really helpful. So does that help?"

"So the intention to begin again, I offer it as an idea to just examine. It's an intention to have alongside any other intention you might have. Good night. May you all be safe."