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Daily Practice
questZENer
Veteran
We had a recent thread in which someone queried what members do to support their practice. I'd like to submit the following query:
What is your daily practice? What do you do for daily practice?
I don't want to limit answers for others, but for myself, my sitting meditation is following my breath and attending to my posture. About a year ago, I read a post by ZenMonk, the old bugger, that helped my practice tremendously:
Step 1. Do one thing at a time.
Step 2. Pay full attention to what you are doing.
Step 3. When your mind wanders to something else, bring it back.
Step 4. Repeat step number three a few hundred thousand times.
Step 5. And, when your mind keeps wandering to the same thing over and over, stop for a minute and pay attention to the "distraction": maybe it is trying to tell you something.
What do others do? I'm curious about both newbies' and oldbies' practices.
What is your daily practice? What do you do for daily practice?
I don't want to limit answers for others, but for myself, my sitting meditation is following my breath and attending to my posture. About a year ago, I read a post by ZenMonk, the old bugger, that helped my practice tremendously:
Step 1. Do one thing at a time.
Step 2. Pay full attention to what you are doing.
Step 3. When your mind wanders to something else, bring it back.
Step 4. Repeat step number three a few hundred thousand times.
Step 5. And, when your mind keeps wandering to the same thing over and over, stop for a minute and pay attention to the "distraction": maybe it is trying to tell you something.
What do others do? I'm curious about both newbies' and oldbies' practices.
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Comments
How do I "support" my practice? The main thing I do is turn it into somehing I enjoy, not a ritual or chore.
For example, when sitting, I try to "imprint" or remember my joyful emotional response to the reduced chatter, and hold it in front of me, as if to say "remember this joy - may it be like a carrot along with the stick".
M.
Quest - I enjoyed your ZenMonk quote - missed that one along the way.
-bf
There can only be one!
Have to admit am having difficulty maintaining constancy in practice at the moment.
May I share a trick that I found helped me immensely? START SMALL.
One of my teachers spent time with Dom Bede Griffiths at his ashram. Daily meditation was the cornerstone of the personal work and my teacher went at it in his usual enthusiasm (bulls and china shops come to mind). At a meeting with Dom Bede, the old Benedictine told him to do no more than ten minutes at a time! His very eagerness was getting in the way and was unsustainable when he came back into his daily life.
In my own practice, after years of trying to be 'perfect', I lapsed completely. Starting again, I built up from a few minutes of "warm up" followed by five minutes watching my breath and then anything else that presented. Total not more than 20 minutes, first thing.
Bit by bit, my practice has grown until, now, it embraces my whole day in various ways.
Be kind to yourself. Do not demand too much too soon.
Much metta
lesley
At first, in love with the newness, we are enthusiasts. Very important, this time, because it gives us some impetus when we get to the inevitable discouragement. There is also a risk, at that point, that we begin to compare ourselves with others. I've always thought that this is what was most unpleasant about the Pharisee in the Jesus story: "I'm glad that I'm not like him." This is the point at which we begin to have to take charge of our own training by doing the work, practising the music or refining our balance. There are tedious bits of this, too and we can easily slide into unskillful habits of self-satisfaction or mindless rirual.
It was a big moment, for me, when I realised that, despite all my ambition and education e tutti quanti, simple and honest were better for me than clever or complex. Over and again I have gone back to simple sitting with real fruit.... and then done a bit more and a bit more, until the complexity has come back. At first, I found it infuriating, then I found it funny, now it happens less and I notice earlier and go back to silence.
I have no idea, any longer, if this is the 'right' thing to do. Some of my fellow-pilgrims have more intricate practices and, when we practice together, there is real joy in sharing our differences. I have found, too, that sharing practice time with others as often as I have the opportunity is a great help. I share quiet time at a local Quaker Meeting House when I can get there. We have local churches and places of worship of all sorts: we are something of an 'alternative' centre here. The Sangha is a very important aspect of the Triple Jewel for me.
The best thing that has arisen is the quiet enjoyment that I now have in a simple sitting practice and the extent to which, by dint of advancing time, it has become essential.
much metta
lesley
I also find a piece of Jojo Beck's advice very helpful: be sure to have a firm intention each time you sit. I think what she implies by "intention" is some kind of modest goal. As I posted earlier, it is to just come back to what's here and now, particularly, my breath and my posture.
In the past I have dabbled in the Chenrezig meditation, which I quite liked but I put down for a variety of reasons.
Lesley--you may try to choose one practice per sit for a week, say, Green Tara or whatever. Then expand on two sittings per practice. You've chosen these particular meditations for a reason. Mine them for what they're worth--but give them a chance! Vajra--as all Buddhism--is about repetition, but not mindlessly.
Great discussion!
Much metta
lesley
Palzang
One geshe said to me that "patience is nirvana in samsara", if his translator got it right.
Sounds right to me! If you can learn patience, you're halfway there because then you realize that no matter how grim things look right now, it won't be that way forever.
Palzang
Me too!!
This is a great thread and I have found it very helpful. I miss my "sitting practice" as I have not been able to sit without being in pain for the past two weeks, so I am really looking forward to it again, hopefully next week. I was meditating laying down, but I like sitting on my zafu and zabuton MUCH better!
Anyways, the advice about taking little steps at a time is so great. When I first started out, I would sit for 5-10 minutes, and now I am just working my way up to longer times. That seems to work the best for me.
"Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier. If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous. I think that if you try to do zazen once a week, that will make you busy enough. Do not be too interested in Zen." (p. 58)
This resonates with something I've noticed below in several members' posts, myself included--the 'goal' of sitting longer and longer periods. Why? Why is this a goal? What's the benefit? If there is no such thing as "progress," what makes us think that sitting longer is more desireable?
This is an honest question, not just a rhetorical one!
I think we need to be clear here, QZer. This is the ultimate paradox of BuddhaNature: it is both causation and fruition, to be found but always present. It is the "gateless gate".
What you say is true and false, and neither of those at the same time, like the bizarre nature of the fundamental particles of the physical universe.
In the First Turning of the Wheel, the Buddha Shakyamuni taught a Truth: dukka, however youi choose to translate and interpret it. Indeed, I believe that we cannot come to a 'right' translation or understanding of this Truth without some effort. In the Third Noble Truth, he taught that there is a way out. Comprehending these truths even to the smallest extent would be impossible were there not some means by which we can do the work.
As I have quoted elsewhere anent Sartre, for liberation to be comprehensible or possible, it must be not only a goal but, also, a pre-existing condition. Manifesting that freedom in our lives is only the outward expression of a growing awareness of sugatagarbha, BuddhaNature. T. S. Eliot put it better than I can:
Heraclitus says it in the West at about the same time as the Buddha is saying it in the East.
As a result, the apparent contradiction between the goalless journey and the journeyless goal is resolved by our understanding the full scope of the Four Noble Truths as more than just a simple description of generalities. The Fourth Truth, the truth of the Noble Eighfold Path, is a description of both the cause of increasing and developing awareness, and the fruition of awareness awakened. Just as we practise whistling a tune until we are doing it without noticing, so, by practice, we awaken citta, compassion, which lies asleep but stirring in all beings.
You ask: "what is the benefit?" From one perspective, that, say of the Enlightened Ones, the tathagatas, there is neither benefit nor loss. From my simple p.o.v., the benefits can be listed under a number of headings:
* physical;
* emotional;
* intellectual;
* creativity.
The more I do it, the more I am able to do it with less and less effort, that's all.
My understanding of Suzuki is trying to get across that sitting is not separate. Perhaps the "longer you do it, the less effort it takes" bit is also pointing to that as well. Non-duality applies to sitting and not sitting as well!
Loved the Eliott, BTW! Not quoted enough, he is.
Welcome to the club!
Grab a chair, a cuppa cocoa, go to the Lotus Lounge (New Members intro thread) and tell us all about yerself!
Great to meet you!