Welcome back! Today we're going to talk about practicing persistence, a subject I've touched on before (and will likely touch on again in the future). But first, this gull has someplace he has to be, let's see him off:
Looks like he's having a rough time of it, let's chat a bit about getting through those rough spots...
Background
Springtime is often the roughest season for me, I don't really know why. Throughout this spring I found, among other things, my practice lapsing. I just couldn't seem to get my act together for daily zazen, sitting meditation.
I still had weekly meditation, which now has happily become twice a week as our little Zen center grows stronger roots. I had occasional meditation, but I find there's just something grounding about having a daily sit in the morning, something that can carry me through the rest of the day with more equanimity. When I miss it, less equanimity, more suffering, more difficulty, until I feel like that gull up there, flapping full tilt while being unsure if I'm even moving.
Lately, I've been finding myself with the space to return to my daily zazen practice. So, today, we're going to talk about practice and using persistence to get through the rough spots
Dharma Chat — Practice and Buddhism
At its core, Buddhism isn't about what we believe, nor is it not about what state of mind we have achieved; it's not about reaching nirvana nor becoming an enlightened master. It's about our practices.
It's about how we sit in meditation, and how we carry that with us through the day. It's about how we act with kindness, with compassion towards others. It's about how we express generosity. It's about how we bring mindfulness and concentration to bear on the work before us. It's about how much we yet cling to things, to ideas, to people.
We're Buddhist whether we're newcomers or venerable masters, whether solitary or associating with a large Sangha, whether lay practitioners or monastics, whether we're observing Dharma or Samsara, whether studying under our teacher or exploring independently. We're even still Buddhist whether our practice is weak and unskillful or strong and quite skillful.
However, when my practice gets weak, my Buddhism gets weak, and when I strengthen my practice, I strengthen my Buddhism, so it behooves me to strengthen my practice.
Most of my readers here are not Buddhist, so I'm sharing this not only to offer some insight into an approach towards strengthening practice, but perhaps it will help you with your own practices as well. Buddhist, Christian, Atheist or anything else, we're all acting in the world around us, informed by our understanding of what constitutes a beneficial and ethical way of acting, we're all practicing.
Dharma Chat — The Meditation Model
Meditation, on top of its intrinsic benefits, makes a good model for approaching practice in general. As we sit, thoughts arise: we hear the sound of a bird in the distance, we wonder if we shut the living room light off, we notice our nose itches, we wonder how long we've been sitting here.
Most meditation instruction in Buddhism involves neither indulging the thought, nor suppressing it. Instead, we acknowledge the thought and let it go on its way. If it hangs around anyway, we might take a closer look along its edges: where does the thought come from, what might it be connected to, why is it "sticky"? Then, after more fully acknowledging and identifying the thought, it should be able to move on, leaving us still sitting.
But often it's not that easy. Sometimes we notice that our finger is already scratching that itch, or that we dove headfirst into that thought about the living room light and we've spent the last few minutes berating ourselves over perceived flaws in managing our household, or that we must have dozed off.
The only thing to do, then, is to acknowledge that we wandered off the path a bit, and return to the path as directly as we can figure. We return our body to the right position, verify as best we can that we have the right posture, attend to a few breaths to let our mind return to our meditation, and then meditate some more.
Dharma Chat — Connecting to Practice
Buddhist practice is intended to be an "all the time" thing. This doesn't strike me as unreasonable, because much of the practice that is intended to be going all the time consists of basic things I've been trying to practice since long before I became Buddhist, like being kind and generous.
Other parts of the practice are things that should be done regularly, like sitting in meditation, and making offerings. Daily is good, skipping a day is unskillful (but not the end of the world), more than daily can be even better, if done appropriately (and not as a way of avoiding other things).
One part of the practice I have much difficulty with right now is being present, here and now. When we sit in meditation, we're to be sitting in meditation, not daydreaming. When we travel to work, we're to be traveling to work, not fantasizing about playing hookie (Buddhist or not, being present is really important while maneuvering a half ton of metal at a speed of over 50 feet every second). When we're relaxing with friends, we're to be relaxing with friends, not cultivating our worries.
My mind wanders, and as with meditation, sometimes the thought arises ("call in, you know you want to"), and I can see it, and let it go on its way, and return to my practice. Sometimes I miss it, and realize that I've spent the past ten minutes (or two hours) daydreaming. So I pause, take a look at where I've been, see if it's expressing an unmet need (do I need a break? tea?), and then return myself to attend to what I am doing now.
But over the spring I also had difficulty maintaining my daily practice. My schedule wanders, and sometimes the scheduling conflict arises ("this will mess with your meditation"), and I can see it, and adjust my posture. Sometimes I'm so caught up in my pains and worries that I don't realize it for a week or more. Even as I realize it, I have difficulty finding my way through, I feel too muddled and overwhelmed to rearrange what goes where to practice comfortably again.
It seems like a Catch-22, my regular practice is how I get past the muddled and overwhelmed times, but I feel too muddled and overwhelmed to practice. So, when that's where I am, I try to seize on the occasional moments of clarity, those times when I'm thinking "this is messed up, I need to do something". I try to make sure to use those moments to ask myself "What little thing can I do right here, right now, to strengthen my practice?"
And then, do it. Without action, there is no practice.
Perhaps I might do sitting meditation, even just for three minutes on a bench in a busy store. Perhaps I might decide to drop what I thought I should be doing, and get to sleep, because being properly rested is important for my practice as well as for life in general. Perhaps all I'll feel I have time for is a mindful breath, maintaining that mindfulness as long as possible after. When I keep taking moments like this, as I find them, to strengthen my practice, my practice gets stronger. This path feels infuriating, it's far slower than my impatience would prefer, but it gets there, and if it's the only path I can find, it's the one I take.
And so, after a rough spring with more days of missed practice than of practice, this summer I'm finding myself able to return to daily practice.
Too often, I find myself lost in a fog, mired in the pea soup of fear, pain, exhaustion and suffering, stuck in mindlessness. In those moments, my mind is not empty, it's full, specifically full of crud, it's the opposite of mindfulness. So, it seems to make sense to turn the guidelines of mindfulness upside-down: Sometimes clear thoughts arise amidst the fog... acknowledge the thought, and identify when the thought seems connected to the world outside the fog, and so enter the thought to strengthen that connection.
I hear the sound of a bell, and there in the distance, I can just make out a man in the fog, walking through, carrying a stick filled with noisy rings. Following the bells while I hear it, eventually I can find my way out of the fog. Perhaps one day I might learn to carry one of those sticks myself; but for now, it's enough to follow the sound of the bell...
So how about you? What are your daily practices? What do you do when you find yourself struggling to practice them? Any other questions, comments, concerns, the kettle is on, the floor is open.