w*******w
发帖数: 2051 | 1 http://dharmatreasure.com/question-answer/practice-in-ones-dail
Question: how does one bring one’s practice to bear, 100% effectively, 100%
of the time, with no lapses in attention, poise, tranquility, and natural
confidence, in daily waking life? If this is not happening, what does one do
about it?
Answer:
Thank you for introducing this topic, because it is a very important one.
You have already received some good suggestions and I hope there will be
more to come. Here is what I have to offer, and there are multiple
interdependent aspects to it.
First is your level of dedication and commitment, the priority that you give
to practice as compared to the rest of the things that occupy your time and
attention. To bring your practice into your life 100% of the time with
maximum effectiveness, it has to be the single most important thing in your
life. As Richard Hamming says in the wonderful article that Frank posted, “
Most great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who
don’t become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.” He
was talking science, of course, but it is equally true of anything else,
including Dharma practice.
But you don’t get to that place all at once, you have to begin where you
are and you have to cultivate that degree of dedication. Dick Hamming spoke
to that as well. Wherever you are in this process when you begin, most
likely your knowledge and understanding of the Dharma, your practice of the
Dharma, and the goal of Awakening will probably not yet even be combined to
form a single cohesive objective. That’s OK, they will fuse together over
time. And as a priority, they will be only one (or three) among many
competing priorities. At first you likely won’t even be aware of all of the
other attachments and priorities that they are competing with. But that is
one of the things that will become clear in the course of practicing
mindfulness in daily life.
Be mindful of your motivation. Review it often. Penetrate it deeply. If you
find yourself thinking, “I want to experience Awakening”, ask yourself Why
? Awakening from what? Awakening to what? What do I really know about how to
do this? See what the Buddha and others have to say, then look inside
yourself. What is it that you really, really want, and why do you want it.
Especially, why do you want that rather than anything else the world has to
offer? Whenever there are pressures on your time to do other things, which
there always will be, never miss the opportunity to review and ask yourself,
“How important to me is this, really? What am I willing to change or
sacrifice?” One of the greatest dangers we face in life is unconscious
decision making, the workings of habitual karma. Every time this kind of
situation arises, it is an opportunity for the application of mindful
awareness and the generation of a new kind of karma.
Seek inspiration from others. Attend inspiring events and listen to
inspiring talks. Read inspiring books. Associate with people who are excited
about the Dharma. When others start to describe you as obsessed, then you
know you are on the way to 100%. Even 50% is admirable, but donâ#
8482;t cut yourself short. Do you want admiration or Awakening. Go for it!
Second are the changes that you must make in your life to make both time and
energy available for formal practice and study, to reduce or eliminate the
stresses which rob you of energy and motivation, and to eliminate the
sources of agitation of the mind that will obstruct you in your practice.
Richard Hamming had a lot to say about that as well: “The great scientists,
when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they pursue it. They drop
all other things.” This is absolutely necessary. Do you read the newspaper?
Do you watch TV? Do you read fiction? Do you golf? Do you attend movies,
sports events, plays, or other entertainments? Do you volunteer your time to
organizations for social, political, environmental, charitable, or humane
projects? Do you socialize with people who are not involved in the Dharma? I
am not suggesting that you should not do these things, but if Awakening is
your top priority, you will look at every one of them from a different
perspective, you will notice the time they consume and the effect they have
on your mind, and you will probably make some major changes. And whatever
remains must become a part of your practice if your practice is going to be
100%.
Becoming a full-time Dharma practitioner has a radical effect on a person&
acirc;#8482;s social life. They find they have less and less in common
with most of their friends and family, and many of the interests and
activities they used to share with those people are no longer important. The
relationships they maintain and the time they invest in these relationships
becomes more a matter of loving-kindness, compassion, and the practice of
fully-conscious, full-minded awareness being applied to the understanding of
desire, aversion, delusion and dukha. In other words, the relationships
that continue become a part of your practice. You will most likely find that
many of your old friendships fade away and are replaced by new ones that
are more Dharma related. This can be difficult for some people, and there
can be a period of alienation and loneliness before becoming involved in a
supportive sangha of fellow practitioners.
You will most likely end up simplifying your life enormously. The Buddha
asked people to leave everything behind — family, jobs, possessions — in
exchange for a robe and a bowl, the fellowship of other bhikkhus, and a spot
underneath a tree to sleep and meditate. The weather, insects and wild
animals were a bonus. That is not very practical today. Of course you could
sleep under a freeway overpass and eat at soup kitchens, but you probably
wouldnâ#8482;t find that was very conducive to the kind of practice
you want to do. But we can still learn a lot from the â#339;going
forthâ#157;. The Buddhaâ#8482;s bhikkhus were restricted to
one meal a day, which was obtained by knocking on a few peopleâ#8482
;s doors, bowl in hand. How much time do you spend every day eating and
preparing meals? Do you really need to eat three times a day. For many, many
years I only ate once a day. Recently, for health reasons, my healthcare
providers insisted that I start eating three meals a day. I find it takes a
huge amount of time out of every day to do that. The Buddha didnâ#
8482;t allow the bhikkhus to collect extra food and save it either. It might
seem to be more efficient for a monk to knock on a couple of extra doors
and collect enough so that he doesnâ#8482;t have to go on alms
rounds tomorrow. But then there would be all the time and energy consuming
and emotionally agitating problems of storing and protecting the saved food
from animals, deciding how to share the surplus, etc. I think it was a wise
rule.
What do you own (or does it own you?) and how much do you really need?
Deciding what to do about your job or career can be a tough one, but you can
â#8482;t afford to stop asking the question: How much money do I
really need? What does this job cost me in terms of time and energy, stress
and agitation? How does this job contribute to my practice and eventual
Awakening? Where and how do you live, and what is really necessary? For
ethical and moral reasons, I cannot condone the abandoning of spouse or
children or aging parents. Instead, caring for them and time spent with them
should become a part of your practice. But look at the effect your sense of
responsibility towards them is having on you and your attachments to
worldly things. While you shouldnâ#8482;t abandon them, you probably
should renegotiate their expectations of you.
I am not suggesting that you drop everything. These are all decisions you
will have to make for yourself, and you do need to take care of yourself now
and provide for your future. But whatever you decide not to set aside must
become part of your practice if you are shooting for 100%. There is no other
way. The fact is, examining these questions is a mindfulness practice in
itself and it is one that must be ongoing.
Finally, there are the different techniques you can utilize in order to turn
ordinary life activities into meaningful practice, and, most importantly,
the things we can do to help ourselves to remember to do so. Other people
have made suggestions about actual practices, so I will focus on how to
remember to practice mindfulness all of the time. Learning to be
continuously mindful has an exact parallel with learning to be continuously
aware of your meditation object while sitting. At first you frequently
forget the meditation object entirely and your mind wanders for long periods
of time. In the same way, at first there are long periods, most of the day
in fact, when you have forgotten to be deliberately mindful. After a while,
you only forget the meditation object briefly before realizing the mind has
been caught by something else, and then you bring the meditation object back
into focus. Likewise, after a while there are lapses in mindfulness during
the day, especially when strong mental afflictions arise, but you quickly
recognize the lapse. Then you can mindfully reflect on what has just
happened while it is still fresh, and can continue with your mindfulness
practice thereafter. Finally, just as your mindfulness eventually becomes
uninterrupted during your meditation sit, so to in daily life will your
mindfulness eventually become continuous.
I have found a daily reflection and review to be very useful in cultivating
continuous mindfulness. Another teacher I know has people keep a book with
them which they write in six times a day to help keep them mindful. Whether
you do it once a day or six times a day, the idea is to recollect how
mindful you have been since the last reflection, and congratulate yourself
for your success (rejoice in it even). Then you reflect on the times when
your mindfulness has lapsed and make a resolve or imagine yourself to be
more successful in maintaining mindful awareness in the future. I suggest
that a person start off by using the precepts and the perfections of
generosity, virtue, and patience as a tool. Pick one thing to begin with,
irritability and anger, lust, false speech, etc, whatever happens to be
particularly significant and important to you personally. Use the daily
review of occasions upon which these mental states arose in which you were
and were not mindful to bring yourself to a place of always having mindful
awareness in the moment when these things are arising. Build on that success
by adding more things to your list of specific things to be mindful of. Don
â#8482;t restrict yourself to overcoming negative traits, but also
cultivate positive ones. The result will be a powerful habit of mindful
awareness throughout the day.
I wasnâ#8482;t going to get into specific techniques for practicing
mindfulness, but I will suggest one. In the Dvedhavitakka Sutta (Two Sorts
of Thinking, MN 19) the Buddha describes how, as a Bodhisattva, he practiced
being mindful of wholesome and unwholesome thoughts and mental states
whenever they arose. By mindfully examining how unwholesome thoughts and
mental states make one feel physically and mentally, the speech and actions
they give rise to, and the affects they have on oneself and others, one
recognizes them as leading to â#339;my own affliction, to others&
acirc;#8482; affliction, and to the affliction of both; it obstructs
wisdom, causes difficulties, and leads away from Nibbanaâ#157;.
Please note that this is simply about being observant, it is not about guilt
, judgment, or analysis. All that is necessary to see what needs to be seen
is open, non-judgmental, mindful awareness directed at what is actually
happening as it happens. The conclusions described by the Buddha make
themselves obvious, you donâ#8482;t need to dig for them, and
analytical thinking will only create obscuration. The Buddha goes on to say,
â#339;When I considered thusâbrvbar; it subsided in me.&
acirc;#157; That is the desired effect, and illustrates the powerful
effect that mindful awareness has on the arising and passing away of
habitual thoughts and mental states.
The Sutta goes on to tell us that the Buddha, who was then only a
Bodhisattva ,did the same thing with wholesome thoughts and mental states,
observing that,
â#339;this does not lead to my own affliction, to othersâ#
8482; affliction, or to the affliction of both; it aids wisdom, does not
cause difficulties, and leads to Nibbana. If I think and ponder upon this
thought for even for a night, even for a day, even for a night and day, I
see nothing to fear from it. But with excessive thinking and pondering I
might tire my body, and when the body is tired, the mind becomes disturbed,
and when the mind is disturbed, it is far from concentration. So I steadied
my mind internally, quieted it, brought it to singleness and concentrated it
. Why is that? So my mind should not be disturbed.
â#339;Bhikkhus, whatever a bhikkhu frequently thinks and ponders
upon, that will become the inclination of his mind. If he frequently thinks
and ponders upon thoughts of renunciation, he has abandoned the thought of
sensual desire to cultivate the thought of renunciation, and then his mind
inclines to thoughts of renunciationâbrvbar;
â#339;Tireless energy was aroused in me and unremitting mindfulness
was established, my body was tranquil and untroubled, my mind concentrated
and unified.â#157;
I hope you find these thoughts helpful, and may your practice bring you to
the final goal. |
|
