Inconsistent practice

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明安 Myoan
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Re: Inconsistent practice

Post by 明安 Myoan »

Your life is wherever it is, whenever it is, and whatever it is.
There's no escaping this life right now through chanting or through not chanting, through feeling devoted or feeling discouraged and doubtful. Each "scene" that you see through is nothing but your life.

So you can't escape birth since you're already here, you can't escape your life with these less than ideal parts, and you can't escape the issue of your death either, even if you practiced hard every day. So you can't take yourself too seriously if you may die in some dumb way tomorrow, like a meteor or a gunshot from a block away meant for someone else entirely... and yet since we have this unavoidable life, we want to care for it.
If your practice is rooted in this sense of taking care of each "scene" as it comes up, then you naturally care for every being you encounter who is in these scenes, even when it's just you.

Every opportunity in life to do your practice is precisely that: an opportunity to take care of your life, not an automatic dividing up into bad/lazy practitioner against good/idealized practitioner.
That kind of dividing disappears as soon as you decide to practice again despite failing the millionth time.
Where did bad practitioner go, and are you suddenly good practitioner now?

Taking care of your discouragement and frustration is taking care of your life. The presence of these things is not a failure but just another scene your life at the time that I think everyone here passes through, too.
Darn! Even at our worst we're not the worst! :pig:
Your frustration is not separate from the motivation to free all beings from suffering.
Feeling frustrated at your slow reluctant feet as you try to rush to the temple, right there you arouse bodhi mind! It's your mind seeking to free yourself from suffering too, right under your nose!

I found a lot of difficulty in practicing just about anything, since I'm very forgetful in general.
Kosho Uchiyama wrote quite a lot in "Opening the Hand of Thought" about this sort of thing, which I've found helpful. Here's an example:
"Wherever I find myself, I just live out the self that is nothing but the self, in my own way. This is magnanimous mind. As a natural outgrowth of the attitude that whatever I encounter is nothing but myself, I take great care of my life."

I recommend it, even if you aren't otherwise interested in Zen.

Best of luck :twothumbsup:
Namu Amida Butsu
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Rita_Repulsa
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Re: Inconsistent practice

Post by Rita_Repulsa »

Hail and well met, Monlam Tharchin!
This present moment is all that is real, it is all that we have. Are we truly experiencing it? Or does it slip away unnoticed?
But eternity and infinity are also contained in this moment, however grand, painful, posh, humble, peaceful, boring, hellish or sublime. This is what the doctrine of ichinen-sanzen teaches us. My opinion is that, when we forget that, we forget the Buddha.

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.’”
― Stanley Kubrick
Echo interaction cause and effect the interconnected quality of the absolute truth the foundation of Buddhism laying in this belief in happiness the four immeasurable and cessation of suffering. - tomschwarz

Buddhism is not a Care Bears fantasy (as many westerns think). - Harimoo
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