Everyday Life Is the Practice

Geshe Tenzin Wangyal tells us how to turn our daily challenges into meditation practice. Illustrations by Steve Heynen.

Leaving everyday life\r\nand committing yourself to formal meditation practice is one way to enter the\r\ndharma, as demonstrated by the many yogis practicing in remote places and monks\r\nand nuns living a simple monastic lifestyle. Perhaps in your own life, you are\r\nconsidering this approach. You may be retired and financially secure and can\r\nclearly decide that this is the time to completely commit your life to\r\npractice, renouncing your ordinary lifestyle. For most of us in the West,\r\nhowever, it is hard to leave our lives in order to practice dharma. In fact, to\r\ndo so could cause harm to our family and loved ones. So we have no alternative\r\nbut to bring our dharma practice fully into our lives, which is just as valid\r\nan approach as leaving our life behind to practice dharma.

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There are certainly\r\ntimes when you can leave your daily working life—times for learning and for\r\npersonal retreats. Such special occasions are opportunities to gain a clearer\r\nidea of how to practice and to find some perspective as you reflect upon how\r\nyou are going to integrate practice into your life.

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A conflict may emerge\r\nfor those of us who pay bills and have children and have an ordinary, beautiful\r\nlife. We feel creative and self-motivated within our ordinary life. We also\r\nknow the value of formal practice, yet that sometimes conflicts with family or\r\njob responsibilities. On top of that, we don’t even know if we are making\r\nprogress in our practice, because we feel we are not doing it enough. Many\r\ntimes, with the pressures of daily life, we find ourselves saying “Oh, I didn’t\r\ndo any formal practice at all last week. I am a bad practitioner. I committed\r\nto do this, and now I just dropped everything.” We feel bad about ourselves and\r\nour path.

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So we end up with a\r\nbig gap between the reality of our everyday lives and our formal meditation,\r\nand big gaps like this are a problem. Because we are consumed by the fact that\r\nwe are not practicing enough, we don’t apply the antidotes we learned to\r\ncounteract our habitual patterns. We don’t deepen our experiences of practice.\r\nOverall, we are uncertain how to judge the success of our meditation practice.\r\nWe are not skillful enough to bring the practice into our lives and build a\r\nbridge between dharma and the challenges of everyday life, including the many\r\nrelationships it involves.

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To illustrate this\r\ngap, I give the example of a friend of mine who wants to have a loving\r\nrelationship with her mother. Fighting and arguing between them has been a\r\npattern for a long time. Since her mother is quite old, she wants to change\r\nthis pattern of arguing. She is now determined to make a change. With this in\r\nmind, she plans for a wonderful time with her mother on a weekend visit,\r\nthinking “I’m going to try my best, take some time off, and spend quality time\r\nwith my mother. We will go out for dinner and a movie. We’ll relax together and\r\nenjoy each other’s company.” On Friday, as she leaves work and drives out of\r\nthe city, she encounters lots of traffic and arrives late. When she arrives,\r\nher mother opens the door with, “You’re late,” followed by, “Oh, what have you\r\ndone to your hair?” That is just enough to awaken the old karma, the\r\nspontaneous manifestation of the same mother and the same daughter, and they\r\nare back in the same argument.

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This experience\r\nshows that my friend was not really engaging deeply enough in her practice for\r\nthe change she desired to spontaneously manifest. Intellectually, she wanted it\r\nto, but internally things hadn’t really changed. If they had, perhaps she could\r\nhave responded to her mother’s comments with humor, exaggerating her comment\r\nand laughing. “Oh yeah, Mom, my hair. It’s very civilized all week, but come\r\nFriday it goes wild.” Some humor, something that changes the direction, is\r\noften all it takes. If her practice had ripened in her, or touched her as\r\ndeeply as her mother’s comments had, she could make that shift. Or perhaps she\r\nwould not even hear the comment. She would be focusing on putting her bag down\r\nand washing up rather than listening for and identifying herself entirely as a\r\ntarget for her mother’s comments.

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If we were following\r\nthe path of leaving daily life in order to practice dharma, perhaps we would be\r\nfocused on renouncing negative emotions, such as anger. And certainly, if you\r\ndon’t have anger, you’re not missing anything. But if you do experience anger,\r\nit doesn’t help to pretend it’s not there, or to suppress it. Rather, consider\r\nhow you can give some space to it, because it is already in you, and cultivate\r\nits antidote, which is love. Then your anger can actually become the foundation\r\nfor the achievement of wisdom.

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In fact, the human\r\nrealm is an ideal place to work with these emotions, to cultivate their\r\nantidotes, and to recognize one’s true nature.

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Self-reflection on our\r\nnegative actions of body, speech, and mind is essential to the practice. We can\r\nuse the ten precepts—ten actions to be avoided and ten virtues to be\r\ncultivated—as a very useful guideline to support self-reflection by considering\r\nhow we violate the precepts with our body, speech, or mind. For example, we may\r\nreflect upon our negative speech by thinking “Driven by anger I spoke harshly\r\nto my mother. I am aware of the suffering this action caused. In my spiritual\r\ndevelopment, changing that behavior would make a difference.” The precepts\r\nallow us to be more definite in seeing and working with our negativity.

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You could look at the\r\nten actions to be avoided in relation to greed, the root cause for the\r\nsuffering of the hungry ghost realm, as you seek to clear the causes and\r\nconditions of this realm of suffering. Look at your actions in the past,\r\nremembering those times when you were stuck in your version of the hungry ghost\r\nrealm, feeling incomplete and empty and needing so much to be filled up. You\r\nmay realize that you gossiped because of an underlying feeling of being\r\ninadequate and hungering for attention. Reflecting upon the suffering of\r\nyourself and others caused by this action and developing sincere remorse, you\r\ncan now connect to your inherent open awareness.

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As important as your\r\nhour session of meditation is—reflecting on the causes of the hell realm and\r\ncultivating the antidote of love, or reflecting on the greed of the hungry\r\nghost realm and cultivating the antidote of generosity—the time when you really\r\ngrow spiritually is when you are challenged in your life. You grow when your\r\nmother opens the door and greets you in that familiar way that invites you to\r\neither manifest the seeds of your anger or to exercise your awareness. In the\r\nsame way that you build muscle when you lift weights, your wisdom muscle is\r\nbuilt when you are challenged in life. The challenges are not easily found in a\r\ncomfortable retreat setting. But they are certainly found in everyday-life\r\nsettings.

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In daily life, there\r\nare many times when we unexpectedly encounter problems, and we don’t always\r\ngreet these encounters joyfully or with strength. Sitting on our meditation\r\ncushion is a good time to bring these situations to mind, and then to look\r\ndirectly at those encounters, with the support of our refuge in the Buddha as\r\nopen awareness.

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In order to bring the\r\nfruit of practice into the realities of everyday life, it is important to look\r\ndeeply and directly at yourself, to examine your actions of body, speech, and\r\nmind. The teachings and practices give you ways to overcome and transform\r\nnegative emotions, so you can examine yourself with confidence. It is not the\r\ncase that the closer you look the scarier it gets.

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You also do not take\r\nthis opportunity for reflection as a means to over-analyze your behavior or to\r\ndevelop guilt. You look closely and directly because you feel like a warrior.\r\nYou can look at your life with strength, with power, with motivation, and with\r\na solution. Because you have a means to transform your life, you actually feel\r\ngrateful when you can see your stuck places, rather than being fearful, overly\r\nintellectual, or guilt-ridden.

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By looking closely\r\nwith the bravery of a warrior, we can grow and transform the self that\r\nencounters issues and problems in life. We can shift from being driven by anger\r\nor greed or ignorance to abiding in the open space of awareness. We may\r\ndiscover that in this open space of awareness, the antidotes of love,\r\ngenerosity, clarity, openness, peacefulness, and joyful effort naturally and\r\nspontaneously arise.

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If you are ripened\r\nthrough your practice, if you have allowed your practice to touch those places\r\nof weakness in you, when anger arises in daily life, you will not be driven by\r\nthat anger. In the best case, anger becomes the fuel for the spontaneous\r\nexpression of love or kindness, or at the very least, you may find some space\r\nto host that anger without being driven by it.

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In order to love\r\nfully, you need to understand the wisdom of emptiness, which I often translate\r\nas openness. Openness is the ground of our being. But how do you actually\r\nbecome more open in the face of anger? I have clear advice: keep silent; don’t\r\nact. Usually we think acting out is a way of taking care of things when we are\r\nangry. “I really have to speak up about this!” Instead, create space by not\r\nacting. Give more time. You may think that not acting sounds too simple, but\r\nthat is my advice. If you are able to give time, you will create space. If you\r\nare not able to give time, if you are not able to not act, you will have driven\r\nactions, driven speech, and driven thoughts, all of which result in the ten\r\nnegative actions to be avoided. Instead, guide your actions, speech, and\r\nthoughts with the antidotes and with the ten virtues. Guide yourself rather\r\nthan being driven by your emotions. To make this possible, you must give time,\r\neven though it is sometimes very hard. When people are angry, they have to do,\r\ndo, do! How fast you feel the urge to act is often the clear message that it is\r\nnot time to act. The thought “Now I have to act” is a clear message that you\r\nneed to allow more time and space. And when you give space, you often make the\r\namazing discovery that you don’t have to say or do anything. Have you felt\r\nthat?

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If your practice is\r\nripened, awareness is spontaneous. If your practice is not that ripened, a\r\nlittle conscious effort is useful. When you reflect on your life, you try to\r\nprepare the causes and conditions for ripening. When you take personal time to\r\npractice, you build the foundation and reflect, so you are ready, or almost\r\nready, to change something in your life. When a situation that challenges you\r\narises, you apply a little extra effort to shift your behavior and make the\r\nchange. Once things change, the benefit of change itself brings power to your\r\nawareness, and the next time a challenging situation arises, your awareness is\r\nstronger, and you need less effort to shift your behavior. In this way you\r\nexperience the completion or the result of your practice in your everyday life.

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The gap between the\r\nopening of your heart in your practice and seeing the fruit in results in your\r\ndaily life is a very important gap to bridge. We have already discussed\r\nreflecting upon our challenges and bringing this reflection to the cushion,\r\nlooking directly with open awareness at our emotions and conflicts. When we\r\nhave developed our practice of reflecting with openness, we must keep creating\r\nbridges between our practice and our behavior, so that we can make changes in\r\nour lives. Perhaps we experience love, but it is only half-ripened, and so a\r\nlittle encouragement to manifest that love would be nice. If you can manifest\r\nlove in your kitchen or your workplace or with colleagues or with your family,\r\nif love can manifest in those particular situations where it seems necessary,\r\nthat will be a practice. It is not a formal practice, but definitely it is a\r\npractice. I would give more credit to those times when you are conscious and\r\naware even when you are challenged and pushed. In those cases, your spiritual\r\nmuscles are exercised. When you pay attention to the difficult places and are\r\nable to shift them, that is great joy. You can see right in front of your eyes\r\nthe areas where you have difficulty and the shifts you are able to make.

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Perhaps as you have\r\ngrown through your meditation practice, you have learned to be nice where\r\notherwise you were not. Think of that as a practice, instead of thinking, “I\r\nmissed my practice, my half-hour of sleepy meditation, this morning.” What is\r\nthe big deal of missing that meditation when you have been kind to somebody in\r\nthat difficult situation? Consider the success of your day rather than the\r\nfailure of missing a session of practice. It is important to think, “Yes! I am\r\npracticing!” The idea of feeling guilty and inadequate because you are not on\r\nthe cushion doing your silent meditation is not useful.

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I’m not saying formal\r\npractice is not important. It is. But we can expand our notion of practice in\r\norder to bring the results into everyday life. If we look closely at our lives,\r\nwe always have time to practice. Do I need to meditate quietly in order to\r\ncreate a little extra problem to work with? No, the long line for the security\r\ncheck at the airport is perfect. I can get agitated and manifest my six realms\r\nthere—and in many other places—quite easily. In terms of the practice, that\r\ntime is completely available to practice the virtues and the antidotes. That\r\ntime becomes wonderful practice as you live your everyday life, conscious and\r\nworking with the situations of life, and your formal practice supports you to\r\nmake the changes that benefit you and others.

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By Geshe Wangyal\r\nTenzin RINPOCHE – Lion’s Roar