Just Practice!

All Buddhist Teachings, if you look closely, are nothing but instructions on how to work with your mind. That’s the one fundamental message … how we can best know our self and our mind, and how best we can work with our mind. That’s what all the teachings are about … how we can work with our mind … how to do that. When Lord Buddha was asked what was main message of his teachings, he answered, “Completely tame your own mind.” And the essence of all the Dharma teachings you will ever encounter consists of instructions for how to do that. Of course, when the practice instructions are given, it is assumed that you will actually follow those instructions and that you will actually do the practice. When Dharma teachers give you these precious practice instructions, there is really only one thing required from you … only one thing that it is assumed you will do … practice the instructions.

There may be a little bit of cultural difference here, because that’s how Tibetan people think, and that’s how the people in ancient India did too. In Tibet, those who seek Dharma teachings are single-pointedly motivated toward practice. They feel strongly that there’s something they want or need to do, which is Dharma practice, and that in order to do it properly that they need to establish a relationship with a teacher and get instruction and transmission. Then they seek out the teacher and those instructions and transmissions, so that they can practice them. And then as soon as they have even gotten even a little bit of instruction, they immediately try to put it into practice. If while practicing, they notice that there’s something not quite clear about their understanding or their experience, they continue to practice and if necessary go get clarification, and then they go back to practicing while the instructions and clarifications are still fresh. From that perspective, it’s all about practice.

But maybe that’s not quite how Westerners think. Here there’s a tradition of having two different kinds of learning: what I will call “practical knowledge” and “interesting knowledge”. In Tibet, we didn’t have that one called “interesting knowledge” or idle knowledge so much. We did have stories and folk tales and gossip, but even those usually held symbolic meanings … disguised lessons for making practical improvements in our lives. Here you have television documentaries and even college courses that contain quite an enormous amount of detailed interesting information. In the case of college courses, you might even take careful notes, read difficult texts, participate in exhausting course assignments, and learn the material thoroughly for passing exams and getting degrees, and more generally for becoming a well-rounded and better-educated person.

But in all of this there is never the expectation that you will put all that interesting knowledge into practice. Maybe you will, but maybe you won’t. It’s not expected that you will definitely put such knowledge into practice. The so-called “101” courses are a good example of how “interesting knowledge” works in western society. In order to complete your college degree you may have had to take Chemistry 101, Physics 101, Calculus 101, Biology 101, and so on. You probably had to study hard to master that material. But nobody expected you to follow up all that learning by actually practicing chemistry, biology, calculus, physics, and so on. In fact, most of you who have taken such courses have never practiced those things at all.

Buddha Dharma is not like that. It is meant to be practiced. Otherwise, it’s just “interesting”. There is even a name now for people who study Buddhism but don’t necessarily practice it. They are called Buddhologists. I am not making this up. Check it out. We have actually institutionalized the art of studying and understanding Buddhism without practicing it. We have taken something that is meant to be put into practice, and turned it into something that’s merely interesting. Please don’t do that. I have not undergone the personal hardship of coming here to share these precious teachings with you in order to produce Buddhologists. I have given up my own personal time and life energy to share these instructions with you so that you can practice them and thus gain the results described. If you don’t put these teachings into practice then my life has no meaning. It would be a terrible waste.

Now we are experiencing a special opportunity. A qualified teacher and a group of motivated students have come together to share these precious instructions. Don’t waste this opportunity by not practicing. Please listen carefully to the instructions I give you. Please reflect carefully and deeply on what you hear, until you no longer have misunderstandings, hesitations, or doubts. But even before you fully understand, practice these instructions, as best you can. That practice will inform your next listening session. It will inform your reflection and deeper understanding. For now, if you must, perhaps you will think of your practice sessions as your physics or chemistry lab sections. But at least do that. At least participate in the lab sessions. Practice these instructions. Practice regularly. Practice daily. Practice unfailingly. Then my life will have meaning and your life will have meaning too. The practice is easy to do. Don’t just understand it. Don’t just appreciate it. Do it!

So now you know. The teachings and practices are practical instructions for us to work with, and work on our own minds. They are meant to be practiced, not merely appreciated. But you still might ask, “Yeah but, what’s the big deal? Why do we have to work with our minds?” Perhaps you would like to know why we can’t just “chill out and groove.” It’s because we have a problem … a serious problem. What is the problem? Our mind is tangled in knots. In Buddhist teachings, in Sanskrit those knots are called kleshas (Tib. nyon mong) which refers to mental states that afflict or cloud our mind and manifest in unskillful actions. Those knots are so tangled that we habitually confuse left for right, and up for down. How so? We fail to remember or recognize the important role our mind plays in shaping and interpreting what we call “our world”, “our experiences”, or our “reality.” We labor under the delusion that our suffering and its causes are “out there” somewhere.

Under the influence of that fundamental mistake, we engage in a form of activity that Anam Thubten Rinpoche has called “rearranging the furniture in the burning house.” We wander the face of the earth trying and failing to root out all unsatisfactory causes from our outer environment, and trying to rearrange our circumstances; when, in reality the only factor we can even hope to control is our inner circumstance of mind, and the role it plays in weaving the cloth of our experience. Then, to make matters worse, we let our thoughts, emotions, feelings and sensations control us, rather than us determining our relationship to them. We fail to recognize our situation (mistaking circumstances for causes) and then we fail to take responsibility and control our relation to mental arisings, but rather cede control to the vagaries of cognition. The practice of meditation is for reversing all that … for untangling and straightening out the long-tangled Gordian knot of our habitual failure to realize and integrate.

You know, if you had a traumatic event in your life last year, you might get into therapy to undo or reverse the harmful effects of that experience. And if the trauma occurred in your childhood, you might do the same thing, but the course of the therapy would be expected to last longer … to require more sessions. All the more so if the trauma had occurred even further back in your history, like in previous lifetimes. We would say that such a problem is “deep-rooted.” Likewise, if it were not only the one single traumatic incident, but rather a prolonged sequence of repeated abusive experiences, we would expect the therapy to take a longer time still … to require more therapy. Well, that’s our situation. That’s our case. We have suffered repeated abuse over a course of many lifetimes … abuse at the hands of our thoughts, emotions, sensations, feelings, hopes and fears.

These cognitive happenings pop up, urging us to say and do and think things, and we obey unquestioningly, plunging deep and blindly into thoughts’ contents. The thoughts and emotions draw us into their contents, and we lose track of even the basic fact that we are thinking and worrying. We just become obsessively involved in the contents of these mental arisings … obsessing on their contents … obsessing on what they are “about”. And in the process we mistake the world that those imaginings are “about” for reality, and we say and do and think and feel things in inappropriate ways, not in accord with the way things actually are. Our words and actions and even our thoughts and feelings and emotions are all careening out of control, simply because we have become unquestioning victims of our own stream of oppressive mental arisings.

This is clearly a pattern of long-term abuse. We have been long abused at the hands of the arising thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations, … for so long that no one knows when the abuse started. Such a long established pattern of repeated and continuing abuse and trauma will not be undone merely by hearing the word “therapy”, nor by merely meeting a therapist, nor by dabbling in therapy. What is required is a regular sustained course of therapy. In Buddhist terms we call the technique of such therapy “meditation”, we call the application of such technique “practice”, and we call the repeated therapy sessions “practice sessions”. If the technique is effective and the sessions are engaged in repeatedly and regularly, we can expect that the knotted mind will be untangled over a shorter time period than the sustained confusion that was its origin.

But we can’t necessarily expect such a reversal to occur overnight, nor in a single session; and certainly not merely by understanding how meditation works, nor by seeing the teacher a couple of times, nor by appreciating the value of meditation without engaging in it, nor by merely “hearing about” meditation. Being “interested in” meditation is … well, interesting, but not effective. Meditation only works through the practicing of it. So, regarding the practice we are about to explain … practice it! OK? Practice it every morning for 10-15 minutes. If you are a minimalist, set your alarm 10-15 minutes earlier than usual, sit up in bed, and practice. If you want to be a little more formal, roll out of bed, land on the floor, sit up with your spine straight and practice where you land. If you prefer, and can drag yourself to a chair or stool, do that. However, don’t invent 30 minutes of preparatory arranging and ritual for a 10-minute sit. That’s too much exposure, too much opportunity for the ego to ambush the practice. That gives the ego a 3:1 advantage. What to do? Just practice every day!

Don’t wait until a little later today. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Don’t wait for the weekend. Don’t wait until next month. Don’t wait for summer. Don’t wait for winter. Don’t wait for you’re your paid vacation. Don’t wait for your kids to grow up. Don’t wait for retirement. Don’t wait until you are better off financially. Don’t wait until you can get your head together. Practice today. Practice now. Practice on your cushion. Practice off your cushion. Practice in every moment. The relationship between you and your mental events will change. Thoughts and emotions and feelings will settle down and become more well-behaved and peaceful. Simultaneously your mind’s attention will gain a degree of independence from the churning of mental activity. It will stay where you place it, abiding without distraction, whether thoughts and emotions are arising or not. But that will only happen if you practice. Get it? Just practice!