A complete practice.

As a practitioner, we all struggle to integrate our practice with our daily life.  We struggle to carry our daily practice off the cushion and into the world.  We struggle with trying to figure out how to act in the world after we no longer buy into the rat race of money, status and power.

These are problems that we try to solve as practitioners.

In order to relieve the tension we often feel between our practice and our daily life, we need to develop a complete practice.  A complete practice isn't just what you do on the cushion.  It starts with how you see the world, includes your meditation, your activity in the world and the result of your practice.

View.  Meditation. Conduct. Result.

View.  How do you see the world?  Is it possible to transform your vision?  What is your outlook and your intention?  Is your view informed by wisdom or by biased perception?  Your view can be like standing on the top of a mountain in which you can see everything below very clearly.  It can be like a vast expanse of space without border or limit.

Meditation.  Your view leads to meditation.  If you see how all things are dependently arisen, you will see subtle connections in meditation.  If you appreciate the impermanence of all phenomena you won't fixate on meditation experiences.  Meditation deepens your appreciation of the view and cuts through conceptual constraints.  Meditation is a vehicle.  It elicits your buddhanature in all its fullness- originally pure and naturally present.  As we gain confidence with this unique state, we awaken to timeless freedom and great compassion.

Conduct.  How do you carry your view and meditation into your daily life?  What does that look like?  What do you do with the freedom that you have gained?  We engage in the conduct of the bodhisattvas- we share generously, know how to work with our emotions, have patience to work through resistance and problems, and joyously persevere with a focused mind.  We carry wisdom into our homes, communities, work, life. 

Result.  Your life is your spiritual practice, the result is the path.  Every step you take.  

Never finished, yet never bound; such is the complete practice of the bodhisattvas.