Cultivating Your Daily Practice
Yesterday I was filling up the single glass bowl on my meditation table with clean clear water and as I did so I felt the fresh moment ‘as it is’. This simple action delighted me, maybe because of the sheer simplicity of the action itself.
We get so complicated in so many ways of doing things! The water droplets on the clear bowl shining in the light brought me to the ordinary magic of water being, simply water. Then reflecting that, as they say in the teachings, clear like mind, simply being ‘as it is’.
Perhaps I also remembered by doing this, how potent an ordinary ritual, such as filling a bowl with water, can provide the shift in attitude/mood to enter into my practice of sitting meditation. I then lit a candle and offered incense, not in a rote sense but with the same awareness of how each gesture, felt as I connected to them.
Do you have a way to ‘enter into’ your practice time? A way that leads you into a communication with the moment. Slowing down, feeling what you are doing, The lineage has taught us many eloquent ways to do this but give yourself permission to find what brings you into your practice time. Take cues from the Shambhala/Buddhist shrine such as five bowls representing the sense objects, clear water, a plant or flower arrangement, candles, incense.
What do you do to ‘enter’ your practice?
