Daily Practice in Your Everyday Life - Shingyo Temple

relau

Daily Practice in Your Everyday Life
In order to attain the final salvation, you will continue right practice in your everyday life.  Your daily practice will be to learn teachings and practice of the Buddha, continue daily rituals, participate in rituals and services of Shingyo Temple distantly, meditate, do self-reflection, respect the five precepts, contact our priests for questions or concerns, express your sincere appreciation, and to support others within your capacity.

Now, the question is how you should continue your practice in everyday life.  We will show you some ideas and suggestions for you.
How can you start your practice?

Think about your lifestyle to find reasonable ways of practice.  For example, you should know how much you have time in the morning.  If you have 15 minutes in the morning, you can chant the Heart Sutra and do a quick meditation.  If you have 30-minute driving to commute, you can meditate by simply focusing on driving.

If you are too busy to have time for your practice, you can use several short moments in your life to do practice.  For example, you can meditate or chant the Heart Sutra during shower.  You can make self-reflection just before you go to sleep and take a memo.  You can express your sincere appreciation every morning.  You can also pay attention to the five precepts.  You do not need to have time to pay attention as you are doing daily routine with the attention.

Now, you are actually "warming up" yourself for the practice to attain the final salvation.  Once you warmed up, you should pay attention to environments that you practice.  For example, clean your room and remove all less spiritual items (items that will bother peace in mind).  Then, make your room a safe place for you by adding something you think it spiritual.  The safe place is the place you learn and digest the Buddha's teachings, meditate, do daily rituals (Click here to find a daily ritual movie for yourself), chant, or participate rituals and services of Shingyo Temple distantly.

Now, you may want to visit our seminary to have more knowledge of the Buddhism.  You will find information and sermons.  You can also ask the head priest if you have questions or concerns.  Of course, if you wish to continue your practice seriously, you can be ordained or a registered priest of Shingyo Temple.

Suggested Daily Practice (If you read this, you will know that continuing the daily practice is not impossible!):

(1) When you wake up, you take a Gassho position (A position used for greeting, with the palms together and fingers pointing upwards in prayer position) to express your appreciation for another day to practice to attain the final salvation.  You may say, "I do appreciate to have one more day to practice to attain the final salvation.  I will not waste this day.  May the Buddha be with us all.  Thank you very much."  For your weekend, you will perform a full morning ritual for 30 minutes.  You are welcome to use our daily ritual movie to support your ritual.

(2) When you eat a breakfast, show your appreciation.  You will do this for lunch and dinner as well.

(3) When you take shower, you take a Cassho position to make a quick meditation.

(4) When you leave the house, say "Good bye" to your family members.  If you live alone, say "Have a nice day" to people of the Buddha in your mind.

(5) During the lunch break, you may think about the Buddha's teachings or do a quick meditation.

(6) When you are back, say "I am home" to your family members.  If you live alone, say "I am home" to people of the Buddha in your mind.

(7) If you have some free time, visit our seminary to learn Buddhism.  You may also do self-reflections.  You may want to do meditation. You may listen to the Heart Sutra.  You may also want to visit this page.

(8) Before you sleep, take a Gassho position to express your appreciation for the day.  For the weekend, you will perform a full night ritual (Again, you can use our ritual movie).

(9) When you are available for regular rituals and service at Shingyo Temple, please join distantly from your safe place.

Continuity of your practice:

The most important thing is to continue your practice until you attain the final salvation.  The Buddha made sure this point in his last teaching.  In order to continue your practice, you must be self-reliant with powerful determination and confidence in attainment of the final salvation.  Please remember the last teaching of the Buddha.

"Make of yourself a light. Rely upon yourself. Do not depend on anyone else. Make my teachings your light. Rely upon them. Work hard to gain your own salvation."   

Do not regret:

When certain circumstance does not allow you to do practice, do not regret!  As long as you are self-reliant with powerful determination and confidence in attainment of the final salvation, you will be confident about your continuity of the practice once the circumstance changes.  At the same time, you will be spiritually flexible to change your practice to deal with the particular circumstance.  For example, you can express sincere appreciation to the Buddha even if you are so busy.  If I am so busy, I will at least chant the Heart Sutra and express my appreciation.

When you cannot practice, you should accept the fact.  Then, you can think about real reason(s) why you could not practice.  It may be because of uncontrollable situation.  It may be because of your poor time management.  It may be because of your laziness.  If you notice the reason cannot be justified, you learned and got a chance to improve your life for better practice!  You should appreciate with the learning and the chance.  If the reason can be justified, you simply accept it!

In any case, you must not regret!  If you regret, you will create unnecessary suffering!  Instead of regret, you should learn and improve for better practice and continuity of the practice.

Realism:

When you plan your practice, you must be realistic!  Look at your life and life style.  Look at your everyday life.  Look at your own personality and preference.  Do not pretend to be an ideal person!  Face to yourself to know yourself before you make the plan.

At the beginning, try not to do too much!  For the first plan, you may simply plan expressing sincere appreciation to the Buddha and chanting the Heart Sutra once in every morning and evening.  Then, continue the plan for 21 days!  If you can continue for 21 days, it will be your new routine!  Try this 21 days rule!

Learning Partner:

You are not alone!  You are always with the Buddha and all the priests of Shingyo Temple.  If you have questions or concerns about your practice or teachings of the Buddha, you should send the questions and concerns to us!  We are always with us.  We are always here to support you!  We will because this is the Buddha's wish.   May the Buddha be with us all.  Gassho.