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Living the Practice into Daily Life

It's a very nice question. It's very nice that they have a sense that the practice is relevant for their life. Maybe what happens in meditation shouldn't just stay in meditation, but should somehow spread into the rest of their lives. There are all kinds of things that could be said in response to that question. Maybe everything we ever teach is in response to that question in some way.

We could say things like: meditate every day, or practice meditation as you are. Be mindful of your speech as you speak. If you want to really supercharge your everyday practice in daily life, pay careful attention to why you say what you're going to say. You'll learn a lot about yourself, and you'll learn how to be present in a much clearer way. Or it might be as simple as, if you're driving a car, or if you're on the bus or a train, don't do anything else but just sit there and collect yourself. Be really present for that experience. Don't read a book if you're riding on the bus, or don't listen to the radio or a podcast; just really be there to the simplicity of driving. You're beginning to bring that sense of presence into your life rather than constantly multitasking. Or a person might say you should practice the precepts. Try to live an ethical life. An ethical life will help bring it in and open up all kinds of important things.

Another response to the question of how to bring practice into daily life is to say, well, that's a nice question, but it's not really the best question. A better question is: how do you bring your daily life into your practice? Rather than putting the onus on your practice—that you have to somehow muster it up, adapt it, change it, or apply it so it fits into your everyday life—instead, how do you fit your life into your practice?

This means how you are when you're practicing—the state of practice, the state of presence, integrity, and wholeness that comes with practice—actually is the center of gravity. That's actually what has priority. That's what's most important. Your daily life is just a hodgepodge of all kinds of things. We tend to prioritize it because we have a lot of desires, and a lot of protection and things we want. Sometimes we prioritize it, and it makes some sense. But I think what I see with people who've practiced for some time and really gotten into it, things get reversed. What is most central to them is the experience of being alive that comes out of the practice—a sense of integrity, wholeness, the way of connecting to the world. The way of being is so important that they don't want to compromise that for anything going on in the world.

That's a radical thing to say: not to compromise the state of your mind, your heart, the state of being that you have in practice for anything going on in the world. In a way that becomes not quite as radical, is to say that there's no benefit you can do for the world that requires you to sacrifice your inner peace and well-being. There is certainly a lot of benefit we can do for the world and things we should take care of, for sure. It's not saying we shouldn't do those and just sit and meditate and smile. But none of that requires us to sacrifice our peace, well-being, and happiness here. To state it another way: why should you suffer so that other people don't suffer? Are you more important, or are you less important than anybody else?

It isn't that Buddhism is selfish, that you're supposed to just take care of yourself, but you're not supposed to discount yourself. Your well-being is just as important as any other individual's well-being. There's no need to sacrifice what's here. It's possible to take care of the world and other people with this presence, this experience of freedom that's found here.

As practice develops for people, there are some who turn that question around, and they ask, "How do I fit my life into my practice?" Both questions are good, but I kind of like the second one, especially since people tend to ask the first one. My job is to try to give you different perspectives.

So I would like to give a little different perspective for a similar thing: rather than bringing your practice into your daily life, make your daily life—how you are—into something that your practice wants to enter. Make yourself the kind of person, live the kind of life, where your practice will naturally flow into it and fill it. Then the onus is not on you to practice. The onus is on how you live your life. How do you conduct yourself in your life so there's space, time, and goodness? A way of being that whatever is opening up for you in practice just wants to go there? It feels so welcomed; it feels like this is the best place to go. Just ready to fill you.

How do you make who you are welcome the practice down? Now we're talking about getting into hard work. The practice will take care of itself in your life if you begin to adjust your life. This involves, among other things, a change of behavior and a change of attitude. Some people don't want to change their behavior. The question, "How do I bring my practice into my daily life?" literally for some people means, "How do I do it all?" Maybe even more running around, being busy, doing everything that has to be done, racing between one thing and another, and "How do I bring my practice into that so that I can be centered, calm, whole, and free?" Perhaps the answer is you can't. If you're running around greedy, wanting, or trying to do so much, that's operating from the very principle, the very way of being that the practice is supposed to free us from. Some people want to have everything, and you can't.

One of the wise ways of living... for some of us who are pretty privileged, we live in a society where we have a lot of choices and a lot of messages about what we should be doing. Whether it's obligations to save the world, whether it's to explore more recreational opportunities, or whether it's to do more spiritual practices. It's un-Buddhist to do too much Buddhism! If what that means is you're just doing more and more things, just getting busy. I've known people who just get busy: go to this sitting group, read this book, do that practice, and then go to that teacher. They're racing around filling themselves more and more with Buddhism. Too much Buddhism is un-Buddhist.

Sometimes we have to change our behavior, and that's hard because sometimes it demands of the world. All the wonderful, important, good things that we can do, all the good intentions we have... it's literally too many things. You can't just try to fill your day with all the possible helpful things for the world. A wise life doesn't try to do everything that you could possibly do, but does fewer things so we can do them better. So that we do it in a way that the practice comes along. We're not out of breath. We're not racing from one thing to the other. There's a little bit of time before and after we do something to catch our breath, to pause, to have a cup of tea, to just be.

If you take that kind of time, or if you do things carefully—which means you just do one thing at a time—then the practice wants to come into that. If your practice is strong, it'll just show up for you. You'll find that you're present. You're sensitive to how you get caught and how you're free, and there will be a prioritization for being free rather than caught up in your things. You'll feel and notice when you're being mean, and what it's like to be compassionate and caring. Your system will want to go towards being caring and compassionate. It's a lot of work to be mean; it's a drag. If you really pay attention to it, your system really doesn't want to do that. But if you're harried, running around, and busy, it can seemingly be quite satisfying to be mean on the fly. That's my theory of why people do it. But if you settle down and are present and relaxed, of course, you'll be different.

So sometimes a wise life means to look at your life and change your behavior. Stop trying to do so many things. Stop just filling everything. Stop trying to race through things so you can get to the next thing. Stop some of the multitasking that goes on. Sometimes it's fine to do two or three things at once; it's not necessarily a sin. But if what you really want is to have your practice flow into your daily life and form your daily life, that comes at a cost. That has certain requirements. One is changing your behavior, changing how you live your life to some degree, and perhaps doing fewer things.

Allowing the practice to fill what you do brings a much greater treasure to your life than all the pleasure of doing many things, or the gratification of getting all kinds of worldly success. Worldly success, doing a lot of things, in a sense, is only skin-deep. But if how you are from the inside out is where your satisfaction and inspiration come from, then that's a treasure that not only you carry with you, but becomes a gift to other people. For people to encounter someone who knows how to be happy and at peace with themselves, and be engaged in the world that way, that shows everyone, "Okay, that's possible. I thought I just had to be out of breath to have some kind of success."

You've probably met people who, when they're 45 or 55 years old, think, "Wait a minute, there's no end to this pattern. There's always something next that I have to get." Recently I met someone who had a very successful life—not financially, but very successful in a certain enterprise, doing a lot of good for other people in an activism role. She said, "In my kind of activism, most people don't have much success, but I had a fair amount of success and became a little bit of a superstar in my domain. But at some point, I realized I wasn't happy. I was shocked. If this didn't make me happy, and I had success, where was my happiness going to come from?" So she took a whole break for many years to do practice, and after practicing for some years, she went back and was of service in a very different way.

So, behavioral change: how do we make ourselves so that our practice is welcomed into the space? I love it—that is a little bit of a twist on the ancient epithet of the Buddha. Some of you know him as the Tathāgata^[1]—a strange name. He was reluctant to identify himself with the identities that were common in his time. He had titles for himself that shattered the usual identifications that people lived with, and one of them was Sugata^[2]. Gata can mean 'to come' or 'to arrive', and su can mean 'good' or 'well'. So, the 'well-come one'. The little twist I like is that the Buddha is the welcoming one, and so we're supposed to become the welcoming ones too.

That's a change of attitude: how do we become the one who welcomes? Maybe first and foremost welcomes ourselves. Have you ever felt really welcomed by someone? I had a grandmother and a great-grandmother who I felt so welcomed by. I felt so loved and cared for, and not imposed on. It was just like this field of goodness to sit with these two women. Sometimes I would just sit with them just to be with them. My great-grandmother in particular didn't talk much, but she was radiant. It was like darshan^[3] sitting with her. I really felt welcomed.

Maybe you've welcomed someone. Maybe it's second nature for you. A good lover, a family member, some wonderful benefactor you've had over your lifetime, you're welcoming to them. Maybe they come over to your house, and for them, you clean your house. You make sure there are some nice things to offer them, some nice tea or lunch. You maybe even take a shower before they come. You wouldn't still be in your pajamas. You would be refreshed to make sure you were not harried and out of breath, arriving at your door 30 seconds before they get there. You'd be prepared for them; you'd be welcoming them.

This attitude of welcoming allows the practice to flow into you. Can you welcome yourself in the same way? What would it take to be welcoming? For some people, it means not being so critical, not being at war with oneself. Not feeling that some of the things we did in the past are unacceptable and that we have to hate ourselves for it, or feel a tremendous weight of guilt. Or not to feel that somehow how we are on the inside is wrong. It might not be right, but it does not have to be wrong. Be welcoming to this.

When my kids were pretty young, maybe a year and a half, they had playdates with different kids. There was one kid who had an issue of biting and hitting other kids. The parents of this kid were quite concerned, so they went to a child therapist and explained the behavior. The child therapist said, "Whenever your son starts doing this, just love him a lot. Go over there and hug him, love him." The parents said, "But we can't do that, it's going to be positive reinforcement for that behavior! You have to be strict." The therapist replied, "No, no. Trust me. Just go and just love the kid." And sure enough, the behavior stopped quickly. It wasn't positive reinforcement; it actually was the very thing that healed it. Who knows exactly what the kid was trying to accomplish or what sense of hurt, loneliness, or fear that little kid had. But the parents were welcoming in a certain kind of way.

All of us have some kind of—I don't know what your favorite word is, I like "foible." The Buddha, if he spoke English, might say we all have "blemishes." So that's not so bad, right? Just a blemish. We don't have to be so heavy with all these things that we have. There's a certain way to be welcoming of who you are, and all of who you are. Not to give in to it, because some of these things shouldn't be said and shouldn't be done. But be welcoming of it into our hearts, into our awareness, so maybe it can relax and settle. So that the underlying hurt, the underlying wound that we carry gets met, held, and relaxes. How do we welcome ourselves so that we don't see anything about ourselves as being wrong, but allow something to flow, move, and heal within us?

Being a welcoming one for ourselves translates directly to being a welcoming person for other people. When we meet people who are difficult, rather than shutting down, learn the art of stepping forward, opening up, and welcoming them. Many people don't have that ability. They've never had models for that, or maybe had good reasons in their lives not to do that because they've been hurt, harmed, or betrayed. But how do we learn to stay safe and be welcoming to all things? We start, I would say, with ourselves.

As we learn this welcome, what do we do in our daily life? We create a daily life that is welcoming. Welcoming of our practice, our goodness, the freedom, compassion, love, care, and integrity that can be found inside ourselves. Where mindfulness just wants to come. Rather than mindfulness being work, mindfulness becomes our natural expression. As we are, we're aware, we're attentive. The awareness is there.

Instead of asking, "How do I bring my practice into daily life?", ask "How do you make your daily life welcoming for your practice?" How do you do the equivalent in your life of cleaning your house, taking a shower, putting on nice clothes, and having nice tea, so that when your beloved comes, the beloved feels happy, contented, received, honored, and respected? Maybe your beloved is your practice. How do you prepare yourself, make yourself the kind of person that your practice wants to just come, relax, and be with you?

This is a slightly different message than we usually get, where the idea is to depend on the practice to solve everything for us, and we don't want to have to do anything. If we have to do something, we fear it must mean that we're wrong, it must be a judgment against us. It's often taught, "Just practice, just be mindful." Be mindful so you don't have the burden of having to do anything, because if you have to do it, you can fail. It's wise to get that advice, but it also shortchanges us. It doesn't give us the full picture of what's possible.

I would like to suggest today that a wise Buddhist life is a life where we give thought, concern, and reflection at the macro level to our life. What we're doing in our life, our behavior, the activities we do, and the attitudes with which we do them. And in a reasonable way, consciously, intentionally, try to change some of those. Some of it can be quite small. For example, if you drive or take the bus to work, you actually leave ten minutes before you have to. You take the earlier bus, just so you're not hurried, and you have a feeling of ease and relaxation. When you get out of your car or bus, and it turns out it's a beautiful day with a rainbow, rather than rushing and missing it, you take your time to take it in and feel the fresh air. And lo and behold: "Oh, I feel kind of strange, what just happened? Oh, my practice showed up. I'm present, I'm aware, this is nice." You start walking to work across the parking lot, and you actually feel like you're really here and feel the ground. Usually, you don't even notice you're in the parking lot because you're already imagining being at your desk. Something very simple you can do is simply give yourself a little more time to do things so there's more space for the practice to show up.

Or maybe it's a change of attitude. Sometimes we think attitude is so deeply ingrained and we're so identified with it that we don't think we can change it. But we change our attitudes all the time for important things. If you go to someone's memorial service, chances are you step into the memorial space with a different attitude than you had yesterday at the basketball game. At a basketball game, you take on a different attitude, cheering your team on. But you don't cheer people on at a memorial service in that kind of way. I was really struck by how my attitudes changed when I used to go into my kids' preschool when the kids were napping. Talk about sacred, talk about Zen! That was pristine. "Don't wake them up!" It was like the embodiment of goodness, twenty three-year-olds sleeping. Boy, did I change my attitude quickly! We can change our attitude to some degree. The welcoming attitude is that we welcome even when we don't do it well. We don't make it a burden or criticize ourselves. Stop the war, stop the criticism. Be willing to be welcoming, even of what is difficult inside of you, what's uncomfortable.

Those of you here today might be pretty new to all of it. I want to warn you: there's a real risk that if you get into this meditation practice, and you discover something really good inside, something that teaches you that you're actually good, that you might realize, "You know, I think I might have to change my life a little bit." That's the risk. Watch out. [Laughter]

Those are my thoughts today. We have about five or six minutes if anyone has any questions, comments, or testimonials.

Q&A

Speaker 1: I have a foible where I cannot be on time. It doesn't matter, I'll get up a half hour earlier. I will find distractions and things to do, and I will be walking out the door late. Now, when I walk out the door late, I don't rush, I just continue my "oh well, here I am" kind of thing. But I don't know how you do that.

Gil Fronsdal: So you mean that no matter how many things you have that day, whether you have just a few things or a lot of things, you procrastinate, you take time, and you don't actually show up on time? Great! Do it more. Schedule more into your day, but schedule things which are not that important, and schedule them in between the important things. And then you realize, "Oh, I don't have time for that one." It's okay. Using schedule books is actually a good thing too. Write in your schedule what you're going to do and schedule things that are not that important. Maybe you do them and it's nice to do, but maybe that protects you a little bit.

Speaker 2: Thank you. I really appreciated this. As someone who was feeling very harried on my way yesterday, it really struck true. Do you have any guidance for someone who does lead that very busy life, and as I think about, "Okay, what can I take out to give myself a little room?" Any guidance on a practice of how to do that, when many things are really important?

Gil Fronsdal: A couple of things to say. When there's a lot to do, I used to be a fast-order cook after I was in the Buddhist monastery, and I loved it. I was spinning around in the kitchen, I had multiple meals tracking at the same time. And I would leave the kitchen calmer and more centered than when I came in, rather than harried. You don't have to do things slow, but don't hurry. You can be fast, but don't hurry. Never hurry. If you're ever hurrying, you're already lost. Figure out how to be fast if you need to be fast, but don't hurry. That's an attitude.

And then the idea of just doing one thing at a time is really powerful. When I was a fast-order cook, doing one thing at a time was only cooking all those dishes. I wasn't listening to the radio or doing other things. I just gave myself over to the activity I had to do. If you can do one thing at a time, or just give yourself over completely to the activity you're doing, even if it's a lot of different things, just give yourself over to it. So you're not thinking about the future or the past so much, you're not trying to get other things in. And nowadays, don't check your phone. Leave your phone in another room so you're not even tempted, because that's a way of dividing up your dedication. Just do one thing at a time.

Speaker 3: I really appreciated you bringing to mind your welcoming grandmothers and great-grandmother. That brought to mind some people in my life that were that way, and I consider that towards our practice and in my daily life. One of the opportunities I have over and over again is with my cat. It is to make myself welcoming to my cat as my cat comes up to me, and we spend time together. It is such a strong and deep experience. Being able to take that essence and bring it towards how I welcome my practice... I appreciate the instructions.

Gil Fronsdal: Nice. Imagine sitting down to meditate and greeting yourself in meditation the way your cat greets you. Great, thank you.

We have a few minutes before the usual ending, and we do have tea, so you're all welcome to stay, socialize, and talk. But I'd like to ask you to turn towards one or two people next to you and say hello. Maybe say just one simple, good idea that you got from this talk for yourself—some provocative, really nice idea. Just share that with your partner, and you can go after that or stay for tea.