The Importance of Practice
One of the reasons I’ve not been posting much is because I felt I couldn’t really write with any amount of credibility about the subjects I wanted to write about.
I could have written about my Skillful Means studies, or about my work in the center, but I felt, and mostly still feel that it would just be quoting stuff I’ve reand not things I’ve practiced myself, and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Especially with the subject matter that I’m writing about in here, I feel it’s important to be at ease with it and comfortable enough to know I’ve actually have some basic idea what I’m on about. As I wrote on my “About” page, simple statements can be either trite or something that can be explored, and I think one of the things that decides which one it is, is whether one has thoroughly worked with the material you are writing about.
There is also the consideration if what you want to say will actually make any useful sense to your intended audience. A lot of the things I’m working on right now are very personal, and while I myself know why I’m doing them in context, I think that to someone else they will at best sound useless, at worst give them totally the wrong idea.
This is also one of the reasons I feel it’s a pity a lot of advanced texts are openly available at the moment, without a lot of trained people out there to point out when it would be a good idea to start working on them. I know some people will balk at the idea, but just because information ís available, it doesn’t follow that you should start working with it.
The simple example of the layman trying to make sense of statistics and the trained scientist interpreting the same data should suffice to point out that information taken out of it’s context can do a lot of harm.
This is also true of spiritual texts and one of the most important things to be aware of is what you know and understand and what you don’t.
As with academical studies, or any form of study, Buddhist studies are founded in hard work and ultimately, practice. It’s not enough to pick up a book, read it, even read it thoroughly, and say that you understand what’s in there.
Putting it into practice is what it’s all about. Knowing about things like non-violence, loving-kindness and openness isn’t enough, you are supposed to get to know these things intimitely and integrate them into your life. If not, they remain just words, nothing more. Beautiful words, maybe, but nothing more.
And that’s basically what I have been working on these last months. My study of Skillful Means, which may be described as applying Buddhist principles to daily life, has been rewarding, but is só basic that it goes down right to the fundamentals of how you approach ordinary life.
So far I’ve mainly been working on my attitude to studying this material in the first place, which can give you a headache, as I kept getting caught in circular arguments with myself. Major headache time.
Still, it’s a non dogmatic way of looking at and questioning of my basic attitudes, and I feel that the opening up of hitherto unexplored questions is well worth the occasional headache.
Be well, and have a good day.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 12:45 and is filed under Buddhism, Daily, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
