Skillful Means in Buddhist terms can also be called “Wisdom in action”.

Wisdom is a bit of a difficult word, because it often conjures up the wrong image. In this case it basically means seeing what is happening at the present, instead of getting caught up in the story of your life.

We make up stories about what is happening in our lives all the time. Almost all of these stories, if not all, are aimed at maintaining a feeling of security or safety, at the expense of losing sight of what is actually happening.

One of the ways to experience this is meditation in it’s most basic form: just sitting and breathing. Anyone who has actually done this knows that in a very short time the mind goes into overdrive, desparate to find something to do.

Another way are various forms of yoga, which aim to get back into contact with the experience of actually feeling what is going on in and on your body.

Both of these methods can be thoroughly unsettling and/or liberating for people. To actually experience and realise what you have been missing, purely information-wise, can be a powerful thing.

Skillful Means has the same aim, and at the same time offers the situation to take action. It strives towards being more aware of what is happening by very simple exercises.

One of these exercises, which I have been doing for over eight months now is to catalogue as minutely as possible what you actually spend your time on. The important part in this is to train yourself not to judge at this point. You’re just looking, nothing more. I have done this in two forms: keeping track of blocks of two hours, taking notes after each block, and at the end of each day, taking stock just before sleep.

Just such a simple exercise has opened up a whole new view of time for me. It’s very difficult to describe, and your own experience will be yours and I don’t want to colour your experience if you decide to try it, but it really was a mind-turner. I’m much less prone to deadline stress, take things much easier while accomplishing more and generally am less hasty.

Of course, my collegues each got something different from it, but get something they did.

If you want to try it, just get a booklet or writing pad and resolve to keep at this for a fair amount of time. One day isn’t enough, but three months might be stretching it ;). A few weeks will be enough to get the idea. Maybe after that, you’ll want to continue. ;) Keep this journal next to your bed and at the end of each day try to write down everything you spent your energy on that day, down to the most trivial actions like brushing your teeth or humming a tune if you remember it. Don’t strain to remember, just write down what you can remember. Try to fill in the gaps if you can, but remember, don’t strain if you really can’t remember. Maybe fill in that you can’t remember two hours. Then just put the pad away and go to sleep.

That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m not going to tell you what is supposed to happen, because I have no clue. I just know that just keeping track will definitely have an effect. If you are giving this a try, feel free to post any results in the comments. I’m nosy, so indulge my curiosity ;)

Have a very good day!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but it’s been very busy at the Center. As always, there is change in the air, and there is work to be done. Fun times.

In fact, I’d thought it maybe nice to share a few things about work with you, and the place it has within our Nyingma lineage.

Let’s start with a very basic observation, which is that work takes up approximately one third of our adult lives.

If you combine that with the observation that yet another third is taken up by sleep, that means work takes up about half of our waking adult lives.

That’s a LOT.

One of the key thoughts within Buddhism is that life is precious and you don’t know when it is going to end. Following from that thought and observation, it makes sense to utilise every moment you have got to make the best of it.

From this stems the way we work with work.

In our Center we use Tarthang Tulkus vision on work called “Skillful Means” as a guideline during our work.

Skillful Means has many aims, but one of the most important aims is to be able to use work as a way to learn about your mind and how it operates. It’s not a program to make you work harder, better or longer, it is a method to contact the experience of working and living well.

What better way to practice it in the place where we have to work with other people, will face difficulties on a daily basis and need to deal with the experience of time that is running out than on the work floor?  What better way to immediatly be able to see the results that arise from causes, be they good or bad? Work provides immediate feedback. If you don’t make a deadline, something has happened and you can figure out why. If you tend to procrastinate, you can find out why. If you really enjoy something, you can make direct contact with it and figure out why.

In short, work turns into a laboratory in which you can practice life skills in a very demanding atmosphere.

Unlike many teachings on the Buddhist path, it starts not with teachings about suffering and how to end it, but it starts with pointing out that the inner freedom you seek, want and crave is already present.

It’s not working to justify your existence, but working to express your existence!

If I seem especially emphatic in that last one, I will not ask to be excused, because I have found it to be a very big difference.

Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche (Rinpoche is an honorific, meaning “precious jewel”) points out one of the most important delusions Skillful Means can help us address: “In letting go of our belief that suffering is a necessary part of human life, we can take a few steps forward.”

I view this as one of the most important things I’ve been working with the last few years. The fact that suffering is not a given, that you can work on it, that there is an element of choice possible, has been one of the biggest inspirations I’ve had, period.

I’ve actually gone a bit farther with Skillful Means and have been studying it in more detail the last months and hope to share some of the things I’ve found engaging and helpful with you and hope you will find them so too in my posts the coming weeks.

Have a good day!