21st Century City Buddhas
The most difficult thing about awareness practice is to accept pain. Accepting means not having a problem staying with self-based pain but that is very hard and difficult because it is precisely the sense of me-ness that we both identity with and instinctually want to get rid of. There in the midst of all this is where buddhist recognition practice happens or doesn't happen. It is important to accept that the nature of dharma practice is that of willingly accepting pain and discomfort. Understanding this can save us lifetimes.
There is purity and perfection in everyone of us. This is the view that we should remind ourselves of because it both gives us direction and empowers us. We are, even if we suffer tremendously and are deluded, rich and complete wakeful beings.
When we are dealing with dirt, it is very important to sit as much as one's daily time allows. Yogis are meditators which means sitting in one's place of meditation. There you have your sacred spot, with the image of gurus, flowers, statues of buddhas, incense and your seat that gathers pure vibrations and helps you out of the internal mess. You might also have drinkable water or oil blessed by a teacher or guru to do the same. These are simple and very useful technologies. As is guru yoga.
Our aim is to realise buddhahood in this life. This means that we are playing in the top league. This means that our practice is not just one hour on the cushion but at all times. This also means that as the intensity of the training is high, there also needs to be sufficient rest and recovery time. You can't just keep going and doing too many things, without balancing it with rest and leisure. In order to keep going in an ideal manner, we need to find time in our daily life to rest and recuperate. In this way, we can do our practice effectively the next day.
There is no ready-set and tested model for 21st century city yogis and buddhas so we have to find it ourselves. By doing that is a great service to mankind.
Kim, 31.3.2021
