DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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If you want to practice the Dharma, please do not think too much. If you are practicing and you find yourself trying to achieve a particular result, it is better to stop. When your mind has calmed down, become stable, then you think back on what you have done and stop:

- I stopped, that is right …

At that time, take all your analytical and theoretical knowledge, pack it all up, and put it away carefully in a drawer. And do not bring it out to argue or teach, because that is not the kind of knowledge you use to practice.

When the reality of a thing is seen, it is not the same as what has been written to describe it. For example, you write:

- I like to practice

When your desire to practice is overwhelming your mind, there is no way that the words can convey the exact meaning as it is. The same is true with anger. You can write on the blackboard:

- Anger,

But when you are really angry, the experience is not like that. You cannot read the word quickly enough, and the mind is already overwhelmed by anger.

This is a very important point. The theoretical teachings are correct, but bringing them into the mind is the key. They need to be internalized. If the Dharma you are practicing is not brought into the mind, the Dharma is not truly known and not truly seen.

In the direction of practicing the Dharma, I would like to share an experience:

One day, I had the good fortune to listen to a Zen master preaching. While listening, some disrespectful thoughts arose. At that time, I did not know how to listen to a Dharma talk in a beneficial way. I did not understand what the wandering Zen master was saying. He taught as if he were starting from his own direct experience and as if he were searching for the truth.

After some time, when I had some first-hand experience of practice, I saw for myself the truth of what the Zen master had taught. I understood how to understand the Dharma. Wisdom arose immediately after that. The Dharma began to take root in my mind. It took a long, long time before I realized that everything the wandering monk had taught had come from his own experience, not from books. He had spoken according to his understanding and insight. When I set out on the path, I encountered all the details he had described, and I had to admit that he was right. And so I continued.

So you must do your best to practice the Dharma. Whether you are at peace or not, do not worry at this point. The important thing is that you first begin to practice and sow the seeds of liberation later. If you practice, you don't need to worry about the results. Don't worry when you don't see results. Worrying too much will make you restless. If you don't put in the effort, how can you get results? What do you hope to see? Only those who are diligent in searching will discover. Whoever eats is full. Everything around you deceives you. Realizing this ten times, there is still nothing wrong. The important part is that you must practice. Practicing the Dharma means:

- Keeping the precepts,

- Developing concentration and cultivating wisdom in your mind.

- Remembering and contemplating the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

- Renouncing everything, without exception.

Your practice is the cause and condition for ripening in this very life. So, you must make a sincere effort. Even sitting in a chair meditating, you can still practice concentration. At first, you don't need to pay attention to many things; pay attention to your breathing. If you want, you can repeat the words:

- Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha together with each breath.

While you are concentrating, do not try to control your breathing. If your breathing feels labored or unpleasant, it means that you are not practicing correctly. When you are not comfortable with your breathing, it seems too shallow or too deep, too subtle or too rough. However, once you are relaxed with your breathing, you will feel it is pleasant and pleasant, you will hear each inhalation and each exhalation clearly, and then you will understand the right way to do it. If you do not do it correctly, you will lose your breath. When this happens, stop for a moment and then focus on mindfulness again. If, while practicing, you feel the urge to experience spiritual phenomena, or the mind becomes radiant, or you see images of heavenly palaces, etc., there is no need to be afraid. Just recognize what you are experiencing and continue practicing. Sometimes, after a while, the breathing seems to slow down and then stop. You feel like your breath has disappeared, and you panic. Don't worry, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's your mind that thinks your breath has stopped. The breath is still there, but it's more subtle than usual. It will soon return to its normal state.

In the beginning, just focus on making your mind calm and still. Whether you're sitting on a chair, in a car, or wherever you are, you must be proficient in making your mind calm as you wish. When you get in the car and sit down, immediately calm your mind. You can meditate anywhere. Your proficiency shows that you are familiar with the method. Then you begin to test. Use the power of a calm mind to test what you experience. That is, what you hear, smell, taste, feel in your body, or think or feel in your mind. Whatever sense experiences you have, whether they are pleasant or not, you just take them and contemplate them.

Simply be aware of what you are experiencing. Do not impose any thought or interpretation on the objects of sense perception. If they are good, you just know that they are good. If they are bad, you just know that they are bad. This is a conventional reality. Good or bad, they are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self. They are not trustworthy. There is nothing in them that is worth grasping at and clinging to. If you can maintain this practice of concentration and investigation, wisdom will arise automatically. Whatever is felt and experienced falls into three pits:

- Impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self.

This is Vipassana meditation. When the mind is settled, whenever impure states arise, you just throw them into one of these three pits. This is the essence of Vipassanā: Throw everything into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. Good, bad, disgusting, or whatever, just throw it down there. Before long, understanding and insight will blossom right amid the three universal characteristics. In the beginning, wisdom is still weak, but you should try to maintain this practice steadily, and you should understand what the Buddha said:

- Let go of everything.

Let go with awareness and mindfulness, if you do not put your whole mind into it, it is not right. You let go because you understand conventional reality. That is non-clinging. The Buddha taught that, even in the early stages of Dhamma practice, you need to make a very strong effort, develop things thoroughly, and hold on to a lot. Hold on to the Buddha. Hold on to the Dhamma. Hold on to the Sangha. Hold on deeply and firmly. That is what the Buddha said. Hold on with sincerity, closely, and hold on tight.

In your search, you have to try almost every method of practice, and then you will have full faith in enlightenment as real. Indeed, these things are certainly real, just as the Buddha said. But to do what the Buddha taught, you need to practice and practice correctly. It requires you to push yourself to the edge of your ability. It requires you to have the courage to practice, to think, and to transform at the root. It requires you to have the courage to do what needs to be done. And how do you do it? The answer is:

- Train your mind.

The thoughts in your head are telling you to go one way, while the Buddha taught you to go another. That is why you need to practice. Because the defilements have hardened and covered the mind. That is the state of the mind that has not been transformed through practice. That mind is not worthy of your reliance, so do not trust it. It has no virtue. You cannot put your trust in a mind that is not pure and clear like that. Therefore, the Buddha warns you not to trust in a deluded mind. At first, the mind is just a servant for the deluded mind, but later, when both master and servant cooperate for a long time, the mind becomes bad, corrupted, and defiled. That is why the Buddha teaches you not to trust your mind.

If you look closely at the practice of True Dhamma, you will see that the whole work is just a training of the mind. And whenever you train your mind, you feel irritated and disturbed. As soon as you feel irritated and disturbed, you immediately start complaining:

- This training is so difficult! It's impossible!"

But the Buddha didn't think so. He considered that when your practice brings you frustration and friction, it means you're on the right path. But you don't think so. You think it's a sign that something is wrong. That misunderstanding makes your practice seem too hard. At first, you feel hot and bothered, and you think you're on the wrong path. Everyone wants to feel good, but they don't care about right or wrong. When you resist the core of your delusions and challenge your desires, you inevitably feel miserable. You get hot, agitated, and frustrated, and then give up. You think you're on the wrong path. The Buddha, however, thinks you're on the right path. You're dealing with ignorance, and what's hot and agitated are the defilements themselves. The Buddha says that it's the defilements that are being disturbed that make you agitated. This is what happens to everyone.

So, the practice of True Dharma requires a lot of effort. You should observe things carefully and clearly. When you do not observe carefully and clearly, you will lose the Path, either by indulging yourself or by choosing self-torment. You are stuck in those two extremes. On the one hand, you like to indulge in following the desires of the mind. If there is something you like, you do it right away. You want to sit comfortably. You like to lie down and stretch out in comfort. This is what I mean by indulgence:

- Holding on to the feeling of wanting to be comfortable. With indulgence, it is difficult to progress in the practice of True Dharma.

Thus, if you stop being indulgent in wanting comfort, enjoying comfort, you will become debauched. The end of debauchery is regret, frustration. You get frustrated and angry, and because of that, you feel miserable. This is going astray, turning into the path of self-torment. This is not the path of peace, nor is it the path of one who is at peace. The Buddha warned against falling into the two paths of self-indulgence and self-torment. When you experience joy, just know, with mindfulness, that you have it. When you experience anger, ill will, and frowning, then understand that you are not following the Buddha's footsteps. This is not the path of those who seek peace, but the path of those who do not know the true Dhamma. A practitioner does not follow these paths. You walk straight in the middle, with self-indulgence on the left and self-torment on the right. That is the right practice of the True Dhamma.

If you choose to practice in a monastery, you must follow the Middle Way, not being excited by happiness or suffering. Put them aside. The Middle Way is to let go of both suffering and happiness, and the truth is The right practice is right in the middle. So when ordinary craving arises, you are not happy and you also feel non suffer.

Following the Buddha's Middle Way is challenging. There are only two extremes, good and bad. If you believe what they tell you, then you have to obey them, and if you get angry at someone, you run to get a stick to attack them. You have no patience to endure. If you love someone, you want to caress them from head to toe. Both of these paths are completely wrong from the Middle Way. That is not what the Buddha encourages. He teaches you to let go of those things gradually. Your practice is a path that leads you out of existence, away from rebirth, a path of liberation from becoming, birth, happiness, suffering, good, and evil.

In short, when you are blind, you do not see what is liberated from existence, from rebirth. Because your mind is blind to it, you have faced it, but you still ignore it because you do not see it. The Buddha's Middle Way, the true path of practicing the True Dharma, transcends existence and rebirth. When your mind has transcended both good and evil, it is liberated. This is the path of the sage at peace. If you do not follow this path, you cannot become a sage at peace.

Because there is existence and rebirth, there is birth and death. The Buddha's path has no birth and death; it is neither low nor high; it is neither happy nor miserable; it is neither good nor evil. This is the straight path, the path of peace. It is peaceful, without both suffering and happiness. This is the way to practice the True Dharma. Experiencing this, your mind can stop. It no longer asks questions. It no longer needs to seek answers. That is why the Buddha said that the True Dharma is something that the sage knows directly for himself. There is no need to ask anyone else. You understand clearly, without any doubt, the Truth of all things as taught by the Buddha.

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