Ultimately practice and life are not two separate activities. With time and intention all of life becomes the field of our clarity and awareness. Any activity can become a meditation. A special time and place offer an opportunity to develop the muscles of attention, to firm our intention, and to simply help us remember that we want to be awake.
Making Daily Life Spiritual Practice
Notice first breaths and last breaths of the day.
Be awake during the day.
Choose to notice the breath and body during changes of activity as the day progresses. Delight in the opportunity to be alive, in the simple warmth of being an animal body.
Pause before answering the telephone, eating, turning on the computer, getting in the car.
Breathe during forced pauses like stop lights, waiting lines and download time.
Select different daily activities to turn into activity meditations - teeth brushing, dishes, opening doors. Work with one little thing at a time. Add a new meditation every week.
Open to the pleasure and self-intimacy of a daily sitting practice.
Include short sittings between activities throughout the day.
Establishing a Daily Sitting Practice
Make a special place for practice
Quiet and uncluttered
Out of line of traffic
Comfortable and pleasing to you
Be kind to yourself.
Begin focusing on sitting consistently rather than on the length of a sitting.
Start with short sittings. Five minutes to start with. Don't discourage yourself from the beginning by focusing on length of time. Just choose a short time and stick to it. Sitting meditation is not an olympic event. The quality of attention is much more important than the length of the sitting
Set a timer - then don't look at the time, only at your experience.
Try different times of day to find time best suited to your lifestyle
You may have one or two formal times to sit, but consider including short times throughout the day.
Consider preceding sitting with walking or some other active meditation
Begin by adjusting your posture to be comfortable and alert. Don't be afraid to move. It takes time to find the best posture.
Once settled, turn inward so you are experiencing your body from the inside.
You may wish to pair your formal sitting time with inspirational reading or spiritual study.
Consider keeping a notebook, entering even just the date.
Finding Time in the Day
A notebook/journal can be used for evaluating how you spend your day as well as for recording insights and doing investigations.
For a week, keep a little running log of how you spend each hour of the day.
Keep this log very general.
Below is the schedule of a Christian mystic, St. Benedict. This is the model Benedictine monks use to structure their day. However, our intention is not to try to create or force a structure. Instead we merely experiment. We see what is there. We are willing to look at our life. We seek a natural rhythm, a rhythm that supports being awake.
Benedict's Daily Life:
Prayer 4 hours
Reading and Reflection 3 hours Work 6-9 hours
Eat and Rest 3 hours
Sleep 7-9 hours
You might use these categories as a starting place, but add your own or modify after studying, at the end of the first week, your running daily analysis. You may find that your normal schedule is not so far off, though you will probably have to redefine some activities. Prayer could be silent mediation, physical activity and, sometimes, personal interactions, socialization and play. Reading and reflection can include study, spiritual reading and writing. Look to see if the work you are doing is work you care about and give yourself permission to do what is important to you.
Please do this in a spirit of play, serious play, but don't judge yourself for even not doing it all. At first this kind of play requires effort. In time, because of our experiences, faith begins to take firmer hold. Energy for it naturally arises.