How to practice Buddhism explained by a Buddhist teacherA brief article on how to use Buddhist texts to make progress in your practice. I have a problem with my ability to meditate, in 2015 something happened to me and my short-term memory has been affected ever since, so now I have a really hard time memorising the texts. So, I decided to just keep the texts with me (in-hand) and read them, but it feels so artificial. I had the exact same problem during a recent retreat and I don’t know how to handle it. Should I just make an extra effort until I memorize it all, allowing myself to just "be peaceful" and read, or should I skip the recitation part entirely? - N. V.
Hi N.,
So nice to see you again. I can understand how it can be frustrating or feel limiting to have your short-term memory affect your ability to meditate or memorise the buddhadharma. I have good news: it doesn't have to be! May I offer an alternative to "artificially reading" the texts or skipping the recitation part entirely?
The purpose of the Dharma is neither memorisation nor recitation; at least not in its true sense. However, we can use memorisation and recitation as tools to help us recognise, reduce, and replace old habitual ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that we've come to recognise as root-causes of self harm or harm to others.
The challenge that many people have is that they continue use texts and recitations as just that: texts and recitations. They either forget to, or never learned to use them as tools to help them make real progress. That's like seeing the pilot's chair in an airplane and using it just as a seat to sit down on, missing the point that that's where we sit to take us to other, more rewarding destinations. It may be of benefit to spend more time working on developing your analytical meditation practice. In this way, you can meditate with your selected texts and think upon them with focus, awareness, and clarity. This is done by reading the text and considering its contents and reflecting on whether or not it stand up to your logical analysis of it. This is formal practice and done on the cushion. Does the text stand to the test of reason? Does it makes sense to your experience of life? Doing so will help you to better understand and incorporate the dharma texts into how you perceive the world around you and thereby how you interact with it. Doing so will fold the teaching within the selected text into an inseparable part of who you are, so that the lessons they contain will come as a natural by-product of the time you spent deeply thinking about the topics, instead of being unnaturally forced through rote (and often routine) memorisation or recitation. The Key Point is this: insight and progress come from the thinking and practicing, rather than from the memorising and reciting. Unless you are a Buddhist scholar or a monk, the texts of the dharma are not nearly as important as is practising with the texts to transform your mind. Just some of my thoughts on the matter, you are welcome to email me any time. May this have been of benefit to you, or someone else. With metta, Michael Turner Buddhist Ācariya and Anagārika If you gained any insight from this article, please consider subscribing. And if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts or just saying 'thanks' in the comment field below. It means quite a bit to me to know that I may have been of value to others. But perhaps most of all, would you mind sharing this on your social media platform of choice?
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2 Comments
2/14/2022 09:30:58
Very much appreciated. Thank you for this excellent article. Keep posting! 2/14/2022 10:33:02
Thank you for your kind comment, I am glad this brief teaching was of benefit to you. May your practice bring you peace, positivity, and progress. Leave a Reply. |
The Sagacious Buddhist Blog
by Anagārika Pasannacitta The Teacher
Anagārika Pasannacitta
Hi! My name is Michael Turner (my Dhamma name is Pasannacitta).
I am a pre-monastic sakadāgāmi, early Buddhist teacher, enlightenment and streamentry (awakening) mentor, resilience and happiness counsellor, meditation instructor, transformative personal coach, and full-time Buddhist anagārika. I've spent more than 30 years learning and cultivating what I do, and what I do goes far beyond meditation and dharma. I work with Buddhist practitioners of all levels to help them attain measurable spiritual progress toward Nibbāna. This special kind of one-on-one training isn't readily available to lay practitioners and I hope to do my part as I prepare to prepare to become a monk and enter into full-time Buddhist monastic life. Our Dhamma-vinaya student community is donation-funded and I'm available for serious and dedicated practitioners of meditation-and-dharma to course-correct their views, understandings, and practices to help them overcome the challenges and problems that hold them back from making progress along the path toward Buddhist enlightenment. This isn't hocus-pocus, this is practical- and applied-Buddhism, and your progress will be the result of dedication and effort. It is worth noting that what is on-offer here is very special. I am a skilled pre-monastic early Buddhist ācariya and I will be a Buddhist monk, scholar, and teacher. There are few people outside of authentic Buddhist monasteries who can genuinely offer this kind of applied guidance and advanced training to lay practitioners. Please visit my home page and my about me to learn more about my style and what it is that I teach. "The only thing that prevents people from attaining Enlightenment and experiencing Nirvana directly is insufficient instruction and/or practice." Categories
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Michael Turner is a full-time Buddhist anagārika and ariya-puggala; he is also a deeply accomplished streamentry mentor, dharma teacher, and, c-level leadership advisor and personal success coach. He emphasises and teaches practical techniques and teachings for our everyday lives to overcome the problems that stand in the way of making veritable progress toward our goals and happiness; he is particularly adept at explaining them in ways that can be easily understood and practiced in the West. He has been meditating and cultivating views and techniques that generate indestructible resilience, inner-strength, and direct experience for more than 30 years and has helped countless numbers of students and clients course-correct their practice to make veritable progress toward happiness, success, and nibbāna.
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