(Follow this link to see the November 2019 Priory Newsletter where this was originally published.)
One day some time ago – I think I was 25 or so – I was contemplating going to the temple for a Wednesday evening class. That evening, there was some type of social evening planned. Being all social with groups of people has never been my thing, so I didn’t really want to go. I was probably tired from work but on that evening I didn’t have to get up early for work the next day so, if I was honest with myself, I didn’t have a solid practical reason to not go. My usual practice at the time was to recognize this aversion and the quibbling and to try to work against it by defaulting to going to such things, even if I didn’t want to, as a way of training that habitual pattern. (To do things just because we “want” to, or because we don’t “want” to, can very easily become habits contributing to our suffering.)
At the time, I had also begun to work on trying to rely less on the rules of practice (like, if I have an aversion, I do the thing I don’t want to) and more on the process of sitting still Continue reading →