FEATURE EXERPT FROM THE INAUGURAL ISSUE
Day-to-Day Buddhism
by Khechen Tsewang Gyatso
In your day-to-day life, you can maintain mindfulness to not create any sorts of harmful deeds based on mental, verbal and physical actions. Try to concentrate on mindfulness. And you should try to accumulate virtuous things, positive things, through your thoughts and your verbal and physical actions... And you should try to accumulate virtuous things, positive things, through your thoughts and your verbal and physical actions. In that way one tries to discipline oneself. In the beginning, of course, it is not easy for any one of us to always concentrate on doing something virtuous. It is difficult because we are not trained in that way. We do not have that kind of long-term practice. We do not have the habitual tendency to naturally do something virtuous. We do not have that, and that is why we need to work hard on it. So how can we act in a more virtuous way?
For that, first one must have a sense of mindfulness in one’s day-to-day life. Whatever you do, including working at your job or driving your car, you have to be mindful. If you are driving and you are not mindful, and somebody cuts in front of you, then something bad can happen. So, mindfulness training is very important. It is not necessarily a kind of meditation, rather a sense of awareness. Whatever you are doing, you need to have awareness at that moment. Mindfulness, or awareness, is not just something that you have to take care of for a long time. It is not that complicated a thing. It is just in the present moment. In the present moment, whatever you are doing, you must be mindful and have awareness.
For example, if you are cooking and cutting vegetables, you have to be mindful, or otherwise you will cut your finger. You must have mindfulness at that moment. Sometimes you may be cutting vegetables and thinking about something else and, when there is no mindfulness, you do something wrong. Then you cut your finger, and of course you have some pain. You get so frustrated and so angry; you start throwing everything, and then you start yelling at your family. You say, “I’m not going to cook. This is always a problem.” You burst into anger and then there is no way you can experience something good. So mindfulness is necessary in the present moment.
When you are doing practice, you have to have mindfulness as well. When you are doing practice, you are thinking, “Oh, I have to go shopping at Wal-Mart. I need to buy this. I need to get that for my, oh, birthday celebration, something for that or something for the weekend.” And then? You are sitting there but your mind is wandering into those malls. Then there is no real practice. Your mind is in those malls, sometimes you even see your friends, and you are just talking there. Your mind is getting afflicted there.
So, however much you think you’re doing, “OM AH HUNG, Om Ah Hung, om ah hung…,” after some time you start thinking about all of these other things. And then, no matter how many mantras you chant, it is not effective or useful. It is just wandering. When you are doing meditation practice, you have to have your mind there. When you are working, you have to have your mind there. Whatever you do in your day-to-day life, you must have that mindfulness in the beginning.