Practitioner

Yes, this is a book from Bokar Rinpoche and the blurb says it pretty well:

Giving up the ordinary activities of the mundane world to devote ourselves to spiritual practice alone would create an ideal condition for inner growth. This is possible for very few individuals. For the rest of us who must juggle work, family, friends, and deal with all kinds of emotions, ways to integrate our spiritual practice into daily life are much needed. This book gives us this guidance in a variety of situations so we can become more mindful about our daily life.

There are a treasure trove of written words that come from countless traditions.  Nothing pleases me more than diving into that sea of wisdom and just enjoying it, learning for the sake of learning, and nothing else.

And then there’s practicing.  It’s a whole other thing.

In Judaism, the first spiritual “structure” I encountered, the tradition for many generations was for young men in the “old country” (Eastern Europe, pre-WWII) to wander about to various towns until they found a teacher they felt compatible with, and vice versa.

Now there were many charlatans gadding about who had managed to gain an unearned reputation but really only wanted to be powerful and admired.  Some things are universal.

But there were also some of the greatest Talmudic scholars the Jewish world had ever seen, and it was like winning a lottery if you could get one of them to be your teacher and had the intestinal fortitude to learn from them.

So the advice goes that these young men should not keep drinking at different “wells,” but should eventually settle down with one teacher and get on with it.

“Get on with it.”  Actually practice what they were studying.

If I had been born a man, I no doubt would have stuck with Judaism as my spiritual practice.

I finally did find a spiritual structure I could commit myself to, and so I did.

We write a lot about our beliefs and morals, yet it is probably impossible to put into words our various spiritual practices.

The effect on the brain of Tibetan Buddhist meditation has been studied, with the permission of the Dalai Lama, by scientists on several long-time Tibetan practitioners:

Over the past few years, he (ed. Dalai Lama) has supplied about a dozen Tibetan Buddhist monks to Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson’s research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.

All the major religious traditions have methods of practice.  All of them.  We can read about them to our heart’s content but will never understand them unless we actually try to practice them.

It’s two different things.

Buhdy’s essay of yesterday, New Structures, posts a message from a Lakota Elder.  His request is refreshingly non-sectarian, appealing to anyone and everyone who cares about the planet.

To me, it’s like the experts that we should have had in charge during the BP catastrophe, engineers and science folks with a track record of problem-solving.

Imagine if there were also spiritual “experts” there as well who could provide the moral infrastructure needed to appeal to the whole world and inspire all of us to change in order to be in harmony with our planet.

I realize that’s a whole lot to imagine!

If you do ANYTHING for 35 years or so, I’ve found, you get pretty good at it even if you weren’t all that great shakes to begin with.

There are people from all traditions (even using the word “spiritual” can be misleading, but it’s all I have for now) who have made the choice to practice their spiritual craft the center of their lives.

Some of their brains have changed!  And I am without doubt this is also the case for spiritual practices other than Buddhism or any sectarian paradigm one can think of.

I find that remarkable.

This is just a piece of the puzzle that Buhdy presented us with.

I am tossing it in the air to see where it will land.