Fully Engaged

Life is short and fleeting. Everyday we are given 24 hours to use – we must strive to not to let a single moment go to waste.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should pack our day with more practices, recitations and dharma activities. While these can be helpful, they are not the most important thing.

It’s easy to assume that we are using our time well if we are practising in retreat, meditating and studying the dharma every day. Upon closer examination, however, we may come to see that we are wasting a significant amount of our time without even realising it.

For instance, we might recite mantras or meditate on a deity while allowing our minds to wander, or we might get lost in the details of the deity image. In other words, we are not fully engaged with what we are supposed to be doing in our practice. In this way we can say that we spend most of our day in a sleepy or unconscious state. As long as we remain distracted like that, it doesn’t matter what we do, our time is going to waste.

So to make the most of our time, we must strive to know exactly what we are thinking and doing, and how our minds are set on the activity at hand. That is the most crucial thing.

8th January 2023, Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal