The essence of practice

I was listening to a dharma talk by Steve Armstrong (listen to it here) on working with the defilements of the mind.   He begins the talk by quoting the Buddha who says that the pure mind is radiant and bright and that everything else is the result of being visited by defilements.   In Buddhism these include greed, aversion and delusion.

Less important than the dharma content of this talk though is a line that Steve Armstrong said that zinged home with me.   He said that when we sit down to meditate, we should not expect to have a “good experience” but rather, we should understand that this is the place where we meet the mind’s defilements head on.

That really resonated with me.   It seems an important feature of any practice that one recognize that the reason for practicing is to meet challenge, difficulty and frustration.   In that sense any practice becomes a dojo, a place of training.   In meditation we sit to discover how our mind works and to work with what we find.   In my own martial arts practices of taekwondo and warrior of the heart, it is about confronting physical challenges and fear.

And it made me think about what it means also to be a practitioner of conversational arts.   Many of the places I work are difficult places, and I can see now that what makes me a practitioner is that I willingly choose those places because they are hard.   That is where I practice, and the practice is learning to use the social spaces between us as people to make good happen in the world.

Practice is not a retreat from the world, it is confronting your sharpest edge.   Work, for me, is like that too.