Practice

I've come across two metaphors for meditation practice that I really like, and want to share them. I think that even if you're not into meditation, they apply to anything that you want to get to know really well, anything that you'd like to become second nature to you and become intimate with, wether it be gardening, painting, telling the truth, being courageous, or whatever else you're genuinely devoting yourself to.

The first metaphor comes from Dogen, a zen monk from the 1200s, whose work I'm currently reading about in "Sit down and shut up" by Brad Warner. "Dogen likens ... practice to the way you get wet if you walk through fog. You don't notice it as it's happening. But walk through that fog long enough, and you'll get thoroughly soaked."

The other metaphor I really like, and unfortunately can't remember where it comes from, is of practice being like soaking beans. I soak a lot of beans, so I feel close to this one. When you first put the beans in water, they are small and rock hard. Over time, the water infiltrates, slowly and imperceptibly, at its own pace, until the beans are eventually all swollen and soft, and quite transformed.

I hope these metaphors can be helpful to you in some way, maybe if only as encouragement that things do happen when you make an effort, when you try, even though it may take a really long time to see any results. Sometimes the results of our actions may not even appear until our lives are over. 

So, to close with another quote from Brad Warner, which I really like, "Do what you can, and do it now".

Peace