For This New Year, Just Practice

As the new year sets in, we are each making our New Year’s Resolutions. Each one of these is a practice. In fact, our entire life is a practice, though we don’t often see it that way. Whatever your practice is, just practice.

In Zen training, people gather to sit in a room together. They are there to just sit. There is nothing else to do and no way to get around sitting, even when it’s difficult. This is the practice of “just sitting.”

Just sitting, it feels like a waste of time, right? This is exactly what we do.

Yet, while just sitting — people break into tears crying, others have euphoric experiences better than sex, yet others finally let go of lifelong misery they didn’t know they had.

And after all of this, they keep on sitting.

While just sitting, the mind is not on achievement, it’s not on attaining something, the mind is just practicing. If we are thinking about attaining, then we are no longer just sitting.

This attitude is often a stark contrast to our modern world. We are taught we should seek things — good grades, wealth, status, spouses, pleasant experiences, whatever it may be.

While there’s nothing wrong with having these things —the direct seeking of these things becomes a practice itself — a practice of attainment.

This focus on attainment is driven by fear. For if we had no fear, we would know, there is nothing we need to attain. In essence, then, our drive to attain is a practice of creating more fear — for ourselves and others.

Life is a practice, and we get to choose the practice we engage in. Will we let the current of fear sweep us down with it? This is certainly the lower energy path and will happen to us if we’re not careful.

Or will we consciously choose the path we want to practice? In this case, we have many ways to go.

Religions offer pathways to practice — while generations of practitioners have left crumb trails to help guide us, religions also come with baggage — attached beliefs, social structures, and more that we may find unpalatable.

For many who don’t find religion a good fit, spirituality comes instead— yoga, in particular, being much more than a set of movements, is often called the “science of spirituality.” Spiritual teachings can feel more flexible than religious teaching.

Though, we can practice even if we don’t like the label of spirituality, and at the same time, we can use religion and spirituality as guides. After all, religion and spirituality simply teach things that are already within us. We can use them as guides in the practice of life.

Mindfulness, for example, while rooted in Buddhist teachings, has taken a decidedly secular path that anyone can practice in their life. Perhaps less known is that Buddhism, among other religions, also teaches loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy. Because you are human, all of these can be your practice — you don’t have to be Buddhist.

Though, when we start separating our practices from their traditions, we may often be unsure if the practices are working for us. For example, meditation is a foundation in many religions. Yet, meditation is “scientifically” known to increase feelings of anxiety — does that mean we should stop meditating?

For those of us who are skeptical of religion and spirituality, we often look for “scientific proof” that practices will work for us. When we see “scientific proof” in the opposite, we can easily become dissuaded from the practices.

Putting our faith in science, while effective for some aspects of life, is not always prudent when developing life practices. Science offers only a glimpse into the potential of life practices. There are many reasons for this, two among them being that science itself is rooted in conceptual thought and much of our science today takes a reductionist approach.

Life practices can go beyond conceptual thinking and necessarily have a holistic approach — there is no true separation between body and mind, me and we, or now and later. Confidence in our practice comes from practicing, though science can help us here and there along the way.

It’s helpful to know the signs that our practice is working — it often starts with the mind-calming, the body relaxing. Things that once irritated us stop being so annoying.

We find more peace with simplicity. We feel more connected to the people around us. We let go of old grudges and judgments for others and ourselves. All of these things can happen, and in the beginning, they are the most obvious.

There will be times when we won’t notice these things, we feel like we are going nowhere in our practice, or even reverting back to our old ways. This is natural, though, could easily dissuade us from practice.

If we practice “with nothing to attain,” we won’t worry about these results. Our practice is done without trying to is fix anything, solve anything, grow anything. Instead, we “just practice.”

Whatever practices you hope to take up this new year, I hope you do it consciously and that you “just practice.”

With nothing to attain, you will find what you need. With nowhere to go, you will get where you need to go. With nothing to achieve you will do what you need to do.

Happy New Year to you all!

This year, I plan to focus on articles about life practices that can create more meaning and joy. You can get email subscriptions on my medium page.

Prajna Life Coaching —learn practices and skills to create balance and joy in your life. Contact us at prajnalifecoaching.com to work with us.