What is Practice?

What is practice? What is there to practise? Practice means managing our inner habits and changing our negative habits. Only when you can reflect and get a clear understanding of your negative habits and change them, do you grasp the essence of practice.

You must be aware that prostrating to the Buddha and making offerings are ways to cultivate one’s merit and inculcate positive habits but they do not change negative habits. If, when encountering external phenomena, you find you cannot refrain from having thoughts of hatred, greed or jealously, then you must realise that these are your problems. It is pretty simple to know what sort of person you are. The thing you need to do is to keep a record of all the positive and negative states of mind you have, write your name and tell yourself: “This is me”.

My purpose, in fact, is to help you to be aware of the thoughts that arise in your mind. Whatever state of mind you have, you will get a similar response. For example, if you are in the habit of stealing things, then when someone loses something that you like, you definitely become the first person they suspect. If you begin right away, training yourself to bring back your eye attention to the present, then you will come to see your own mental states and become able to change them.

This means that our personality is not fixed and that it can be changed. Therefore, only if we are willing to transform ourselves, can we be said to be practising. Otherwise, we will learn some method of practice but fail to realise the goal of practising, which is the eradication of suffering.

As long as you are willing to change yourself, you are practising.

An extract from "The Sound of Zen" by Venerable Yuan Fan