" Taking Breaks "

[devaloka]

Dear all,

Sometimes I find practice gets too overwhelming and I need to take a pauze. In that pauze I often indulge in entertainment. And then my "10minutes max!" breaks easily become hours or days.

What is a skillful way to cool down or take a break when hardcore practice starts to feel like weighing too heavy on my monkey mind?

Many thanks,

[Sam Vara]

Dear all,

Sometimes I find practice gets too overwhelming and I need to take a pauze. In that pauze I often indulge in entertainment. And then my "10minutes max!" breaks easily become hours or days.

What is a skillful way to cool down or take a break when hardcore practice starts to feel like weighing too heavy on my monkey mind?

Many thanks,

One skilful way is to not engage in "hardcore practice", but to be gentle with yourself. Getting heavy with a monkey seems like a recipe for frustration all round.

[Alino]

Hello dear devaloka,

Indeed, it can be quite difficult to resist the sense pressure (eg. pressure for entertament) while practicing on 8 precepts for à while.

But there is an important point.
Difficulties (fatigue, pressure, dukkha in general) comes not from the practice of sila, the problems comes from lack or failure in sila...

What does it mean?
It mean that with little failures in our sila (just slept a little bit more, just eat a little bit more, just talked a little bit more, just payed attention at the sight of beauty...) our mind get poisoned. And it is this very poison that create pressure and restlessness.

The main thing here is to :
1. Keep sila as good as possible (avoiding to handle sharp things while manipulation poison)
2. If mind is already poisoned and practice falling apart - we can contemplate two things: drawbacks of entertainment (heaviness, overdose of information, fogy mind, and dukkha of 5 hindrances in general) and contemplatong drawbacks of little failures in sila (observing how little bit more sleep led your mind to eat little bit more, then led it to wanting some entertainment etc...)

By contemplating these drawbacks, your mind will see real danger in the slightest fault, by experiance.

Practice is easy, hindrances are heavy.

PS iam not perfect in my sila, but here some observations I made from failures under the pressure of hindrances and it's causes...

Sadhu for your sincere effort

[Alino]

...also Ajahn Jayasaro once gave an intresting simile, that practice is like boiling water. In order to clean it from all germs we need to rise the temperature above 100°, but if we stop before, germs will remain in water.

Also an intresting observation is that a diamond is just a coal that passed thought hight pressure and temperature.

Once I heared a great encouragement that can be useful here: "don't belief those who tell you not to ordain", in our case we can say "don't belief those who tell you not to practice hard". Humain life is short, occasion is unique...

Imho

[devaloka]

Hello dear devaloka,

Indeed, it can be quite difficult to resist the sense pressure (eg. pressure for entertament) while practicing on 8 precepts for à while.

But there is an important point.
Difficulties (fatigue, pressure, dukkha in general) comes not from the practice of sila, the problems comes from lack or failure in sila...

What does it mean?
It mean that with little failures in our sila (just slept a little bit more, just eat a little bit more, just talked a little bit more, just payed attention at the sight of beauty...) our mind get poisoned. And it is this very poison that create pressure and restlessness.

The main thing here is to :
1. Keep sila as good as possible (avoiding to handle sharp things while manipulation poison)
2. If mind is already poisoned and practice falling apart - we can contemplate two things: drawbacks of entertainment (heaviness, overdose of information, fogy mind, and dukkha of 5 hindrances in general) and contemplatong drawbacks of little failures in sila (observing how little bit more sleep led your mind to eat little bit more, then led it to wanting some entertainment etc...)

By contemplating these drawbacks, your mind will see real danger in the slightest fault, by experiance.

Practice is easy, hindrances are heavy.

PS iam not perfect in my sila, but here some observations I made from failures under the pressure of hindrances and it's causes...

Sadhu for your sincere effort

...also Ajahn Jayasaro once gave an intresting simile, that practice is like boiling water. In order to clean it from all germs we need to rise the temperature above 100°, but if we stop before, germs will remain in water.

Also an intresting observation is that a diamond is just a coal that passed thought hight pressure and temperature.

Once I heared a great encouragement that can be useful here: "don't belief those who tell you not to ordain", in our case we can say "don't belief those who tell you not to practice hard". Humain life is short, occasion is unique...

Imho

Really very much appreciated! Your words help me greatly! Thank you!