How do we establish and maintain a consistent practice?
How can we reinforce our determination to practice twice a day every day, strengthen our lives and create unshakable benefit?
The benefits of consistent practice are many. For one, it's easier. Once you establish the practice you just greet your life twice a day in from of the Gohonzon without having to force yourself to do it. It just becomes part of your life.
With consistent practice chanting is easier, benefits flow more consistently, and you change your karma, embrace your challenges and win over any challenge you face. With consistent practice we change our lives for the better. This is the way it works.
Positive Psychologists talk about something called "Activation Energy."
It is the energy to get something new up and running.
We can compare the launching our consistent practice to an airplane taking off. Each airplane has to advance down the runway with engines firing. Once the plane gets in the air it switches to a steady maintenance energy, but it HAS to fire those rockets to get off the ground.
How do you fire your own rockets?
I think the secret lies in being part of the SGI organization. (You can click on the SGI Portal to the right to find your local SGI, if you're not connected yet. Remember there are no dues or rules or priests. The SGI is an organization of people working together for their own happiness and the sake of others.)
The friends you make in the SGI are friends who will help you get those engines firing and help you lift into the air. And the beautiful thing is, as another is helping YOU, they are also helping themselves. That is just the way it works. And you can be this friend for others and help them chant too.
Yesterday I was needing some activation energy. It has been very cloudy and cold here in Chicago, and on Sunday I didn't chant as much as I normally do, so my engines had to be revved up to bring my plane into the air yesterday morning. I did my normal hour of chanting, but it was hard to concentrate and after the hour I still felt sluggish and unenergized. So I called a friend in the SGI and invited her to chant. She had done the exact thing as me...chanted already, but she was also still feeling like she needed a boost. So she came over and we chanted an uninterrupted hour and both got our planes in the air. We went on to have very productive and energetic days, and I awaken today with much more energy and ready to take on a new day.
Our friends in the SGI are our friends in faith. What are some other ways we can bolster each other to make our practices stronger? When I was first chanting 28 years ago my mentor came to my house every morning for a few weeks to help me generate Activation Energy for my practice. I liked the feeling of doing gongyo consistently, and was able to keep my plane in the air after that. Doing evening gongyo was harder for me. But within a few months I was doing morning and evening gongyo and I saw how my life was "on a roll", I liked the way consistent practice felt, and I've continued for 28 years.
Why do we sometimes just skip gongyo? We may not even see it, but it is always our fundamental darkness holding us back. The key thing is this: once we see our fundamental darkness for what it is, we can make the choice to defeat it. We must recognize it for what it is. It's not just "being busy" that keeps us from chanting. It's that fundamental darkness within each of us that uses every method to fool us. This is the fundamental struggle in our lives. When we overcome this and establish our consistent practice EVERYTHING becomes easier and we get leverage over our problems.
This is something that must be experienced to be understood. My dear "Baby Buddha" (the nickname she chose for herself) heard me tell her for two years to chant every morning and evening, and she replied that she doesn't do ANYTHING consistently and wasn't going to do this. No way. I kept chanting for her and inviting her to chant. And one day, she just made the decision to try chanting twice a day to see how it felt. She couldn't believe how different she felt. She also realized a deep desire and began to chant for it to happen. Now she lives in Colorado - she got what she was chanting for! THIS is why we practice. Our desires are worth chanting for!
How else can we support each other?
When I began this blog and my two-hour a day chanting campaign, my friend Melissa and I would text each other twice a day when we began chanting. She lived far away so we only chanted together about once a week, but just knowing she and I were chanting at the same time really helped. Sometimes we would call each other before we chanted and tell each other what we were focusing on for that hour so we could chant specifically for each other's desires.
You may have other ways of creating and maintaining your consistent practice. Please share them with me and I'll share them with the other readers of this blog. Email me at chantforhappiness.com with your ideas, questions, suggestions, victories and challenges.
