musangsa 2026년 05월 30일
When you feel like you are losing your center, getting too distracted, or simply following after pleasures, it is okay to just acknowledge it. You can still go out to see a movie or enjoy nice food. Then, when you wake up the next morning, simply do your practice.
We don’t have many retreats at home like temples, but no problem. Once you experience a bit of clarity, you won’t want to lose it, so you keep practicing. We can do extra practice like doing more bows, extra chanting, or sitting a little longer. We have a huge box of tools to help us. You don’t have to cling to any particular method or feel guilty. Just take really good care of your mind, find whatever works for you, and keep making an effort.
Seung Sahn Sunim perfectly understood that lay practitioners have a different lifestyle and cannot practice as much as monastics do. That is exactly why he emphasized over and over to make your life your practice. For a very long time, we tend to separate the two—thinking “this is our life, and this is our practice”—but eventually, they become one. Our life itself becomes our practice.
