Sabba danam dhamma danam jinati

Posted by: Michael | 04/12/2013

Sabba danam dhamma danam jinati

Perhaps it’s just the time of the month but formal practice commitments have been a real struggle of late. More than anything it feels as if I simply do not have the energy needed to keep up the intensity of effort I feel I should be putting into the practice. So, much of formal practice has been about watching the mind rebel and calling out the aversion to the meditation itself as it arises and slowly passes away.

I have said (probably many) times before but it appears to me that saddha is the only recourse left at low times like this when it is ooh-so-easy to believe in the doubting voices in one’s head which seek to persuade us to give up and just crawl into bed. Without faith in the efficacy of meditation, or even simply the tremendous benefit of inclining the heart and mind towards meditation, it would be impossible to cross the vast, interminable spaces where one’s only company are the disembodied whisperings of doubt and self-deprecation. It is at points like these in the practice where I remember why it can be so hard to start and maintain a regular meditation practice in the firs place. But, I am fortunate to have had several years of this practice andd have seen how the Dhamma-vinaya has not only benefited but literally saveed my life.

In that vein, it has just occurred to me that it might be fun and helpful to try a variant of the gratitude practice wherein I contemplate the gifts I have received from my practice of the Dhamma. I might as well start a list here and now and will experiment with it later. In short, I am grateful for the following gifts bequeathed to me by the Dhamma:

The gift of peace
The gift of purpose
The gift of forgiveness
The gift of metta
The gift of karuna

Of course I could write a whole post on each of these and there are surely countless more gifts I have received from the Dhamma but this is really just a preamble to what I hope to be a practice that will open the heart once more.

Sabba danam dhamma danam jinati