Catherine posted the following in the Spiritual Materialism discussion. I thought it merited its own thread.
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I’m putting this in a different post, though perhaps it would be better to move it into a different conversation
Is 5-10 hours a week that difficult for people?
I’d really like to avoid having this become an ordered list of who sits how long, but I would like to have a better idea of what people are struggling with. I know when I teach Taiji, it seems to be a good rule of thumb not to expect that most people will practice outside of class. I’m not particularly bothered by this. And some people do, and they more ofter are the people who stick with it and do more with it, but not always. (And I’ve been really blessed in my students. And teachers, for that matter.) Personally, my schedule is my schedule because I like my life that way a lot – but a lot of people seem pretty horrified by it, and I’m perfectly happy to accept that it might not be especially portable. When it comes to practice, well, you’re doing the work that you’re doing. Anyone who thinks attending my classes is valuable is welcome there, but a class by itself is maybe a little flavor, and it doesn’t strike me as a meal to sustain you. I mention the Taiji just because it’s something I’ve been doing in a formal way for quite a while, and something I’ve experienced from a number of perspectives. By the time I started a formal regular practice of zuochan, I’d had a meditative practice in various forms for some decades and was accustomed to making that sort of time in my life. I don’t know how it works for most people.
I hear a lot about people not having time in the modern world, but that hasn’t really been my experience. (One major exception: small children. I am in awe of anyone who has small children and manages to get anything else done.*) I mean, there is always limited time, and there are priorities for that time. And I do think that people have different needs for down time. It took me a long time to realize that when my spine injury was particularly bad, hot baths and trash fiction were often more productive than trying to make myself do something “productive”. But it has also been my experience that a lot of choosing to do things is often as much the converse: choosing not to do other things. The clearer I’ve gotten on what is important to me, the easier it has been to lay aside other things.
Ridiculing people for not practicing also doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, though it seems we’re often not a sensible people. I generally figure that people will practice when it becomes important for them to do so, and try not to get in any one else’s way. I guess I have seen situations where people have tried to use practice – as well as any other number of measures – as a way of establishing some kind of social hierarchy. Meh. But mostly, what a waste of time. I’ve also run into a lot of people who have been pretty deeply unhappy about their own practices or lack thereof. And sometimes this unhappiness seems to get projected at other people. (Of course, that is in turn my interpretation.) A lot of these things seem very convoluted for people. That often hasn’t been my experience… but then, my experience for myself has been that usually when things seemed most complex, and I most conflicted, I was usually trying to avoid looking at a relatively simple choice straight on.
* My yoga teacher was talking about making time for uninterrupted practice, and mentioned that it really doesn’t apply to people with young children, but then raising a family is itself a yogic practice. I’m still in awe.
