Q: How to be aware every minute, make this awareness to become our second nature?
A: Well, in order to be aware every minute, you have to start doing morning session, evening session; you have to do some form of practice.
You have to do Shine practice, Shamatha practice, Vipassanā practice, but you do a meditation based on external object. First, you start your meditation based on external object, simplified color, simple object, simple shape, and then you focus into that, your mind. And then after that, listening to a certain echo of the sound, and then gradually visualizing a deity, or visualizing a Buddha, or visualizing a singular and simple object. And then once you establish that, and then the sense of awareness will gradually come.
But the most important is that only have the sense of awareness during the time of your practice, whether you are doing 20 minutes, 30 minutes of your practice. After the practice, don’t care about anything, just live your life as almost that you did not know anything about Buddhism. Just live your life freely as you can. But keep that joy and wanting to practice tomorrow again. Keep that strong desire, keep that strong ambition, keep that strong motivation that “Ah, tomorrow when I wake up again, or maybe tomorrow when I go to, before I go to sleep, I will do that practice again.” Keep that desire, keep that ambition, keep that sense of motivation that you want to, that you want to do it! That you want to practice! And then when you are actually doing a practice, and then have the sense of awareness at all times. At least try to make an attempt.
But between, during the session gap, don’t have this too much awareness idea in your head. Because most important is you have to conserve your energy, for the session of the practice. When it’s not time of the practice, just simply relax. And then as your practice improves by itself, and then sense of awareness, even in the session break, even in your daily life, even when you are angry, even when you are unhappy, that awareness can always appear again and again.
So that’s that. But don’t try to make an attempt to be aware every, every single second from the beginning. It doesn’t function and you will be tired from the beginning. So that’s my answer.
Kalu Rinpoche
FB Livestream – 25 October 2020
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