The Practice Game!

byElizabeth Mattis Namgyel

When we do spiritual practice we need a goal.  So what could be the goal?  It could be so many things.  Wakefulness is one goal,  but what else?  Compassion.  Insight. Overcoming obstacles.  Freedom from ignorance.  So these are the goals, and it should be clear what we’re doing.  It’s like when you get in your car to drive you need to know where you’re going.  To understand why we’re doing this is extremely important.  So we have a goal in spiritual practice.

And then the second one is rules.  What are the rules in the practice game?  Well there’s already rules that are naturally there, like cause and effect.  How do we organize our life based on the way things work?  If we’re tight and contracted and self-focused, cause and effect will manifest in a certain way.  If we’re generous and open, then we experience the cause and effect of that.  So all the practices that we do, or vows we make, they are the way we create rules in our lives based on cause and effect to support reaching our goal.  Sometimes we do certain practices where we focus the mind or we visualize or, for example, practice bodhicitta.  That is an incredible set of rules that help us navigate cause and effect in a way that brings us to a particular place.  We could say path or method, but I like rules, because we don’t really have a choice in this matter.  Cause and effect continues to function and we’re subject to it.  So if we want to reach our goal, the rules are really dictated to us by this relational nature of reality which arises as cause and effect.  So this is a big part of our practice game.  How do we navigate that?  How do we utilize that?

Then the third is feedback system.  So life will give us feedback.  I guess we could call that karma.  We experience the result of our activities, how we move on the game board, of course, determines then, you know, the result of that, the continuous manifestation of that.

And then voluntary participation, practice.  Like Rinpoche was saying; are we going to take it on as a challenge or not?  Are we going to challenge our ignorance?  This is a choice.  It’s voluntary.  So the intensity with which we volunteer will determine how good we get at this.  So the path is quite a serious type of play and there’s a lot at stake for us in the practice game, whether we’re going to walk though our life ignorant of cause and effect and how it works and whether we’re going to be able to get to where we want to go.  Are we going to wake up?  Are we willing to wake up?  Are we really, do we, are we going to really volunteer, volunteer participation?  Are we really going to do this?  This is very much a choice.  So it’s very powerful, I think, to look at it in this way.  It’s very empowering, I think, in that way.

So what we’re talking about then in the practice game is how to be in sane relationship with our world.  What do we do with our experience that arises?  Rather than being a feather in the wind, how are we going to navigate this and get to where we want to go?  What are we playing with?  We’re really playing with experience as it arises and there’s all kinds of rules and feedback systems that take place within that context.  So at the same time, you know, how important it is to understand that there’s no truth to the path, to this game, this practice game, to the path. It’s a vehicle.

Like it says in Buddhist sutras: a boatman when rowing a boat across the river, after they get to the shore doesn’t carry the boat on their back and walk, continue to walk; the boat is a vehicle.  The boat is a vehicle like the path is a vehicle for us.  And in fact the path, this path, the Buddhist path or any path that we take each one is just one of infinite possibilities.  So we might say, “Oh, we are Buddhist or we are all on the Buddhist path,” and in many respects we are in the Sangha or in the community and we do have these brilliant methods, these brilliant practices to utilize.  But at the same time, everybody’s path is completely different because in a momentary way, every moment we have to make choices.  That’s our path.  So the path is momentary and personal, an individual thing.  How will we move our pieces each moment?  How incredibly important that is, and yet it’s such an illusion too, you know?