The main question for a lot of people is how to practice meditation in daily life. How to practice the Dhamma in daily life. The practice of formal meditation in a retreat is primarily intensive training in a very structured environment. This is helpful and important, but the real practice of meditation, if meditation is to be of any real value, is in our daily lives.
In daily life, the full path and the other aspects of cultivating the mind have to be undertaken and practiced as well. It's really in our daily lives, in our day-to-day situations that we need skill and understanding to meet all the challenges that come up: all the conflicting situations, the chaos, the the daily ups and downs.
We have to have a game plan for meeting and facing the defilements that come up within our own minds as well as the negativities and defilements that come at us from others. We have to develop qualities of the mind in addition to meditation.
Many people want to meditate and find peace of mind. But some of those people don't want to really change the rest of their life style. They want to have their cake and eat it too-be able to meditate and get the "bennies," such as peace of mind, but still be able to do whatever comes into their mind according to their whims and their fancies.
But the process doesn't really work that way. For most of us, the mind we encounter as we sit in meditation- all the states that come up, the difficult emotions, other negative mental states, and even the condition of our body, pains and the like- is basically the sum total of what we have been accumulating all of our life. These accumulations are the consequences of our life-long habit patterns, life style, and even of our viewpoints.
There are practices, in addition to meditation, that we can cultivate to help us bring the Dhamma into our habit patterns, our life styles, and our viewpoints. Let's explore some of these other aspects of the Dhamma practice which we have to put into effect in our daily lives as the appropriate situations come up.
We know that the second Noble Truth is that the source of suffering is craving and clinging, unbridled desire. Because of this, one of the main practices in the Dhamma is called Dana. Dana means the practice of giving or sharing with others. It is an antidote to attachment, to holding on tightly, to really holding on to our things. We find this greed and attachment everywhere. We hold on tightly to our possessions, don't want to let go of them. The problem is, the more that we have, the more of a burden it becomes. But the practice of giving helps. It's an antidote to stinginess, and by sharing things that we have with others, or letting go of our own selfish self-centeredness, it also helps to open up our minds in loving kindness and compassion. It is an antidote to clinging and craving.