First Practices: A Handbook

Beginning

Everything you need to begin is already with you: a few minutes and a willingness to sit with one thing.

This handbook offers simple practices drawn from the public domain texts in the community's library. Each one comes from a passage you can read for yourself. Each is one way among many. They are starting points.

Pick one. Try it for a week. If it helps, keep it. Otherwise, set it down and try another. One is plenty, and setting one down is part of the practice.

1. Reading a passage slowly

Open the library. Choose one passage, a few lines at most. Read it three times.

The first time, read it to know what it says. The second time, read it to hear how it sounds. The third time, read it to notice what stays with you.

This practice comes from the community's principle that sources carry the weight. The text speaks in its own words. Your part is to listen.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

Source: The Bible (King James Version), Proverbs 4:7, 1611

2. Sitting in silence

Sit still for five minutes. Simply sit. Let the sitting be the whole of it.

When your mind wanders, notice it. Come back to sitting. That is the whole practice. The wandering is part of it. The noticing is the practice.

Those who know (the Tao) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.

Source: The Tao Te Ching, ch. 81, James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 39), 1891

3. Walking with attention

Walk for ten minutes, simply to walk.

Feel your feet on the ground. Notice the air. See what is around you, just as it is. If you catch yourself thinking about something else, come back to your feet.

Everything material soon disappears in the substance of the whole; and everything formal is very soon taken back into the universal reason; and the memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

Source: Meditations, Book VII, Marcus Aurelius, George Long, 1862

4. The daily examination

At the end of your day, ask yourself three questions. The philosopher Tsang asked these of himself every day.

The philosopher Tsang said, "I daily examine myself on three points: whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful; whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher."

Source: The Confucian Analects, bk. i, c. iv, James Legge, 1893

The three questions, put plainly: Was I faithful in what I did for others? Was I sincere with the people in my life? Did I practice what I have been learning?

The answers can stay unwritten and unjudged. Just ask.

5. One good thought

The Dhammapada says that a pure thought brings happiness like a shadow that never leaves. The practice is simple: think one good thought toward someone today.

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

Source: The Dhammapada, v. 2, F. Max Muller (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10), 1881

It can be someone you love. It can be a stranger. It can be someone who is difficult. The thought can stay unspoken. It only needs to be genuine.

6. Meeting harm with kindness

When someone causes you difficulty today, try this: pause for one breath before you answer. In that breath, wish that person well. The chain of harm has to stop somewhere, and it can stop with you.

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

Source: The Dhammapada, v. 5, F. Max Muller (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10), 1881

7. Holding lightly

Everything passes. That is a reason to hold lightly.

Try this: hold something in your hand. A cup, a stone, a pen. Feel its weight. Now imagine setting it down and walking away, simply and quietly. Just: done. Notice what happens in your body when you imagine letting go.

Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, dry and withered.

Source: The Tao Te Ching, ch. 76, James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 39), 1891

A note

These practices are doors. Walk through whichever one calls to you today. Come back to it tomorrow, or let it rest. The library is always open. The practices are always here.

All this asks of you is to begin.