Pure Mountain Tao

Many students worry a great deal about making progress in their practice. They spend a great deal of time wondering whether they are being successful or not. The very fact that they are practicing is making them successful already. Any effort is better than no effort.

The truth is that there are no yardsticks, dice, game boards or anything else that we can use to judge our progress. We can evaluate how we see ourselves now as compared to a year ago or whenever. Yet, this is not always an accurate barometer. It is very difficult to judge ourselves and come up with an accurate assessment. We may be to kind or unforgiving.

Sometimes we may feel we are on a game board. I remember playing a game called Candyland when my children were young. Sometimes you would land on a space and get to travel very far up the board. We may have days like that in our practice. We have a good meditation session or we do a kind act and we think, ‘that was a good day’ and we feel happy like we are progressing well. Conversely, in the game you could land on a space and have to go almost back to the beginning. We have days like that in practice too. We lose our temper, we feel sad for some reason, and we think, “I have learned nothing”, or “I’m wasting my time, why bother anymore.” Of course this is not the case, but we have a tendency to overreact sometimes

For example, progress in meditation is achieved any day that you sit. If you sit and the meditation is good, you have made progress. If you sit and the meditation does not go well, you have still made progress. We often learn more and make more progress resulting from the ‘bad’ days then we do the good.