Joyful Life: Renouncing Each Day

 

 

I live alone.

 

In this aloneness, I watch over the self as a practice.

 

In solitude, I observe morning and evening prayers each day.

 

To miss a day is to miss a month.

 

To be amiss is to interrupt the flow of life.

 

We need to be liberated from our habitual tendencies.

 

It is what life demands,

 

The essence of how life’s work should be –

 

One must firmly decide to escape from the mire of external appearances.

 

One lives a routine life –   

 

A world of one’s own.

 

This routine life should be left behind again and again in the spirit of renunciation.

 

Ordination is not simply leaving for the mountains and temples with a shaved head –

 

It is leaving behind the superficial, extraneous, and nonessential.

 

 It is the spirit of leaving it all behind.

 

To be alone

 

Requires patience.

 

In aloneness, in loneliness, one must discard the habitual search for escape.

 

The clarity of sprit that has collected dissipates with such habits.

 

The rhythm of life will be lost without solitude.

 

Without solitary contemplation, the open flow of observation in time,

 

The rhythm of life is lost –

 

Life loses its essence and energy.