Yogi: Going home from retreat, after a while I lose interest and the practice slides.
Sayadaw: It happens to all of us. Despite that, we have to keep trying. It’s when we lose inspiration and the practice starts to go down, that’s when we have to make more effort. If we keep trying when it’s hard, we start learning the skill of getting through it.
Two of the biggest reasons why we can’t maintain our practice in daily life are lack of skill in practice and lack of understanding of the mind.
We don’t know how to clear the mind when it gets agitated – when the mind is confused, we don’t know how to deal with it quickly. Because of that, all that starts to accumulate and we cannot get back on track to practicing. We’re not skilful with that.
There’s nothing supporting our practice at home; we have to find all the strength within ourselves. When we’re not skilful, it’s a hard battle to keep the mindfulness going day after day. It takes a lot of faith and determination.
One of the disadvantages of the retreat is that it conditions us to only know how to practice when it’s supportive and quiet. So, when it’s chaotic and everybody is demanding our attention, we don’t know how to remain aware and respond to those demands.
If we learn how to build our stability of mind in chaotic environments, how to remain aware and keep the mind stable while everything is happening around us, then we can become more skilful.
That requires us to practice at home because that’s where we’ll have the environment where we can learn that skill.
And if we find that interesting and we keep trying, then we’ll become skilful.