Happy day to you, friends!
And you are no doubt aware, in war and in other places there is a distinction made between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’. The strategy is the overall, long-term plan to accomplish a goal. The tactics are the immediate, short-term efforts one makes to further the strategy.
This applies to spiritual practice as much as anywhere else.
What is the best tactic?
In my experience, the best tactic is to go all out for peace, joy, connection, belonging, and true clarity; to live as deeply and fully as possible in this moment, in the following moment, and the moment after that; to love life with a heart full of gratitude, and to accept wholeheartedly whatever circumstances Life offers–and then with great vigor and determination to work through and let go of whatever unhappy fantasies the survival system dumps into one’s mind in response. To go for the glory will cause a reaction to happen in conditioned mind, and will expose it to awareness, which is a good and helpful thing. With this approach, conditioned mind must either allow us to enjoy our lives in thankfulness, or it must resist and expose itself to annihilation.
What is the best strategy?
In my experience, the best strategy is to devote oneself to spiritual practice as taught by the wise ancients and by enlightened teachers since. In order to end suffering, they all say, it is good to sit, to receive the teachings, and to practice in community. In Buddhism this is called Bodhi, Dharma, and Sangha. The best strategy is to commit to practice for a lifetime, day by day, no matter how you feel, no matter whether you want to or not, no matter whether or not it feels like it’s doing any good, no matter what the voices say… If we practice diligently as best we can every day, then day by day the miracle will happen. This is the ‘ever-expanding faith’ referred to in the Daily Recollection.
Each day we strive for a profound, clear, and love-filled life; for an entire lifetime we nurture the conscious effort that makes such a life possible. This is a good way to practice.
In peace,
David