Inner Maintenance

[2025 June DCTB Mindfulness Tip]  

To keep our physical life running smoothly, there is much maintenance that must be done. Likewise, to stay connected with our spiritual life, we must do our inner maintenance. If approached with mindfulness, these tasks can often overlap.

Success in our practice relies on discipline. We sit in meditation every day. We pay attention to our minds and bodies as we eat and sleep and exercise. We contemplate the patterns we observe to understand what is happening and how this thing called life works.

As we develop our practice, there is a part of us that wants to be done. Most of us have received some form of goal-oriented conditioning. We’ve been trained to work towards a finish line, where we will receive awards and finally be able to stop. This programming doesn’t align with advanced spiritual practice, where there is no real finish line.

However, the goal system can help in the beginning, while we are building discipline. The rewards of a consistent meditation practice are well documented:

• Clarity,
• increased energy and focus,
• the ability to feel joy in even difficult situations,
• greater emotional regulation,
• being aware of more opportunities that lead to career success,
• more satisfying relationships,
• a stronger mind

Once we have built a balanced life, however, the rewards system no longer helps us. If we continue to cling to the concept of a reward – especially the idea that if I do this, then I will win Enlightenment – goal seeking becomes an obstacle to living an authentic spiritual life. And sometimes the ego becomes so twisted in this obsession that we subconsciously create problems for ourselves just so we can solve them and have the feeling of winning.

With a highly disciplined life, we return to the spiritual path no matter what happens. Yet we can have perfect discipline and still get stuck. There is no coasting on the Path. We must continue to perform our inner maintenance.

We need to remember why we practice: to directly experience Undifferentiated Reality, to recognize and live in and as Enlightenment.

When we forget why we practice, it means we need inner maintenance. Some symptoms of needing inner maintenance include:

• a practice that turns stale,
• obsessing over world issues,
• feeling overwhelmed or impatient.
• becoming bored with every activity.
• a high level of annoyance with things that don’t normally bother us.
• unexplained excess exhaustion
• despondency about life general

Despite sitting in meditation and paying attention to our mind, we continue to notice these disturbing patterns.

To avoid this situation, we do our inner maintenance on a regular basis:

• When we clean our home or bodies, we use it as an opportunity to clean away any wrong views we have acquired.
• While discarding the trash or weeding the garden, we release any old mind states or patterns that we no longer need.
• Instead of treating meditation and mindfulness as a habit, we bring a renewed vigor with our intent every time we sit, stand, walk, eat, or sleep. Not through force, but rather with a compassionate attention to the small details of our life.

When we need a big reset, the most powerful form of inner maintenance is the art of retreat. In Trikaya Buddhism, a retreat is not a vacation. It is the conscious stepping away from everything. As we voyage into the uncertainty of being in a different place, sometimes with people we may not know well, we have the chance to let go completely of all that we think we are. We tune into the purity of Light directly. And in that process, we allow ourselves to be recalibrated.

Upon our return, as we integrate this recalibration, the changes are sometimes radical. But more often than not, they are subtle shifts. No one else may notice. But we will feel the newness of our old spiritual practice.

A short retreat can be just as effective as a week-long sojourn. Spending five minutes with a tree or plant can be enough to reorient our being completely towards the purity of Light and remind us of the true nature of our practice.

While sitting near a tree or flower or body of water (yes a photo works too!) this simple meditation can retune our being:

Drop the world and all its concerns
Drop the body and all its woes
Drop the mind and all its suffering
Into the river of Light

When we do our inner maintenance, there is a respite, where everything, including us, is completely supported by that pure and perfect Light. And we realize it always has been so.

Then we turn our attention back to our silly human lives and play the game of expressing that pure and perfect Light in and through every aspect of our being and life to the best of our current ability.

Our discipline continues. Our ordinary activities continue. Yet there is a tiny sparkle renewed by this inner maintenance.

If your practice or life feels dull, it’s probably time for a tune up. Join us for any of our meditation offerings throughout the week at Dharma Center of Trikaya Buddhism.

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