057-The temple garden - Buddhism in daily life

The temple garden

To everyone who likes to hear it (and to everyone else, too) I suggest creating an imaginary temple garden in your mind palace, where you can retreat in stressful times.

Imagine a wonderful garden, just the way you like it, the flowers you like, the trees you find beautiful, with an enchanting lake in the middle, on the shores of which stands a small but beautiful temple. Walk through this garden, through the buildings, accept this place in your mind palace to seek your "time out" here. Small statues are everywhere, friendly people populate your garden, go into the small devotional rooms, enjoy the peace and quiet of the grounds with you.

Every person should have such a retreat, at best one in the mind palace, and one in "real" life, perhaps a garden, or a park, or the bench nearby, in any case a place to "unwind" the soul.

If you "create" your temple garden inside you then you don't have to finish it "in one go", but take all the time in the world. Whenever you want to "retreat" then just "tinker" with your layout, beautify the garden, build new houses, pagodas and statues to create an oasis of tranquility for yourself here.

Remember that the thought palace is the temple garden, and the thoughts are the seeds. Depending on whether you have them under control (or not) they will become flowers, or they will become weeds. Weeds could be compared to the useless and endless self-talk that the ego has "with us" all day long. However, if we direct our energy to "good" thoughts, then we can "overplant" the negative ones, simply put good things on top of them, so that the space for negativity becomes smaller and smaller. Hate, greed and delusion are so easily replaced over time, the good in people becomes more and more important.

Getting control over thoughts may be a very difficult task, but only those who have at least tried will succeed. Just complaining about how hard life is is not a viable approach.

Those who regularly spend time and energy in the (imaginary) temple garden in their mind palace will find that he/she is getting closer and closer to the purity of Buddhist teachings. Make the effort, what could your temple garden look like? Modern or classic, in radiant colors, or more sedate? By a lake, or in the mountains?

The path is the goal!

What is the world? That, in which perishes

- Buddha - honorary name of Siddharta Gautama - 560 to 480 before the year zero

Copyright: https://shaolin-rainer.de

(Please also download my app "Buddha-Blog English" from the Apple and Android stores)