I could start this by saying that it is going to be about the time you are not formally practicing in front of a shrine. Although, as Dogen noted in Rules for Meditation, ultimately there is no difference between training and non-training. The end result is to be living with no sense of separation from the perceived. The states of mind experienced by the fully awake are listed in the Seven Factors of Awakening. Now we might not be there just yet, but it is an aspiration that we express via Nembutsu. When we are not formally doing this, then we are doing our best!
Living this spiritual life is making the commitment to reigning your inner-world, making your Pure Land pure. MAKE YOUR PURE LAND PURE. That any time you use will to create in the astral light (see in your mind) will be intentional and positive, and any stored energy (knot) that arises spontaneously as past conditioning is being healed, is never allowed to pass unwatched or unhealed.
It makes me think of the specific exercises of will development by controversial British occultist Alistair Crowley, where, for example, a person would vow to not use the letter Y. That sounds crazy, but think of what it entails. To successfully accomplish this, the mind needs to be aware constantly, to catch intentions and thought-pressures before they proceed to actions (speech in this case) and to control behaviour and speech completely (which requires disciplined WILL). Now there is nothing wrong with the letter Y, (this is my example), but it is the skill that is important. Watching and reigning.
WATCH AND REIGN.
One huge help for me is to consider the Dharmakaya and/or astral light (or whatever we want to call it) as a living conscious being as well as a place. It’s a place that is my mind. In other traditions, I’ve heard it referred to as (I hope it doesn’t trigger some people) a virgin and a whore. A virgin in that it is full of potential; is inherently untouched, like a blanket of snow that has no footprints, it’s a pure, Pure Land, but it’s also a whore. it will give me whatever I want. There is nothing possible that my will cannot form in this light, the light of my imagination.
Yes, when I relax the will and choose to create nothing then all the pictures and dreams emerge of their own accord, but they are not from the virgin; they are from me. They are past conditioning, the things I chose to create via will, seen and unseen, deliberate and mindless, are stored there and pop in and out of awareness like a river littered with trash. And of course, really, there is ONLY imagination, the things I look out and see in the world are also past creations of my will, somehow projected out from the inner-light, my unpure land shining down into a harsh, and sometimes unwanted world.
IT’S ALL ABOUT WILL. It’s my past and my future and my path to awakening. And while I am on this journey, my task is to reign it in each moment, as an endeavour, as best as I can. The uncreated, virgin part of my mind is the primordial Buddha, and this is somehow rising out of the unmaifest, the underlying Dharmakaya, and each thing my will creates is making a world of the manifest, like a mother feeding a chick, each of my mental creations is a real thing and a real place and each pure, beautiful act of love or creating in my own light is a form of worship, a gift in another world for the divine.
Until we are fully awake masters, it takes some conscious effort to reign the mind, a bit like needing a map until you know the terrain. We can go forward if we know the broad direction. Generally, we need to be mindful and aware of the mind and mental processes. We need to disassociate our feelings and emotions from the outer world we perceive with our senses, the dead past which our will created previously, unseen over time, and orientate our feelings from the inner-world in the present moment where we not only have full dominion but true satiation actually lies.
We cannot be passive observers of the inner land, but must use will to alter the unhealed past we have stored in our light, and once some positivity has been created and the inner light is more accurately shining our conscious intentions, including awakening, then to soften the barrier between the seen and the unseen, shining out the inner pure lands into the dead past our eyes can perceive. WE CAN SEE WHAT WE WANT TO SEE. The following writing is some pointers on how to go about reigning the mind and taming the bull each moment you are ‘off the cushion’.