The main thing is to wake up each day and catch your mood and train of thought and mood quickly, and have a strong intention and commitment to have a disciplined mind, today, and as a practice for the rest of your life. From the chanting practice you should have a range of ‘replacement images’ which can be used to evoke the strong emotion to counter or widen anything that arises.
For example, a while ago I came across an advertisement for an animal charity and it was an anti-poaching campaign. There was a photo of a baby rhino standing, actually leaning, into it’s mother’s body. The mother’s just been shot dead, so the baby will be standing there until it realises she’s never getting up, or likely some predator will take it or something. But there’s something about that picture. Compared to the mother, it was absolutely tiny; it must have been just born. There’s such a strong feeling of compassion which arises in me whenever I see that, I mean, I can just visualise it and this strong sensation rises up in my chest, and of course, it’s not about me, it’s much wider, it’s not even directed towards humans, but all suffering beings.
So this image is a suitable mini-Nembutsu/replacement thought for any moment-to-moment thought that comes up which is based on my self. Perhaps a mental picture of being abused in school, and I can replace the mental pictures with the rhino pictures and a strong wish and affirmation, that ALL ABUSED CHILDREN BE SAFE, to widen it from myself to many, self-pity becomes compassion because the emotional energy is already risen by the memory, but it’s essential nature is free.
Your practice should have a number of ‘goto’ feelings and images. Just make sure you are writing your intent on them. For example, if you find something like the rhino picture and this will be added to a chanting practice, you will see it and internalise it as a recurring part of your consciousness, than make sure that your intention is WRITTEN ON IT. You don’t want your mind to think you are trying to manifest a new career as a poacher! Use an app to superimpose a compassionate intention, such as ‘I pray all living beings may be safe and loved’. It can help to locate the mental picture you are trying to replace physically, where is it existing in your body? Become aware of this for a while and then sense it’s energy, try and move it towards the crown to be healed, to ask the crown energy above you for a ‘blast’ of energy to descend and clear it before you commence with the replacement image.
You can also alter what comes up repeatedly, to change a feeling or state. This is best explained by an example. Years ago I lost some long term employment and accommodation situation and ended up a bit adrift, but eventually transformed everything and ended up in a new situation. Actually, looking back it was the best situation I was ever in, perhaps the happiest time of my life. Well it centred around a business, I didn’t work for them but was associated with them, but it was really being embedded in a whole area and scene and it was like this for about two and a half years.
But suddenly, the whole area was sold out to developers. It was all being literally pulled down. It’s a wrenching thought even now because this whole community that is the happiest time of my life is now a car park. Anyway, it was such a long, drawn out death. The only glimmer of hope was my friend, who was running a restaurant there and decided to move to a nearby location and she is a well-known local matriarch and so a lot of people were used to hanging out in her place. She showed me it while it was being refurbished, and it was quite tiny and I didn’t see how this community could continue, but in my mind I imagined it as the entrance to a huge courtyard, and this courtyard was like a medieval fete on the inside with all my friends and acquaintances socialising within.
This was the replacement thought. I felt such worry about it at the time because my life was there, my livelihood and friends and the thought that it would all be bulldozed was devastating. Each time this feeling came up, I held the replacement thought with certainty and surrender. It wasn’t a moving image. I imagined the entrance to the new place, with flags and banners on the outside and knowing that inside was the community and a life I could belong to. I would hold the image for around a minute to replace the state of fear with a state of surrender.
I had to go away while it was closing, perhaps that’s for the best, but my friend sent me pictures of it all being pulled down and building rubble everywhere. When I got back there was a bit of adjusting, but I ended up, long-term, in a much better situation and the new business was small, cramped and not anywhere near as comfortable to hang around in and have a social life, and perhaps more than half the people from the community I know disappeared, but over the next year, the remaining half were there and I made new friends, had new adventures and things worked out for me.