I have really been contemplating how to live my life more harmoniously. How to maximize my happiness from moment to moment, day to day. I am reading a really good book now titled Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das. In his book, he gives some exercises that you can do to incorporate Dharma with your daily life. Dharma is truth, reality, the spiritual way, the path to enlightenment.
Breathe and smile. Relax. Take a moment to let go, and just be. Enjoy it.
Do standing meditation, while waiting in line for a movie or bus or train. Just stand there, breathe, and awaken.
Whenever you sit down or stand up, stop and appreciate a moment of change, of freedom.
Whenever you cross a threshold, go through a doorway, or enter a room, see it as entering a temple and do so reverently.
Walk barefoot in the grass or on a thick carpet and feel fully each sensation with your toes and soles.
Walk on the edge of a beach, where the water meets the sand, with your eyes closed, feeling your way along, totally vigilant and attentive.
Walk slowly upon crunchy snow or autumn leaves, attending to the crackle of each step.
Sing, chant or pray until you totally forget and lose yourself, then stop and drop into a moment of inexpressible isness, completely beyond concepts, stories, and strategies.
Experience simple, repetitive work like sewing, embroidering, or even washing dishes as meditation in action, focusing totally on the moment in hand and nothing else.
Try doing manual labor in a sacred manner, just doing what you are doing as if it is the ultimate divine service, for it is.
When eating, chew each mouthful fifty or one hundred times, getting the most out of the food as well as being further nourished by the richness of each moment.
Try chewing one single raisin for several minutes and experiencing everything you can about it.
Before speaking, notice what motivates your words.
Set a beeper on your watch or alarm clock to ring every hour on the hour, reminding you to wake up and appreciate the miracle of every moment. Call yourself by name and say, "Wake up!"
Recognize the Buddha-light shining in everyone and everything and treat others accordingly.
Enjoy the indescribable joy and peace of meditation.
Live your life. Find the things that make time stop for you. For me it is riding my bike, reading a good book, taking pictures. I am in the moment, living the moment.
Live your life with childlike innocence, wonder and enthusiasm. See the world for what it is-a big, beautiful, magical place full of mystery and promise.
There is one more thing I want to leave you with. There is this game I like to play called the elevator game. When you are standing at a bank of elevators waiting, see if you can guess which one is going to come. It is a good exercise of being in the moment and enjoying it. And I found out today from a woman I happened to be on an elevator with that her four year old son likes to play the elevator game and is uncannily good at it.
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