How to Practice at Home
For those wishing to complement their at-home Buddhist practice we now have the course for you! The EVERYDAY BUDDHIST Course Pathway now includes Course 24-D “At Home Practice” with Rev. Ellen Hamada Crane. It is about bringing your Buddhist practice into your living space on a daily basis and offers a multi-faceted course covering topics such as (1) creating a home altar (obutsudan), (2) learning practices like incense offering (oshoko), meditation and chanting, (3) using mindfulness throughout your day and (4) a guide to home study. Rev. Crane will instruct you on creating a home environment for practice, having an attitude of engagement, and finding a place of serenity and reflection.
The obutsudan class highlights why having a home altar is important and the components needed to create your own home altar. It features many of the aspects covered in the EVERYDAY BUDDHIST Live Chat session held in May 2021 with more details and added information. Learn about the four essential requirements for a bonafide Shin Buddhist altar as well as other important components that will enhance and individualize your home altar. You will learn where to obtain an obutsudan and/or how to create your own sacred space for your Buddhist practice at home. Learn the distinctive aspects of a Shin Buddhist altar that should not be confused with altars from other schools of Buddhism such as Zen, Jodoshu, Shingon, or Tibetan (if that is of concern). Rev. Crane will share the fun and excitement of building your own sacred home space.
Once you have created your home altar you will learn how to use it as a practice space. Instruction and a demonstration on how to properly do an incense offering (oshoko) will be given. Rev. Crane will also lead you through the protocol for conducting either a meditation or chanting session, and how to interpret notations in chanting books for using the bell and modulating tempo. Of course, one can practice in whatever manner they wish in their home, but it is instructive to learn the traditional protocols and choose whether to use them or not.
The next class will feature ways to bring mindfulness practice into your daily life. It will feature examples from real life persons, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, who use a mindfulness approach throughout their day. Their simple and elegant orientation to life’s everyday occurrences is insightful and inspirational.
Lastly, there will be recommendations on books for self-study, especially for those who are not part of a sangha and are pursing the Buddhist path essentially alone. While having a sangha, a group of fellow Buddhist path travelers, is an essential element of the Three Jewels of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), we recognize that that may not be possible for some. Self-study is equally important for those with a sangha as well because the essential inquiry always to be answered no matter the kind of Buddhism one engages in, is to ask the question, “Who am I?” It is our hope that an “At Home Practice” will go a long way in helping to answer that question.
