Faith and Practice
Buddhism says: Your Karmas determine your life, and you can transform your negative karmas to positives for better and conscious life ahead.
Step 1: Reality Check – Difficult to Accept
You don’t believe that you might have done something wrong in the past; you question your karmas and think, ‘why is it happening to me when I haven’t wronged anyone?’ The Buddhist teachings (or the first step of the teachings) make you learn to hold yourself responsible for all that’s happening in your life. Your karmic cycle is what makes you happy or makes you suffer. All those whom you hold responsible for your sufferings have no role to play in deciding the consequences of your bad karmas or good karmas.
This is the most difficult step to take and understand, to move ahead towards Buddhahood.
Step 2: Decision to Kick-start or Back-off
Now, you either accept (by analyzing or not analyzing, initially), or remain onto your own judgment and skip or keep questioning faith.
If you accept and move on, in the long run you might get answers of all you questions and doubts you had in the beginning. And if, you skip or remain only own your own judgment, you would not find any escape out of your sufferings.
So, decide!
Step 3: Acceptance
How to accept?
The steps to acceptance are:
- Consider yourself very normal as a human being, and very natural to make mistakes, but also willing to bring changes for betterment.
- Don’t analyze (at this point) what wrong you have done; rather think that there might be many things which you might have done that might have hurt others in some way or the other.
- Be firm on your decision of changing all your negative karmas (thoughts, words, decisions, and actions) into positive karmas, and to clean up your karmic cycle.
- Accept your bad aspects and practice faith, determination, good words, positive thoughts and actions to incorporate the changes you are aiming for.
Step 4: Practicing
Start practicing faith without judgment and without looking for instant results.
(But if you think deeply and analyze, you have already started receiving the instant results of your decision of keeping on with the faith, in the form of peace that you found after accepting yourself and continuing with the faith)
Step 5: Feeling Positive
Gradually you start realizing that acceptance is the first step towards peace and positivity. You also start analyzing things now, which you left in the initial few steps. A lot of things will cross your mind and you would be able to understand the difference between right and wrong. You also might get some events or incidents of the past in your head which you might relate to your present condition. Here, you get the real picture of analyzing what is positive and what is negative.
Step 6: Answers to Your Questions
Now, you will not question the circumstances, situations, or God, but you’ll look for answers, to come out of these low life conditions, and every time you will get the same answer, ‘Keep faith, do positive, think positive, be patient! Everything will come to you in due season, but you must not get impatient. You have already held God’s hand by accepting and moving forward towards change, and He will never forsake you. Keep practicing; limit your dependency on people, situations, or things. Dig in yourself and connect to faith every time you feel good or bad.’
Step 7: Vigorous Practice
You will start practicing more in desire to achieve peace and happiness. You will look for better ways of dealing with things. You will let go of a lot of things and also receive a lot of things while practicing faith. Your Karmas will start to transform and you will start appreciating even the smallest positive change in your life. And here begins the Contentment.
Step 8: Contentment
Now you don’t hold others responsible for your happiness or suffering. You practice to improve yourself. You also help others to understand the value of happiness within them. Here your life starts escalating from low life condition to high life condition within no time.
Step 9: Results
Now you have achieved peace, love, and contentment within yourself, and have only Faith to rely on. And then you don’t practice to have something all the time, but you practice to be happy with all that you have. You become a pro in dealing with things by yourself and practicing Faith.
Step 10: Happiness
You always keep on being happy and inspiring others, and seek opportunities to grow your Faith in hard times.
Photo Source: http://www.diamondway-buddhism.org/