Clarifying the practice.

When I say practice, I'm not talking about a technique that happens once or twice a day. I'm talking about a way a life is organized.

Formal sitting practice is part of it, but it is not the center of gravity. The center of gravity is bodhicitta, a life dedicated to waking up fully to be of service and benefit to others.

A bodhisattva is not an identity you add on to an otherwise ordinary, busy life. It is a life that is deliberate. That is a funny word when you look at it. It looks like de-liberate, or the opposite of liberation. But it means to claim by intention. Claim by responsibility. Claim by the willingness to meet whatever arises without stepping out of the field.

Seen this way, practice itself is the system we are building around that intention.

Meditation is one engine of that system.
Discipline is another.
Patience under pressure.
Attention in conversation.
How you relate to anger, fatigue, success, disappointment.
How you work. How you speak. How you heal when you're broken.

All of this is practice.

This is why framing practice as a goal-oriented breaks down so quickly. A bodhisattva’s life cannot be reduced to outcomes. There is no finish line where suffering is solved and the work ends. The work is ongoing because life is ongoing. Conditions keep changing. Situations keep demanding response.

The system, then, is not designed to get you somewhere else. It is designed to keep you in—in relationship, in responsiveness, in contact with reality as it is. Not liberated to somewhere else. Liberated here, now.

From this perspective, failure stops being a disqualification and becomes part of the training. Losing patience is practice (thank god). Seeing that you're lost is practice. Repairing harm is practice. Beginning again without drama is practice.

A life dedicated to practice is not a life that feels stable all the time. It is a life that can tolerate instability without abandoning its orientation. Movement, stress, and chaos are not interruptions to practice, they are the conditions in which practice proves itself.

This is also why the path is not mystical in the way people sometimes imagine. It does not require divine experiences or rare talents. It requires commitment. Diligence. Honesty. The willingness to stay engaged when the fantasy of control falls apart.

Practice is the system because practice is what keeps the life coherent.

Not perfect. Definitely not calm. Coherent. Whole.

And that wholeness, between view, intention, and action, is what allows compassion and wisdom to keep showing up, even when things are messy.

That is the practice of the bodhisattvas.