Like Habit, On Purpose

Dominique Townsend

Practice is trying.

Not in the sense that it wears

one down, but in the sense that

one tries, making an effort toward an idea.

Practice to train the hand, eye, hips,

vocal cords, foot, toes, elbows.

Practice involving bodies.

The mind, we were told, is not the body.

Sometimes we point to the head,

which might be the seat of the mind.

Then we point to the chest,

where the heart is also nested.

Look there, she reminded,

not at my finger, pointing.

Practice is like habit, but on purpose.

And so we practice to habituate.

Repeating an effort again and again

deliberately becoming capable.

Tonglen is giving and taking—

giving what is wanted,

and taking what is awful to me.

This is all in my mind,

but what about the body?

That’s what yogis do—

The real ones don’t stop at imagining.

Are their limits abstract or actual?

Are the body’s limits the limits

of practice? Where the mind resides,

unconfined, limitless, or where the ego

resides, are those the limits?

Beyond the pale

Scales on the piano

Digging potatoes

Forming letters with a pencil

Again and again

In sand and on paper

Practice transcends the individual.

In the sense, for instance, that we can

all give and take without using up

giving and taking—

Dominique Townsend is Associate Professor of Tibetan Buddhism at Columbia University and was previously Associate Professor at Bard College. She is the author of a book of poems, The Weather & Our Tempers (BAP 2013), a book about Buddhism for children called Shantideva (Wisdom Publications, 2014), and the scholarly books A Buddhist Sensibility (Columbia University Press, 2021), Longing to Awaken (University of Virginia Press, 2024), and All This is Dreamlike (forthcoming from Columbia University Press).