The purpose of our group is to support our practice of Buddhism in a non-monastic environment. It’s a different experience to monastic practice because we don't have the advantage of the monastic lifestyle as recommended by the Buddha. He called it 'the most fertile ground for cultivation'. We don't have the benefit of that on a daily basis so we have to use whatever tools are available. Obviously a daily meditation practice is the starting point, ideally morning and evening. It’s not easy in our busy society. One trick is to develop the ability to observe the not-wanting to do it and make that part of the meditation.
Modern technology has provided a wonderful set of tools for accessing the Dharma. Free Dharma talks are available on the World Wide Web. These can be downloaded into an MP3 player such as the iPod which makes them available to us at any time.
The biggest resource we have is the Buddhist monastery itself. Because Buddhism is new to the west we don't have monasteries on every corner, so it’s more of a challenge to make time to visit. It’s hard to appreciate how fortunate we are to be born at a time in the west when Buddhist monasteries actually exist. Imagine all the hundreds of years of our history when the Dharma didn't exist for people in the west. Even if it’s a couple of hours drive to the monastery how worthwhile it is to walk among a living expression of the Dharma. If it were not for the monastic tradition the Buddha's teaching would not be available to us, so we should make contact with it, keep in touch with events via the world wide web and try in some small way to make it a little part of our lives.
The common thread of all our practices the development of good habits. In Pali the word for development is Bhavana as in metta-bhavana (development of living-kindness). We can (and do) develop bad habits. We can also develop good habits, like meditation practice. It has been said that the development of habits is like the threads of a rope. Each individual act is a single weak thread, but as we built it up it becomes very strong.
Our group can help us with our bhavana. I know there is a resistance when we have to leave our cosy home on a dark winter evening to go to a meditation group. If nothing else listen to the resistance and investigate it.