So I was contemplating reality and the path of practice in the shower this morning, like you do.
It's a buddhist temple... and a pun!
As my friend Fiona might say, "wat?"
Practice is such a confusing idea. On the one hand, there's the "do it, get better until you're perfect" meaning. On the other there's the "Have a thing you do regularly, keep doing it regularly" meaning.
Mindfulness is waaaay more that second one than the first one.
As you may have noticed, this is day 67 of my daily gratitude practice. My blog seems to be missing eight days. It's not that I didn't have a thing I was grateful for each day. I most certainly did. There was this awesome dirty illustration tumblr I found, some nice emails I got, hearing back from an illustrator I like, seeing a friend I thought might be dead making progress in his health, some gains at work, connection with my partners, all sorts of things.
But I didn't write them down.
Why? I'm honestly not sure. It could have been exhaustion. (I've been pretty wracked lately.) It could have been being off my routines. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter? Because philosophical practice isn't about perfection, it's about application.
So, these past several days I've been "off my practice", I actually wasn't. I put it aside so I could pick it right back up again. There's no chastisement needed. It's not a problem. It's just living.
You do. And then you do some more. Sometimes you do it great. Sometimes you don't. Keep on going. Or, as I love to say, "no starting, no stopping, only doing."