7 Practices That Restored My Buddhist Faith

Starting in my early 20s, I immersed myself in the study of Soto Zen, first with my Japanese root teacher, and after his death with his American successor. I lived in monastic or semi-monastic settings for a total of 15 years. Early on I was ordained as a priest; at some point I became a teacher myself. During that time, Buddhism was my whole life.

Then, after 15 years my faith in this practice, once so strong, turned to doubt. I began asking myself: What do I really know that is true? Who and what can I really trust? I also asked: What has become of Lew, the person I used to be so many years before?

I felt I needed to re-examine everything. I took off my robes, left my teaching position and my residential community. I rented a house in town, got a job, and set about living an ordinary life with my wife and 9-year-old son. I began taking apart the "carburetor" of who I was and painstakingly re-assembling it, piece by piece. Each time I picked up a piece, I had to ask, what is this? Can I trust it? Out of this lengthy period of self-examination I came up with seven foundational practices in Buddhism that I felt I could really trust, that were solid, trustworthy and effective. These were: Sitting, Walking, Chanting, Bowing, Precepts, Robe and Sutra.

I can't say that all seven are universal to every school of Buddhism, but many of them are, and all of them are common to the meditation schools of the three vehicles -- Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana.

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