Getting directions to Carnegie Hall. 

Have you heard the one about a visitor to New York City who stopped a passerby and asked how to get to Carnegie Hall?

The cheeky reply was “practice, practice, practice.”

No one gets to any level of proficiency without practice, focused practice. Consider mental afflictions and bad habits. Doing away with them is never an easy thing. We can all testify to that. It takes hard work and sustained effort to lessen and eventually eliminate them. To accomplish this, we need daily teachings to remind us of the importance of our work, and to encourage us.

We also need reminders to not be enticed by situations and people who consistently elicit our repetitive, harmful reactions. Suitably equipped, we need to put everything into practice. The more we do something, the better we get at it.

And gradually, with “practice, practice, practice,” we will remain calm in the face of situations that would have unsettled and waylaid us in the past.