There are actually many ways for monks to practice. As a monk, practice can be divided into internal cultivation and external cultivation. The so-called internal cultivation is to cultivate the mind, while the external cultivation is to cultivate the precepts. Some precepts are very important in the hearts of some practitioners.
"The Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment" mentions that a qualified good teacher should meet ten conditions. But in this day and age, there is little hope of meeting a virtuous teacher with all the ten virtues, so we can settle for the next best thing. But there is still a bottom line, and at least three conditions must be met. The first is to have right views, otherwise you will go astray; the second is to keep the precepts and be pure, which represents the virtues of a good teacher; the third is to have the compassion to teach disciples, otherwise there will be no reason to rely on them.
How to determine whether a good teacher is truly practicing? It is indeed difficult. Many times, the true practice may not be visible to us. Ordinary people are often obsessed with some appearances, such as whether they wear tattered clothes, whether they eat one meal a day, whether they live an extremely difficult life, etc., and use similar standards to evaluate their spiritual practice. Of course, these can also be used as references, but they are not the most critical.
Because Buddhism is a method of the heart and ground, practice is mainly reflected in the realm of internal realization and in the way of mind, not just in external aspects such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. As a scholar, if you don’t have certain insights, it will be difficult to choose the true and good knowledge. When we do not have the ability to judge, we can only choose some good teachers recognized by the religious circles, which will be relatively safer.
Monks are people who are empty of all four elements, but they are different from ordinary people in many aspects. They have removed the concept of life and death in everything. I am just doing some things, such as meditating and chanting Buddha, reading sutras and worshiping, and practicing various Dharma methods, and I am still devoted to Buddha. The first thing you should practice is to let go of some obsessions, not to be angry, not to have a lot of desires, and to be strong without desires. This is The most important point in Buddhism is that how to deal with these desires is to use precepts, which can be divided into internal precepts and external precepts.
As for the practice of some monks and some Zen practices, you need to grasp some of the most basic principles, such as various methods of meditation and introduction to operations, and breakthroughs are very methodical. The first is to sit in meditation. After sitting in meditation, you need to enter into tranquility before you can achieve Zen enlightenment and do some enlightenment meditation.
The first thing that monks, as external cultivators, have to do is to be able to endure the boring loneliness. This is to get rid of some mortal delusions, purify the heart, and cultivate the mind.
The general practice steps are to have morning prayers, then bow to the ground with five bodies, and then chant sutras. After breakfast, we will do zazen, open meditation, zazen, stillness and meditation.
As a current monk, there are actually many different ways and means of practice. Especially for the study of Buddhism, I have conducted some studies on the Internet, especially at Longquan Temple in Beijing. Cultivation is very regular, and the people there are also very knowledgeable, and they are all very high-level practitioners.
As a monk, the most important thing is to understand. If you have achieved thorough understanding, , it is naturally a kind of practice.