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How  To  Use  Vows

If you were to start a business one of the first things you would probably do is to come up with a basic mission statement. What does your business do and what does it aspire to do. In fact we probably would never start a business without some basic kind of mission statement. But most of us don't even take the time to consider a mission statement for our lives. We have this one extremely rare and precious life and so often the days just slip by without any clear trajectory or aim. Bhartrhari the 5th Century poet writes:

"The span of a human life is at most a hundred years
Half of which is lost to night
And of our waking time
A portion is claimed by callow youth and time-worn age;
Our prime is spent in futile desire, always unquenchable,
Or in servitude, or suffering, 
Or alienation, or disease.
Where then do we find happiness
In life less certain and more transient than a bubble on an ocean wave."

One of the earliest documented techniques on how to use vows comes from the autobiography of Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin's technique was to figure out the specific areas where he felt like he needed the most work and then he kept a daily journal to track his progress in these areas. To practice this:

• First look around the vow museum and use it to inspire ideas about the areas of your life that you feel restrict your freedom and your piece of mind the most. Are there certain behaviors that end up causing you to feel unhappy or disordered or alienated? You may want to consider ways you could use your body, speech and mind to benefit both yourself and others more. 
  
• Buy a little journal or notebook and make a list of the vows that you want to work with for the next week or month or six months.
• Begin noting infractions and success in your journal throughout the day. For example Ben Franklin's vow #6 is "Industry - Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." Whenever he found himself wasting time, he would put a little asterisk next to that entry in his journal. And his goal was of course to have asterisk free days and weeks, or at least a reduction of asterisks.

Here are some examples of how he organized his journal which you can use for inspiration.