Keith:
Just wondering if anyone knows of any autobiographies by lay practitioners who have become meditators and progressed far along the path while living lives in the "conventional" world. I'm interested more in how they juggled the commitments and resolved the obvious conflicts between following a "spiritual" path (is there another desciptor for this?!) and living a life in the "normal" world.
As you look through DhO and AN, you'll probably be surprised at the lack of conflict between having a consistent personal practice and "the conventional world". Many people have progressed far along the path with limited and even no retreat sessions, simply doing 30 minutes to an hour once or twice a day. In the early days of DhO, there was a smallish community of people posting their daily practice and people providing feedback. Pretty much everyone that had a consistent practice went pretty far, regardless of their daily family (single, married, married with kids) or working life (unemployed, easy work, lots of drama work).
So it really isn't about balancing the spiritual and conventional, the real challenge is simply finding a way to organize your life so that you have a consistent sitting practice.
Hope that helps in some way!
