1.The General Meaning

The purpose of all lay and devoted followers, and intelligent or ignorant persons in keeping a daily diary is to review their mindful and mindless actions, and to review the progress of study and their practice of Won Buddhist Precepts. For those who are undergoing moral training in a school or monastery, the purpose of keeping a regular diary is to record their daily hours of work, their income and expenditure, how they have used their minds and bodies, and their awakenings and impressions.

2.How to Record a Daily Diary

(1)In order to re-examine whether one has done things mindfully, one should record the number of times one has or has not acted with mindfulness. When one carefully selects which actions should have been done and which actions should not have been done, then one is being mindful of one's actions. When one has not acted selectively, then one has been mindless in one's actions. In the beginning, the standard by which one determines which actions were performed mindfully is not related to whether the results of those actions were good or bad but to whether they were selected carefully. When their study matures, however, then the standard becomes whether the results of the actions were good or bad.

(2)when one is undergoing training in the subjects of Cultivation and Study, one should record the number of hours spent on each. To review the regular Dharma meetings and regular intensive training sessions, one should record one's attendance at the regular Dharma meetings and the training sessions.

(3)One can review the state of one's practice of the Precepts by examining and then recording the number of incidences of one's having violated the Precepts.

(4)Those who are not literate, or who are unaccustomed to handling documents, may use the 'Bean Count' method to check whether they have performed their actions mindfully on not. Whenever one has selected an action mindfully, a white bean is put into a pouch, but a black bean is placed in the pouch for every action performed mindlessly. One counts the number of times one has been mindful or mindless by counting the number of black and white beans.

3.How to Keep a Regular Diary

(1)when recording the working hours in a twenty four hour day, one must determine which hours were valuably spent and which were wasted. The goal in the future is to be careful not to waste even one minute.

(2)When recording one's daily income and expenditure, if one has a low income, one should seek a way to raise one's income by working diligently. When one sees that one's expenditures have been too great, one must try to decrease one's expenses as much as possible so that one may prevent poverty and thereby establish a comfortable life. Regardless of whether one is a wealthy person or not, one should try to eliminate the evil habit of living an idle life.

(3)The purpose of record the conduct of one's body and mind during a day is to help one discriminate one's right conduct from wrong conduct and to determine whether or not the sum of one's conduct deserves to be blessed or to be punished. At the same time, it helps one to become enlightened to the Principles of Right and Wrong, Advantage and Disadvantage, which promotes the ability to select right conduct and abandon wrong conduct.

(4)while recording one's awakenings and impressions, one can review one's progress in coming to understand the Principles of the Absolute Unity and its Components, and Being and Non-being.