Sage advice is usually simple and straight-forward. We may enjoy intellectual work, lengthy discourses, many books. Their glow can continue throughout the hours and days. But we are not exclusively cerebral beings, and what we hear or see or feel must touch our hearts and resonate with our daily habits.
Simple advice can shut off the intellectual spigot of too much speculation and adjust the flow to what we can handle or what we actually need at the moment. Simple advice points us to practice, which is nothing more than what we are doing every day, every minute — and how conscious we are of what we are doing.
Simple advice is an antidote if taken in small homeopathic doses — not too much or one frustrates knowledge and understanding, but just enough and we are strengthened and reinvigorated for the challenges of daily life, cured if the malady is deep-seated (miasm, in homeopathic terms).
The Burmese forest monk Taingpulu Sayadaw, when asked how to practice, replied: “Eat less, sleep less, read less, talk less.”