In Practice
Lay followers undertake these training rules at the same time as they become Buddhists. In Mahayana schools a lay practitioner who has taken the precepts is called an upasaka. In Theravada, any lay follower is in theory called an upasaka (or upasika, feminine), though in practice everyone is expected to take the precepts anyway.
Additionally, traditional Theravada lay devotional practice (puja) includes daily rituals taking refuge in the Triple Gem and undertaking to observe the five precepts.
Read more about this topic: Five Precepts
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)