One takes every opportunity we can to increase the power of Right View in the mind. The formal postures are helpful because of the silence factor. The silence factor and the concentration factor that one may develop at that time allows one to go deeper into the mind, and we may get in touch more with our reactions to it, and then elaborate around this particular subject. This helps us actually see these characteristics more easily in our normal life. And then the opportunities to reflect in an informal way greatly increases, because we are used to reflecting on these things deeply. And then we are able to see more deeply in our normal life, so that things that we used to not see we become more aware of.
This is called reflecting internally and externally. As we reflect more internally about these subjects, we often use the experiences from our normal life to reflect more deeply, about what we have seen in normal life. Because we are doing this on a deeper level in silence, when we are not rushed or worried about other things, it has a chance to really settle down deep into the mind. And this allows us, as I said, to see it more externally, so that when we focus on a sight or a sound or something, it hits us more, we reflect about this, then we put ourselves into that same truth at that time, reflecting internally and externally.
There are a lot of different examples of this in the scriptures, where people were able to become enlightened because of this internal and external practice. For instance, one Buddhist story tells of a nun who had been practicing for some time focused on the water as she was washing her feet. Because she had been reflecting on these things for a long time in her practice, she started reflecting about the water as it started to move away from her feet and sink into the earth. Then she likened this to her own body and the impermanence and death of her own body. In the story, she became fully enlightened at this time. If this nun had not been reflecting in deeper ways, she may not have been able to actually focus on washing her feet at that particular time, and then gain deeper insight.