I second so much of the advice here.
Life in a monastery is so mind numbing dull, limited, sheltered and hyper-repetitive. Same old same old, day in day out for years. Talk about ruts! I am often somewhat skeptical about whether that is the best way to "deepen" one's practice, or better to be out in the chaos and tumult of the world and our day-to-day lives, simply applying this Practice and Teachings to life ... the doctor's visits, the shopping, the sick kids, the wars in the news. That is where the rubber of Buddha meets the road of the Way! I sometimes argue that folks fled to monasteries and isolation who could not handle the hard training in the outside, dusty world, and monasteries are for the folks who need protection. Buddha and young Dogen never said that practice happens only in monasteries, and both said that the outside world is the
harder place. Monasteries are traditional the easier, more sheltered, worldly ties cut place for practice. (That does not mean that monasteries are bad, and they are tough places to practice too ... and we all benefit from being in such a setting sometimes if we can manage it ... but simply that we tend to romanticize them a bit or consider them the only "real" place of practice. They never were.)
In other words ... the wife, the kids, the job, the sick in laws, your own problems ... are the place to "deepen" one's practice.
They are your "monastery" and place of practice when the heart knows so.
Next, as was pointed out, there are always a few things to add like a meal chant, another book to read or podcast. But there is also going deep deep deep into what one is already doing, and that involves ... not quantity ... but relaxing one's heart and mind and simply being fully present with what one is doing. So, if even just taking a single bow, lighting one candle, reciting a vow for 10 seconds ... do so with nothing else in the universe for that 10 seconds. That 10 seconds is timeless and boundless, holding all the time and space of the universe, if you make your heart as timeless and boundless as all time and space. Strange as it sounds, one sometimes goes deeper by just being smaller, then dropping all thought of "big and small."
Finally, as was mentioned, our's is a very strange-wise Path that is the medicine for the Dukkha (Buddhist Suffering) arising from our very human need for more more more, need need need, keep me entertained! Yes, these are two old talks that I hope folks really listen to ...
SIT-A-LONG with Jundo: WHAT's NEXT!?!
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...-s-NEXT%21-%21
Watching The Clock Rackin Up Points
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...ckin-Up-Points
Finally, yes, our practice is a hike through the mountains where every step by step is its own total arrival. The foot of the mountain or the heights, each twist and turn, smooth walking or falling in the mud, is ALL "Buddha Mountain." Each step or stumble is its own Total Arrival with no place else to be. We sometimes sit and sometimes walk, but we keep going. No place to seek, but we keep moving forward. Stumbling, we get up and keep going again and again. Mud puddles and poison ivy sacred and also part of "Buddha Mountain" ... yet we try to avoid them. Walk walk with each step the finish line. Do so for some months or years and then, one day, one sees that such walking has become second nature and one has truly gotten somewhere ...
Gassho, J
STLah