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DAY 1:

Track Your Practice

Practice Reminder

One of the problems people have in establishing a daily meditation practice is finding the time. Do you have five minutes right now? I assume you do, since you picked up this book with the intention to read it. Go sit! Practicing is far more important than reading about practicing. If you want, you can support your sit with one of the guided meditations available here: https://wisdomexperience.org/sit-meditation-guides-from-bodhipaksa. Or scan this QR code:

Today

Today we have something of a strategy dump, with several helpful things I encourage you to do: tapping into the power of celebration, recording your practice, changing your understanding of when a day begins and ends, and setting reminders.

Strategies

Celebrate

Assuming you just meditated, I’m going to ask you to do the following: Right now, say to yourself, out loud or in your head, “Yay, me!” Punch a fist in the air or raise both arms over your head, like a runner crossing the finish line. Celebration is important, because it creates pleasant feelings. Those feeling help you to feel good about practicing, making it more likely that you’ll do it regularly. This is an important strategy that we’ll explore further on Day 8, “Celebrate the Small Stuff.”

Record Your Practice

Having a visual record of your practice is another powerful strategy for cultivating a Rock-Solid Daily Meditation Practice. Here’s a link to a twenty-eight-day calendar that you can download and print out to track your progress: https://wisdomexperience.org/sit-meditation-guides-from-bodhipaksa. Or just scan this QR code:

If you already have a paper calendar (and if you’ve already meditated) you can put a big check mark on it for today. It helps if you have the calendar page in a place where you’ll see it during the day.

Now you could in theory use a calendar on your computer or phone, but I do not recommend this. A phone calendar is not as immediately visible or accessible as a paper one that’s taped to your refrigerator, and a more concrete reminder of your practice tends to be more effective. You have to remember to look at your phone’s calendar before you can see it. 17If you forget, then it has failed as a reminder. Plus, phones themselves are a source of distraction.

What Is a “Day”?

We’re aiming for a minimum of five minutes of meditation every day. I’d suggest that for the purpose of tracking your progress you define a day biologically, starting when you wake up and ending when you go back to sleep, rather than a calendar day, starting and ending at midnight.

The reason for defining days in this way is that some of us decide we’re going to meditate before we go to sleep at night, but for whatever reason we stay up until after midnight. If it’s 12:05 a.m. and you realize you haven’t meditated since you got up, then from the point of view of the calendar, you’ve blown it. You missed a day. But from the point of view of human daily rhythms, it’s still “today” and you can still meet your goal of meditating daily. Understanding a “day” in this way is an effective strategy.⁷

Set a Reminder

Allied with keeping a visual record of our meditation is the use of reminders. We like to think that we’ll remember things, but our brains aren’t very efficient, especially when they’re juggling complex schedules. The human brain is essentially an electrochemical computer made of fat, protein, and water. It’s a miracle that it can function at all, and it’s not surprising that it is fallible. So set yourself some kind of reminder right now. It can be low-tech, like a sticky note by your bedside or on your bathroom mirror, or it can be more high-tech, like a repeating daily reminder on your phone. This is yet another strategy. Go do it. (Yes, I mean now.)

Assuming you’ve meditated today, your reminder should be to meditate for a minimum of five minutes tomorrow, preferably at a specified time. (We’ll talk more about scheduling in tomorrow’s chapter.)

We’ve already learned a lot of strategies, and it’s only Day 1! There are a lot more of these tricks to come. That’s all for now, except to say that if you haven’t meditated yet today, make a detailed plan of when and where you’re going to do it. Perhaps the time is now.

I recommend reading the following section only if you have the time. If not, skip it, move onto Day 2 tomorrow, and come back to read today’s “Going Deeper” section at another time.

Going Deeper

The principle of conditionality, also known as dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda in Pali), is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching, or Dharma. “Whoever sees conditionality sees the Dharma. Whoever sees the Dharma sees conditionality,” he said.⁸

Conditionality means that things happen when—and only when—the conditions are right. To give an everyday example, a healthy plant arises in dependence upon water, as well as nutrients, air, appropriate temperatures, and so on. The healthy plant ceases to exist when any of those conditions is no longer present—as you’ve no doubt found if your ability to care for houseplants is anything like mine.

Conditionality means not just that things only happen when the conditions are right, but that they will happen when the conditions are right. Any given thing will inevitably come into being if the necessary supporting conditions are present. With the appropriate conditions, a seed will develop into a healthy plant. If it doesn’t, then some condition was missing.

Now, if we want to create a regular daily meditation practice, we often assume that the most important supportive condition is willpower, 19because that’s what we’ve been told all our lives. But willpower—forcing yourself to do something you’re resistant to—is not the answer. The importance of willpower is something that the Buddha seems to have had fun debunking. One time he conjured up a scenario that I imagine gave his monks a good chuckle:

The monks reportedly said “No, Lord.” (Although some of them might have been thinking, “Is this a trick question?”)

The Buddha repeatedly pointed out that wishing for something to happen is a fruitless exercise unless we take the appropriate practical steps to produce the desired outcome. He emphasized that spiritual practice will be successful even when we don’t have an overt wish for success, as long as we’re doing the right things. “If they follow the holy life even when having made no wish, they are capable of obtaining results . . . Why is that? Because it is an appropriate way of obtaining results.”¹⁰

This book is based on the principle of conditionality. To become Rock-Solid Daily Meditators we need to adopt strategies that help create and sustain a daily meditation practice. These are habits that bring your practice to mind, make you keen to practice, and make it easier to meditate than not to meditate. Of course we need to want to meditate daily. The desire to meditate daily is a necessary condition for success. But that desire is not sufficient in itself. The idea behind willpower is 20that all you need is the desire, and that success comes from making the desire stronger. (Honestly, it’s exhausting just writing about it!) So, having the desire is a necessary starting point, but no amount of desire is going to bring about significant change in the absence of strategic action.

So, in this twenty-eight-day program, we’re engaged in a practical exploration of conditionality. What conditions—actions or outlooks—support the arising of a Rock-Solid Daily Meditation Practice? What conditions hinder us, and how can we learn to avoid them? Exploring these topics, and putting the lessons we learn into practice, is the purpose of this book.

Today we’ve learned the importance of several of those conditions: prioritizing practice over reading about practice, keeping a visual reminder of our progress, creating reminders, and thinking of days as being organic rather than dictated by the calendar. That’s already a lot, and we’ll learn many more supportive conditions over the rest of this twenty-eight-day program.

Conditionality, as well as being the general principle that things exist only if we create the appropriate conditions, is often formulated in the early Buddhist teachings as lists of experiences leading from suffering to enlightenment. Meditation and the states arising from it are frequently a part of these formulas. Without going into too much detail, a common pattern in these spiritual flow charts is that living ethically (that is, with kindness and mindfulness) leads to freedom from remorse, making it easier for us to meditate. Meditation in turn leads to joy, ease, and calm, bringing about a deep stillness that makes it easier for us to observe our experience closely. And this close observation of our experience—especially its impermanent and insubstantial nature—leads to awakening, or enlightenment, which is freedom from suffering.¹¹

It’s good to remember, then, that in creating the habit of daily meditation, we are also creating a life that’s more joyful and satisfying, and that leads toward enlightenment. Right now, right here, you’re on a path that leads to Buddhahood. And you’re not alone. We’ll be together every step of the way.

Reflection

Spend some time thinking about a good habit that you already do regularly. It might be something like going to the gym or learning a language on an app. Write down all the conditions you can think of that support that practice. If I were to write about brushing my teeth, I might list things like “It’s part of my morning bathroom routine. The toothbrush and toothpaste are right there in front of me. I enjoy running my tongue over my smooth, clean teeth.” And so on. Write down everything, no matter how trivial it may seem. If you do something regularly, there are probably lots of supportive conditions.

Last Words

One by one we put into place the conditions that support the creation of a Rock-Solid Daily Meditation Practice. We need to want to establish that habit, but wanting is not enough. What’s important is that we intelligently work to make sure that every internal and external factor we can work with is designed to support rather than hinder our desire to meditate daily.

See you tomorrow!