How to start a daily meditation practice
Whenever I tell people that Buddhist meditation has changed my life, I get self-conscious about coming off like a cult leader or infomercial salesman. But it’s true — there’s a certain quality of being that marks the time after I began sitting every day.
Before meditating, I rarely felt content. Everything — what I wanted and didn’t want — seemed outside of me and therefore out of my control.
Yet in the double bind that is human suffering, I’d blame myself for not getting what I wanted. Something always seemed to be missing, and I spent much of my time lost in stories about what that some-thing was and why — I just need to work out more. I need more money. If I just workout or clean the dishes more, maybe she’ll love me like she used to.
That’s not to say that meditation has solved all of my problems. The downs still come — they’re just shorter, and the ups are higher. And almost everything is out of my control — I’ve leaned on other practices, like therapy and journaling to dig deeper into my particular habits and patterns.
But meditation helps me more clearly see where the line is between what I do and what is done to me; between what my real intentions are and what I’ve been told they should be.
In short, daily meditation practice has made my experience much richer. It’s helped me notice more often when I’m telling myself stories about the past or future, which breaks the pattern and allows me to bring my attention to the present moment, where the real, raw, and potent stuff happens. And, increasingly, that’s all I need to feel content.
My daily practice started after a three-day silent meditation retreat. On the way home, so calm that I was driving ten miles under the speed limit, I said to myself: “I have to get back to this feeling.”
Here’s what I learned, the books I read, and who has inspired me along the way…
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