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Advice for Lazy Meditators
This looks like me when I was young.
When I was young,
I loved the idea of meditation,
but I did not like the practice.
Nowadays,
you might hear
of the benefits of meditation,
and maybe you receive 1 or 2 teachings
and might be inspired
about meditation,
but the problem is
you cannot practice meditation.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow . . .”
Then, the time is gone.
Why is that?
Because of habit.
Normally,
when new things come into our life,
we need to build a new habit for that.
In order to build a new habit,
if you think, “From today on,
I will meditate forever,”
then it becomes very heavy,
and we do not like heavy things.
So do not think,
“I am going to meditate forever.”
Just think about 30 days.
Just 30 days!
Why 30 days?
After 30 days
a new habit
begins to build.
And another important thing
is the volume.
Do not promise to meditate every day for one hour.
You cannot survive
more than three days.
Maybe, at the beginning, do 4 or 5 minutes,
or even 1 minute
if you are very new to meditation.
Maybe 3 minutes.
Something which is easy and doable.
And just think of doing it for 30 days.
Then, what you have to do
is maybe just
get up in the morning.
You do not even need to get out of your bed.
I do that normally.
In the morning, I wake up, and in my bed
I practice one hour of meditation
before I take a shower.
If you want, you can do that.
Try to have some certain time when you practice.
Maybe mornings are better for you.
Maybe evenings are better for you.
If sitting is difficult for you,
then do walking meditation.
And if formal meditation is difficult for you —
formal meaning
the time is fully dedicated to meditation —
maybe you can start with informal meditation.
Informal meditation is
whenever you remember
meditation.
It is mostly, “Oh, I forgot to meditate!”
The moment you know you forgot,
awareness is already there.
“I want to meditate!”
That is difficult, right?
“Oh, I got lost!” is quite easy.
Normally, it is easy to find the negative one.
The positive, “I want to meditate,” is heavy.
But, “Oh, I got lost,”
the moment you know you are lost,
there is mindfulness, there is awareness.
Maybe you can count
how many times you are lost.
Maybe one day you are lost 10 times.
“Wonderful, I was lost 10 times today,”
meaning you came back that many times.
These are really important
to build new habits.
And remember that actually you can meditate
everywhere, anytime,
with anything — with any object.
Remember these things
because normally laziness says,
“Oh, I do not have time,”
“I do not have the right environment,”
or “I do not have
the right conditions.”
Actually, it can be anytime,
anywhere,
with anything!
That is only the case with meditation.
Otherwise,
there is nothing you can do that with in life.
You cannot study everywhere.
You cannot eat everywhere,
anytime, anything.
You cannot do work everywhere,
anytime, with anything.
Only meditation can be done
everywhere, anytime, with anything.
Of course, at the beginning,
we begin to learn meditation with one object
and slowly, slowly we expand that
to anything, any phenomena.
Once we are
inspired
to develop the habit of meditation,
after that meditation becomes easy.