Do all the changes and demands of your everyday life make it hard to find time to simply be? You’ve read it right: to simply be is the way of Zen. It is easier said than done, so we have created formal meditation and all those rituals to help you ease into that habit.
If you were like me, you probably have spent most of your life with a different habit. It is the habit of doing something. We always do something to the point that we get a little too caught up and in our heads with all the doing. So we need to reprogram a different habit to be more relaxed, aware, and awake. We sit and do nothing: just breathe and watch your mind.
Like starting any new habit, it can be hard to find the time to do it. I’ve been there too, just like anyone who meditates regularly. Jonathan, our president has shared these good tips about how he finds the time to practice:
I try to handle this by attaching my daily meditation to some other routine that have I already have locked in place. For example, I pray every morning shortly after I wake up and I’ve been doing this for most of my life so it’s a very strong habit. I now meditate immediately after this and it seems to stick. It’s more difficult with meditation in the afternoon or at night where I don’t have firm habits locked in place. In the past, I made a practice of meditation immediately after I got home from the lab (~5 pm) and that usually worked. Now that I don’t go into the lab anymore I have tried to set a specific time in the evening but I do find it more difficult to initiate the meditation that way, especially if I happen to be in the middle of some assignment for work at the time. Trying to be “present” throughout my work and taking small breaks in between to reset my perspective has made it easier to detach from it when the time comes, but I do struggle with that in particular and it’s been where I’ve been putting most of my energy for the past couple months.
To wrap up, here is a quote from Tich Nhat Hanh: “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” We are all together in this.
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