The Buddha Project Reply To: Do you always meditate at the same time and for the same length?
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What a great question! Thank you for asking it!
What an amazing opportunity Venerable Gendun and the sponsoring centers are providing for us by helping to form this wonderful community of meditators. One of the many favorite thoughts that Venerable Gendun has shared is, “Buddha-hood is a path of friendship.”
I don’t have a fixed schedule. In many ways, this can make it more challenging to meditate regularly. When I do have something in the morning, I wake up 1.5-2 hours earlier to make time for practice. Obviously, during a retreat a fixed schedule is extremely important to follow.
What I have found works is that I’ll fill a glass of water the night before and as soon as I wake up I drink it. Nothing like dryness to interrupt a meditation session. Then I go to the bathroom, if needed. Then I start to meditate. Similar to what other teachers have taught, I’ve found it to be really important to do the morning meditation as soon as possible after waking up. The longer I wait, the more my mind starts to get busy. For this class, I often times get up just 10-15 minutes before (7:30am start in my time zone) so that my mind is a little fuzzy rather than starting to be overly active.
In the evening, I do it right before bed. I’ve found that the majority of the time any sleepiness or dullness tends to brighten up and go away as I practice. Maybe once a month the energy just doesn’t want to arise and I make a note of what I am doing and purposely stop the meditation after 15 minutes. A few months ago, evening practice tended to give rise to a very agitating energy and it would give me insomnia. It’s become a more mellow energy over time that has made it a lot easier to sleep as I’ve followed Venerable Gendun’s wise instruction.
Similar to the others, I have found that this course has increased the amount that I meditate. Starting to find more longing to practice the longer that I have kept to a daily schedule.
