We are very fortunate in that we come from a long tradition,
A two and a half thousand a year tradition,
In which there has been a process of evolution,
Filtering out and discovering the practices that are most powerful in causing real permanent benefits in your life.
These benefits come in two forms.
When people come first of all to study,
I often ask them what they are looking for,
And when we are talking about these benefits,
The first form that the benefits come in is in the area of what we can call problem solving.
People who want to sleep better,
To deal with their stress,
Perhaps access their creativity,
They have some kind of a problem that they want to solve,
To work on.
And then there is another level of benefits.
Certain people come because they want to find the place where there were never any problems in the first place.
And for hundreds and hundreds of years our tradition has helped people both find solutions to their problems and also to find this place where there never were any problems.
In order to get these benefits,
The absolute key thing is to do the practice.
So very often when people think about starting off practicing,
Starting off a Zen meditation practice,
What I strongly recommend is a very traditional approach called a hundred days of building the foundation.
Somebody decides that they are going to do 20 minutes or 30 minutes meditation practice,
And they do it every day.
They tick it off on a diary or a calendar day by day by day,
And they do a hundred continuous days of practice.
Now as they tick off their days,
If they miss a day,
Then they start again at day one.
So that by the time they have finished a hundred days,
They have finished a hundred continuous days of practice.
And I strongly recommend this kind of approach for a number of reasons.
One of them is that it builds a habit,
A habit of practice.
Us human beings,
We are creatures of habit.
It is much easier to keep a habit going than to start something new.
Apparently one of the things that we have in short supply in our lives is willpower.
So the more things that you have in your daily life that require willpower,
The less likely you are to maintain them.
So if you can build a habit,
Essentially you need less willpower to keep it all going,
And that means that it has a greater chance of success.
Not only that,
Meditation practice works a little bit like learning a musical instrument.
That quality of a little bit of practice every day is far,
Far more powerful and effective than occasional splurges of practice.
The continuity makes a big difference.
Also having practiced continuously for a hundred days,
It is relatively easy to get a kind of a clear sense of what your meditation practice is going to do for you in your life.
Everybody has good days and bad days,
But over a hundred days you can get a general sense of the trajectory or the direction that it is leading you.
Once you have done a hundred days like this,
Then you are set to go further.
Now,
Going further is absolutely essential if you want to get the best out of your meditation,
The best out of your life.
Now,
There are two things that I think really help in going forward.
One of them is to keep what we call a meditation diary,
To have a notebook or a diary that typically what we recommend is for,
Particularly when you are starting to practice,
A few minutes after each meditation period you just,
As it were,
Dump out,
You just write whatever comes to mind,
Just thoughts and feelings that have arisen in the practice,
Just reflections on it all,
You just use it as a kind of a brain dump.
Also,
It is a place where you can tick off your day by day practice up to your hundred days.
The value of having this kind of brain dump,
This meditation diary,
Is manifold.
One of the key aspects is,
Within our meditation practice,
We are not,
In Zen practice at least,
We are not particularly interested in the content of our thoughts and feelings.
When we have a beautiful,
Peaceful thought arise and pass through the mind,
And we have perhaps an unpleasant or unpeaceful thought,
We actually treat them both identically the same.
We don't select or isolate out or in any way try to filter or censor what is arising and passing through in our practice.
So we don't deal with the content.
Nevertheless,
It can be very helpful to have a little space in your life,
In your time,
In which that content can be dealt with.
Sometimes,
For example,
Painful memories might arise,
Or very blissful feelings,
Things which you want to reflect on.
And particularly,
This can be helpful over time,
Where you can start to pick up patterns of times when things arise,
The way that things change,
The way that your life actually begins to shift and change.
So that's one very significant value of having a meditation diary.
But more than that,
It's a forum,
A place,
In which you can really tweak or optimize your practice.
For example,
Somebody who is part of their motivation for practice is they have a blood pressure problem.
It's very easy to get a blood pressure measuring instrument these days from any chemist,
Very cheap.
After every meditation period,
You can measure your blood pressure and keep a record of the results.
More than that,
You can start to explore,
Do I get a more powerful effect if I meditate in the evening as opposed to the morning?
Is it more powerful to meditate twice a day for ten minutes rather than once a day for twenty minutes?
You can start to really explore how to optimize your practice,
And what gets measured gets actually built upon.
It's just a function of human psychology.
Another example is that you're finding a very peaceful kind of state within your meditation practice,
And you want to begin to transfer this into your life.
Your meditation diary is a place in which you can track your efforts to do that.
You can start to notice,
You can even give yourself a one to ten score every day.
How peaceful have I been going through my life today?
Very easy to do.
How happy have I been?
The more you track these things,
The more your body and mind respond to that,
And these effects actually bed in more powerfully.
So you can,
As it were,
Optimize your practice.
Coupled with this,
Having a meditation diary and using it very actively is one thing that can really keep your practice moving forward with a powerful,
Developing cutting edge.
The other thing I strongly recommend is developing a clarity over what you're doing,
A resolution or a vow.
Your vow may be on the level of I'm practicing because I wish to lower my blood pressure,
Because that will help me live my best life and be of benefit and service to others.
Your motivation,
Your vow may be more far-reaching than this,
But I strongly recommend that you put a little time,
A little energy into developing a very clear vow,
As clear as you can,
And then every single time you sit down to practice,
You bring it to mind first thing before you actually begin to practice.
I remember one student who was working with me here.
He had an opportunity to put a little more attention into his practice than normal,
Just through the way his job was shaping up.
This was about October,
And he came up with his vow,
And his intention was,
�Kencho by Christmas�.
I remember he wrote this down and this was what he brought to mind at the beginning of every single meditation practice.
It actually took him one week.
He did it in one week.
But establishing that clarity of intention,
That clarity of vow,
Is what makes things happen,
What gives the practice that cutting edge.
So having this set or this intention,
Having this means of recording your practice,
These two elements,
I strongly recommend you look towards introducing as a way of getting the best out of your practice and therefore getting the best out of your life,
Living the best life that you potentially can do.
We live in a situation in which we have tremendous freedom.
No government is trying to control our behaviour in this field.
We have safety within our society.
London has never had such a low crime rate.
We have abundant,
Good quality food.
We have an extraordinary opportunity to live extraordinary lives.
And with an opportunity like this comes a certain measure of responsibility.
It is up to you what you do with this great freedom,
This great opportunity that we have.
I strongly recommend that you think about how for you you can use this opportunity to do it.
It is optimal because who knows how long things are going to be like this.
We never know.
All we know is how it is right now.
If we look after the present,
If we do our very best in the present,
We set up our best possible future.
