99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

1: ESTABLISHING CONSISTENCY

Instruction: Sit for five minutes EVERY day, rather than sporadically for longer periods of time

My earliest experiences with love were rarely consistent. In childhood, people came and went, and those that stayed were often erratic in the attention and care they paid me. And so, when I came of age, like many people, I chose romantic partners and friends who were exciting but never quite present. I did this till depression and illness caught up with me and I realized that consistency in love is a matter of survival. I still slip up, but more and more, I choose people on the basis of their loyalty and solidity of affection. And yet I suffer daily from the sense that those around me could forget about me at the drop of a hat. This is why I meditate: to build a safe home in my mind, a home I never had as a kid but am determined to live in before I die.

Ajaan Fuang used to say that meditation is a small, simple act done repeatedly. People don’t like the “small, simple” part. They want “transformational” workshops or “mind blowing” TED talks. But beneath our desire for spiritual excitement is a deep fear of disappointment: What if being alone with myself turns out to be a let-down? The big epiphanies, like the girl I met at the bar who never called me back, don’t wound me too much when they turn out to be empty, but what if I, left alone with myself, fail myself? That’s a fear that keeps us from meditating, or being happy, for that matter. But the only way past this fear is through it, by showing up anyway, with a steady, simple self-love.

So here’s the practice: If you’ve ever wanted to meditate or haven’t in a while, start with five minutes today. FIVE MINUTES. Start by wishing yourself well and telling yourself the words you most need to hear. Then switch to breathing in a way that feels comfortable. What kind of breath feels best right now? When five minutes are up, STOP, thank yourself for showing up for yourself, and resolve that you will do another five minutes tomorrow. No hype, no fireworks. Just the small but growing certainty that you will be there for yourself in the morning.

- Paul Weinfield

1: Establishing Consistency

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

2: OCCUPYING THIS BODY

Instruction: Sit with a sense of dignity and grace

For the first ten years of my meditation practice, I struggled to sit at home. Meditating with others in classes, on retreats, or even in streets or parks was fun, but there was something about doing it alone at home that filled me with terror. It was only when a therapist pointed out that, as a child, I never felt “at home” in my own home that I realized what was going on: my meditation practice was getting stalled around the idea of taking up space, of claiming a right to be alone, of occupying my surroundings fully. As a teacher, I notice many other people suffer from this issue too.

In art, the Buddha is often depicted sitting in meditation with his hand touching the ground. The story behind this gesture is that Mara, the personification of self-doubt, once came to the Buddha and asked, “What right do you have to sit here seeking enlightenment?” The Buddha touched the earth to show that the ground beneath him supported him in his efforts to find true happiness. I’ve often thought about what a brave gesture that is. In moments of extreme self-doubt, it’s so easy to think you aren’t worthy of the spot you’re sitting in or your desire to be happy. At those moments, no amount of intellectual thought helps. You have to occupy your seat with stubbornness and grace, no matter what you or anyone else thinks.

So here’s the practice: Today, keep up your meditation-habit. Five minutes is perfect! Use those five minutes to fully occupy your seat. Use a chair if you can’t sit comfortably on the floor. Sit up straight, but not ramrod straight, head facing forward, eyes closed, hands resting at ease in your lap, with a sense that you are doing something important. Focus on your breath while reminding yourself that no one else is going to give to you the sense that you belong here. You’re going to have to seize your place on this earth by yourself.

- Paul Weinfield

2: Occupying This Body

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

3: WISHING YOURSELF WELL

Instruction: To experiment with different ways of wishing yourself well at the start of each sitting.

I’ve always had trouble knowing what I want just for myself. As a kid, I was all too aware of the conflicting desires of those around me, and I found it less threatening to help others get what they wanted than to have desires of my own. I’m a classic “caretaker” type, I guess. But really, I think we’re all the same: very few people are consistently in touch with what they want, and often, in fact, those who seem to have the most desires only have those desires because they are looking for love and acceptance from others. We’re all in a partially deluded state about what makes us truly happy.

One of the Buddha’s great discoveries was that the true fulfillment of desire exists in the mind. Normally, we’re so caught up in external strategies for getting what we think we want that we don’t see the deep, inner wish for happiness that underlies everything we do. Most people, in my experience, are actually ashamed to focus on their wish for happiness. They’d rather run around manipulating others or working themselves to the bone than close their eyes and wish themselves well. And yet, until we start to explore the mind’s own capacity for cultivating and experiencing fulfillment, we’ll never find happiness outside.

So here’s the practice: Today, before you meditate or even get out of bed, experiment with different ways of wishing yourself well. Put a hand on your heart or picture yourself smiling, resting, or being free in some way. I find it helpful to ask, “What do I wish for myself most of all?” and to search for a one-word answer to that question that resonates in my body. Remember this, above all: you are listening to yourself, so start to practice telling yourself the words you most need to hear.

3: Wishing Yourself Well

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

4: PURIFYING YOUR INTENTIONS

Instruction: To work with intention at the start of and throughout each sitting.

There’s a saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Maybe you’ve thought it before. I certainly have. I struggle at times with having a “martyr complex”: a desire to help others while assuming they will never help me in return. My teacher was one of the first people to notice this and tell me, “Don’t give to people if your intention is coming from a place of aversion.” His guidance helped me see just how many of the supposedly “good” deeds in this world backfire because they are motivated by some unhealthy intention: competition, self-loathing, etc. In reality, good intentions always lead to good results, not because the world is just (it isn’t,) but because the happiness that lies inside us reveals itself whenever our intentions are in line with real love.

Meditation is a great example of a healthy action often taken for unhealthy reasons. There’s a lot of desire nowadays to appear “spiritual” in order to give off an air of luxury or success or moral superiority. On the other side, there are also a lot of people who hate themselves and think they need to meditate to redeem their otherwise shitty lives. These intentions can quickly turn meditation into a hell-realm, and in fact, my experience is that we find meditation difficult primarily because our intentions for practicing it aren’t healthy. So if you’re interested in meditating, you have to start by making sure your intention is compassionate: you have stress and pain in your life — we all do — and you are sitting here only to find freedom from these afflictions.

So here’s the practice: Today, in your sitting and throughout your day, focus on setting and maintaining a compassionate intention. Remind yourself that you want to be happy. Then focus on a way of breathing that supports that intention. When your intentions are clear and loving, your mind will settle down in its own.

4: Purifying Your Intentions

5: Brightening The Mind

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

6: THE BREATH AS A REFUGE

Instruction: To explore the perception of the breath as a refuge.

Back in my twenties, when I went on my first silent meditation retreat, I rode home with an old man who asked me what I was most excited by in life. I started blabbering about my musical career, my girlfriend, the books I was into. After a while, I realized I was talking a lot, so I asked him what he was most excited by. "Basically just meditation," he said. At the time, I was horrified that someone could have so little else going on in his life besides meditation, but as I get older, I revisit his words a lot. Have my jobs, relationships, and experiences brought me happiness? Sometimes, when I was present enough to appreciate them. But looking back, I see that the same things that made me happy also brought me a lot of pain, and that, furthermore, the difference between that happiness and pain wasn't outside me — it was in my mind all along. And meditation, I see now, was never about leaving the world to become some sort of monk. It was about realizing the importance of my mind, first and foremost, in determining the course of my life.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, "Don't think of meditation as one more ball you have to juggle. Think of it as the solid ground you're standing on while you do the juggling." In other words, before you try to be a "success" at meditation, you have to see it as the still point of your spinning world. That means making up your mind that, whatever it takes, you are going to make the meditation as pleasurable as you can, you are going to make it a refuge. That all starts with the breath. If you see following your breath as a chore, you're going to start thinking of all the other chores you have to do. But if you see the breath as a safe place away from all your problems and responsibilities — a safe place you both need and deserve — you can begin to enjoy the ease and pleasure that exist in the breath. That's when meditation becomes exciting. That's when it becomes a habit.

So here's the practice: Today, in your sitting and throughout your day, think of your breath as a refuge. Make sure to focus on the breath where you feel a sense of ease. If the sensations of breath at your nostrils or the rise and fall of your belly don't feel good, pick another spot! You can think of the breath as an energy coming through your forehead or a feeling at the center of your chest. "Breath" means not just physical air, but the whole movement of the nervous system with every inhalation and exhalation, so experiment with different focal spots. But try to make each breath feel good. Try to make it be something you look forward to receiving, at long last.

6: The Breath As A Refuge

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

7: FREEDOM FROM REGRET

Instruction: To experiment with different kinds of breathing.

My head has been an explosion of regret lately. For whatever reason, I’ve been assailed by so many thoughts about all the past things I wish I’d done differently: financial matters, emotional matters, the last conversation I had. Regret is tricky, because we do want to see our mistakes clearly so we don’t repeat them. But when it comes on in tidal waves, something else is usually up: our clear seeing is probably tainted with some preconception about what we deserve and where true happiness lies. And if we don’t drag these preconceptions out into the light of consciousness, life will seem like a series of walls we keep hitting, whereas life is more like a series of telephone poles that are easy to go around if we aren’t set on having to go a certain way. Leonard Cohen wrote, “Only one thing made him happy and now that it was gone everything made him happy.” But you have to see that for yourself.

The breath may seem unrelated to regret, but working with it is one of the best ways to loosen the grip of preconceptions on our lives. We have so many preconceptions about the breath itself: what it can do, what kinds of breathing actually feel good. Many people, for example, come to meditation believing they’re *supposed* to breathe in some deep, “yogic” way, whereas more shallow or rapid breathing might be what they need. The larger question of what you need to be happy begins, one breath at a time, with being able to breathe in a way that brings a sense of ease and support. Until you develop sensitivity to what feels good here in the present, regret about the paths you haven’t taken will overwhelm you.

So here’s the practice: Today, experiment with different kinds of breathing. Take one breath any way you like and then replicate that exact breath 4-8 times. Watch what happens when you observe one kind of breath over and over. Watch how sensations change and new pockets of ease open up. This is your life, full of more paths and solutions than you ever could have imagined.

7: Freedom From Regret

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

8: ACKNOWLEDGING GOOD QUALITIES IN THE MIND

Instruction: To acknowledge the development of good qualities in the mind.

There’s a part of us that wants to change without having to be aware of change. We like taking a pill and discovering, to our surprise, that the headache has gone. We like sitting on a treadmill, watching TV, and discovering that, without knowing it, we’ve finished exercising. Having to actually watch the process of change can be terrifying, so we prefer to distract ourselves while the work is being done. But the mind, unlike the body, doesn’t change without awareness, so at some point, if you want to actually be happier, not just more fit or more productive, you have to look at the mind and the process by which certain thoughts lead to others.

One of the Buddha’s discoveries was that what we put our minds on re-arises in our experience. That means that changing your life involves BOTH living differently and also noticing that you are living differently. If you do the first without the second, your results will be mixed. For example, if you practice generosity but fail to acknowledge that you have been generous (either because you are scared of being egotistical or of judging yourself harshly,) you won’t experience the full joy of generosity, and eventually, your generosity will turn to resentment that you are doing more for others than they are for you. And if you meditate but fail to acknowledge your effort in meditating, eventually the mind will rebel against having to work for you without any appreciation in return.

So here’s the practice: Today, in your sitting and throughout the day, acknowledge your good qualities after you develop them. If you do something kind or healthy, make sure to appreciate it in your mind. Be careful of the idea that you ought to be modest. You can’t work on your bad qualities until you can appreciate your good ones, just as you can’t weed a garden until you know which plants are worth keeping and cultivating.

8: Acknowledging Good Qualities In The Mind

9: Seeing The Value Of A Settled Mind

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

10: PRACTICING FREEDOM OF AWARENESS

Instruction: To choose ease in my breath and body

Part of me finds the idea of having to “show up for myself” insulting. Part of me thinks, “Maybe I won’t get out of bed until someone else shows they care.” But what I’ve learned is that the feeling of not being chosen, though shaped by early experiences with others, is now caused primarily by my not choosing myself. We’re all like this, I think. And when we look at depression this way, we start to understand the importance of what I call the Reverse Golden Rule: Do unto yourself as you wish others had done unto you.

Meditation is the art of choosing yourself, not by pampering yourself or talking yourself up on social media (for how deep can these gestures go?) — but by choosing, above all, to put your mind on good things: your breath, your blessings, the ease in your body. And once you make up your mind that you are going to exercise your freedom of awareness, you find that ease and wellbeing are ALWAYS present somewhere in body and mind. You just have to hunt for them.

So here’s the practice: Today, in your sitting and throughout your day, make it a “treasure hunt” to find ease in your breath and body. Take inventory of any places where you have pleasant sensations and gather these sensations without forcing them to be bigger than they are. You don’t need a huge display of fireworks. A little ease is all you need if you are willing to put your awareness there and only there.

10: Practicing Freedom Of Awareness

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

Each audio segment contains a short explanation of a particular technique, a discussion of its importance, and a guided meditation. The guided meditations tend to be between 5 and 15 minutes long, but new practitioners sitting without guidance should feel free to do just five minutes daily. Consistency is everything. These techniques and practices come, more or less, from the Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism. Emphasis is on developing a sustainable, daily practice, rather than on creating one-time experiences that may dazzle but do not transform.

99 Keys to a Daily Meditation Practice

Popular tracks