Day 20

People often say that it's essential to have a to-do system of some sort. If you don't, you're bound to remember that letter you have to mail from the office when you're at home in bed. Or remember that you need to take out the bedroom garbage when you're at work. With a to-do system, you can relax with those things, knowing they're covered & written down somewhere. You can stay present rather than obsess on them.

All of which is to say that the mind has a way of picking the least opportune moments to go down certain pathways. Today I was present in my meditation for periods of time, but I also got carried off by creative ideas for my musical. Good creative ideas. Creative ideas I was sort of unhappy to let go of and come back to the present. Creative ideas I wanted to get up and write down so I wouldn't forget.

I guess the trade off with meditation is that I am training my mind to remain present to whatever it is doing. So that when it is time to be creative, I will stay in that zone, instead of thinking about hot fudge sundaes or erotic photographs.

And for the record, the best creative idea my mind got distracted by was putting a song called "Day Job" back into the show with an earlier edition of the lyrics, and having the dancers do polyrhythmic percussive choreo that's somewhere halfway between "Stomp" and Tom Waits' pipe-clanging hijinks on "Sixteen Shells". I didn't forget.

Day 17

That post a few days ago where I said I get carried away more by career fantasies than by sex fantasies? I may need to re-think that...

Day 15

I missed meditating yesterday. I suppose that 90 sits in 90 days means I can double up and do two meditations in one day some time soon. I look at this as yet another way to keep coming back. When distracted, notice and re-commit to the breath. When distracted, notice and re-commit to daily sits.

It would be easy to say "See - you couldn't do it." Very easy. That would get me off the hook of continuing to try. Self-denigration is apparently a particularly western way of copping out.

Today's was a peaceful sit. Some moments of good presence, some moments of distraction. I may be running a bit of a fever. Went on a lovely trip in my mind to a place where I owned a cabaret on Denman St. and flew in my weirdo friends from around the world to perform. Put together a budget. An excel file in your imagination is no more exciting than an exvel file in real life. And yet some part of me prefers it to noticing exactly what is before my eyes.

What nutty beings we are...

Day 12

Today was a run-of-the-mill sit. Periods of presence and focus alternating with periods of discursiveness. I find it interesting the fantasies that take me away for the longest periods of time. Most people report sexual fantasies as being the most compelling, followed by food fantasies.

Mine seem to center around career. I imagine my musical becoming successful, with critical accolades pouring in. The wealth of a hit coming my way is a minor detail in this dream. Conspicuously absent form my fantasy of success are images of joyous, entertained and possibly mind-broadened audiences exiting the theater in great smiling droves. In meditation you get to face yourself, without filters.

Knowing what hooks me the most often on the cushion helps me keep aware of my obsessions & sensitive areas & blind spots off the cushion. It's easier to say "Ah... this email makes me angry because it threatens my desire for praise and good reputation." or "Am I prone to trust this guy too much because he's promising me exactly what I desire?"

I suppose it's also a good barometer of where my abundance lies, too. I'm fortunate to have lots of love and sex and good food around me, so my mind doesn't go searching for it obsessively when it travels away from the breath.

Day 11

It is very difficult to sit in meditation when you know that right after you finish you will go to a fetish party where people wearing next to nothing will flog other people wearing next to nothing. In cages.

Day 10

Another sit. I notice that what often takes me away is a piece of music. An earworm. These are more persistent for me than any sort of story-based thought. Yet they quickly become the soundtrack for mental images - music-video style. And once the images come, the stories begin, and I'm off to Japan in my mind.

In fact, my earworms are SO persistent that the effort of re-focusing away from them towards breath can become a once-every-three-seconds activity. Which can often seem similar to pushing away, choking off etc. Which is not helpful to the intention of peacefully abiding with the breath.

I wonder if this phenomenon is more pronounced in musicians?

Day 9

I missed posting yesterday, but not sitting. The last two sits have been similar in that my mental discursiveness has been fairly consistent. I do not seem to be gaining much discipline in terms of being able to focus on my breathing for progressively longer periods.

I do, however find I notice more quickly in my day-to-day life when I have become lost in thought when my attention should be present: conversing with a boring person, trying to find an elusive song lyric, riding a bicycle in heavy traffic etc. This has immediate tangible benefits.

And finally, I find I am less attached to the idea of progress when it comes to the meditation practice. It has been documented over and over that one's practice will fluctuate in terms of focus and discipline. To expect a linear progression is to add something extra to the sitting-with-what-is. Someone said of meditation that we are all always beginners. So the lesson is to keep coming back. Which will sound familiar to anyone who has done the other '90 in 90'.

Day 7

Very late sit tonight. Unexpected work snafu meant I did not get home until 11:20. Fairly focused, all things considered. I notice I have been less drawn to junk food and to pornography since I have started this practice. I've been intentionally trying to kick the junk food, and have had no opinion or intention about the porn. These last two sentences brought to you by the department of too much information.

To sleep.

Day 6

Today was without a doubt the most difficult sit yet. My mind was absolutely all over the place. Sexual fantasies, lyric ideas, career concerns etc. Totally swept away over and over and over again. I was able to catch myself and return to the present on a number of occasions, but remaining there was simply not happening today.

The idea that the relaxed 'here & now' is the natural state of my mind was not able to hold me. In fact, today's sit felt like a total rebuke to that idea. Dog owners know that a dog simply doesn't want to walk in a straight line, all you can do is pull it back on course. That's what my mind felt like today. Which is where faith comes in.

People often associate faith with the acceptance of wild supernatural ideas without a shred of evidence. It gets a bad rap. But faith can also be about accepting something that you have no direct experience of, based on the experiences of others. Sometimes solely on the experience of others.

The reason ninety sits in ninety days has resonance for me is that 12 step programs recommend that newcomers go to ninety meetings in ninety days. The idea is that this persistence will establish new patterns of thought and behaviour and create a habit for life. To the newcomer, the question "How is sitting in a bunch of mildewy church basements for three months going to change my life?" is a reasonable one. The answer usually is "It just will. You have to experience it to find out."

So to hear that Thich Nhat Hanh recommends ninety sits in ninety days as a way to establish new patterns of thought and behaviour and create a habit for life seems very familiar. I have direct experience with the benefits of ninety meetings in ninety days. It was perhaps the first big leap of faith I took in my life. And there were days when it all felt like a bunch of weird-ass creepy voodoo and I wanted to quit. But at the end of it, my life was changed.

So this meditation persistence is about experiencing it to find out. Back at it tomorrow.

Day 5

This was an interesting sit. I felt very clear and present for much longer stretches of time for the first half, then as wild and discursive as ever for the second half. Again the music earworm would not let me go. I suppose that's a good thing, if you're trying to write a catchy song. I also decided to sit in the morning and blog in the evening. I notice that when I have interesting thinking phenomena going on during a sit, I add an "Oh. I'll blog about this distraction" distraction to the distraction. I thought leaving several hours between sit and blog would alleviate this a bit. It did. It also means I have less memory of the workings of my mind during the sit.

Day 4

Funny. Today my meditation was as all-over the place as ever. The earworm was gnawing away (spent another 5 hours on the same song today). Distractions abounded. But the process of returning seemed much gentler. Less like shifting from fifth gear to first.

That's all I have to say about that, because I'm off to a party at a house full of burlesque dancers.

Day 3

Sometimes when I meditate, it feels like I'm trying to train myself to do some sort of mental ballet. If I apply sufficient discipline, I will shoehorn my mind into this beautiful, counterintuitive state. My discipline may be harsh or gentle, but it seems like I'm training my mind out of what it naturally wants to do - chase every wild hare of a thought that comes up.

In his book "Turning The Mind Into An Ally" Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sakyom Mipham says that a still, empty peaceful state is the natural state of the mind. When we meditate, we are actually just returning our minds to where they naturally want to be. Thinking of this today was helpful. The brief gaps between thoughts had more of an "Of course." quality to them, less of a "Oh, you've got it - try to hang on!"

I was working on a song for seven hours before sitting down, and I had a crazy earworm going for a lot of this sit. I wondered if an earworm really qualified as a thought, as it was not a verbal concept. Again, wondering if an earworm qualifies as a thought definitely qualifies as a thought. And planning to blog about it later means you're off and running away from where you are.

At this point in the practice, when I'm lucky to have a few seconds here or there without getting carried off by thoughts, the process becomes about persistence. Noticing every time it happens. Returning to the breath every time it happens. Not getting discouraged. Not going crazy. Chuckling and starting fresh. Again and again and again.

Day 2

I like coffee a lot. Making and drinking it is usually my first order of business when I wake up. I usually choose to meditate early in the day, too. So I often sit down on the cushion with a cup (or two or three) of coffee zinging through me.

I don't know if the caffeine agitates my mind and keeps it jumping all over the place more than it would otherwise. I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. This morning I made a pot, and then sat down to meditate as it brewed. Other than one or two thoughts about how great the coffee was going to be when I was done with this meditation nonsense, it was a more relaxed, focused sit.

I read a passage yesterday about how the in-breath and out-breath is a good metaphor for things coming together in forms, and then falling back apart into formlessness (think birth and death, the founding and eventual dissolution of a company etc.). This helped me. Perhaps on some level I think that focusing on breath is some arbitrary choice - a convenient place-holder. An arbitrary choice that has been passed on for two millennia, right?

I had plenty of thoughts today during the meditation but I can't remember a single one of them. They must have been important. I'll leave you with one from yesterday. Just before the artificial gong sound on my iPhone meditation timer app went off to let me know that twenty minutes had passed, I heard a baby crying with amazing intensity outside my window. The sound brought me back to the present more than focusing on my breath had. I listened closely. After about thirty seconds it became clear that it was actually two babies crying with amazing intensity. I wondered if the analytical function of my mind discerning that it was actually two babies crying counted as 'thinking'.

Then I knew for sure that wondering if the analytical function of my mind discerning that it was two babies crying counted as 'thinking' definitely counted as 'thinking'.

And that it was a good example of how ephemeral my thinking can be.

Day 1

Sitting in meditation, the instruction is to focus on one's natural breathing rhythms. When thoughts arise (and they will) the instruction is to acknowledge that the mind has strayed from the focus on breathing, and to return to that focus.

On this first day of meditation, I was able to focus on breathing occasionally. Perhaps for thirty seconds of the twenty minutes. Thoughts kept coming out to play, like when you shut five children together in a room and tell them it's nap time. Good luck with that. Even if they could use the sleep, they'd rather giggle and goof around. I thought about:

- How the paint job on one of my walls could be better.

- Why I was unhappy with an employee.

- How my dining room linoleum needed another clean.

- How the area of the linoleum nearest the stove is usually dirtiest, perhaps because of small grease spatters over time.

- The texture of the linoleum.

- A new song that I probably will work on later.

- A short film idea that I will probably not work on later unless I decide to abandon songwriting / musical theater production and get into making short films.

- Conversations I am likely to have with my parents when they arrive, and how I might frame things so that they will think am successful and worthy.

- How random, unending, distracting thoughts arising in one's mind (during meditation or really any time) are like having a TV on in the room at all times. I have relatives who do this, and it drives me nuts. To them, the background chatter is normal. Our minds' background chatter is normal to us, but there is value in noticing it, and in being able opt out of getting sucked into the program.

- Writing a blog about this intention to meditate for ninety days, and how people might say "Oh. Good luck with that. You must be spiritually serious."


When I began meditating several years ago, I would try to squeeze the thoughts away. Strain against them. Get mad at myself for having them. Since then, I have heard repeated instructions that thoughts arising are as natural as kids wanting to goof off at nap time. It's what our brains want to do. Expecting that thinking will happen, acknowledging when thinking is going on, and non-judgmentally returning to the focus on breath are helpful.

Twenty minutes seems to be a much more manageable time period so sit for than thirty minutes. I found myself wondering if the time was almost up FAR less often. Perhaps a tenth as many times as for my thirty minute sits. Maybe fifteen times in all.

My Intention

My intention is to sit in meditation for twenty minutes daily for ninety days. Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh recommends this as a way to establish a lifetime habit.

To date I have not maintained a regular meditation practice, but I keep returning to the practice. I have discovered that practical, specific recommendations on spiritual / mind-training paths are helpful to me. When all else fails, follow instructions. I'm going to follow the instructions of a man who probably knows a bit about the subject.

This blog will track my progress, and document my experiences.