Buddy System

I recently completed my sixth 10-day silent meditation course in the Goenka tradition. Each one gave me something special such as a new relationship to suffering, a deeper experience of the power of silence to hold everything, or the question: What if everything I’ve ever thought has been wrong? Likely, my experience is not unique. I came, I observed suffering, I saw a way out of suffering.

I left each retreat fully intending to commit to two sixty-minute sits a day, even if I doubted that I could turn my lifestyle around to accomplish that goal. Within a few days, or at most weeks, of those first five retreats that intention was repulsed by compromises (I’m late for work, I’ll meditate in the car while driving), reassurances, (Sure you didn’t meditate for two days but you thought about meditating), recriminations (You, bad meditator, you), resistance (I don’t want to sit there, it’s sunny outside), and finally resignation that I (alone) am not up the task. I failed.

It is now more than six months since my last retreat. I have meditated every day, twice a day for the past two hundred days. Many days I do not sit sixty-minute sessions. Some I do. But each day I do sit and meditate twice. Early on I decided to look at this glass as half-full, that is even if I meditate for only ten minutes, I am still keeping my streak going. Good sit/bad sit, insight/no insight--none of the judgments are important. What I’ve discovered is that Metta can be directed toward oneself.

What is different this time around?

On the eleventh day of this last retreat a friend and I went directly to a coffee shop. We bumped into four other meditators from the retreat. We sat at a table of six and shared our insights and experiences with each other. One of the men at the table happened to have sat a row in front of me for the past ten days. He shared that this was his sixth retreat, same as me. I told him I admired his meditative posture. We exchanged phone numbers to keep in touch.

A day later I called and made my ask: “Would you like to be my accountability partner in maintaining our practice? It would mean accepting a text from me every day that look like this: 60/60 or 45/25, or 50/10.” He agreed and we began exchanging daily reports of our sits. To expand on these texts, we’ve implemented a monthly check-in where we talk about our practice in more depth. We both travel extensively for our work. We are both in committed relationships. We have family obligations, homeowner responsibilities, and social lives. It’s a first for both of us that we have maintained our practices for six months. Some parts of the consistency and effects of practice is due to the responsibility we feel to each other, even in this simple exchange of numbers. I feel it gives me a glimpse of his life. We are hoping to meet in person this summer to meditate together, even though we live eight hours away from each other by car. Our connection feels like community. This feels warm.