Lion's Roar

5 Ways to Get into the Meditation Habit

THE MOMENT MY meditation habit was established for good was in a checkout line at Whole Foods.

It was in 2002, I was in my early twenties, and I was living in Austin, Texas. I worked for a small software company, where I was failing. I smoked pot every morning before I went to work, and at lunchtime I sat in my car and smoked up again. Then I walked across the street to Whole Foods to get lunch.

On this particular day, when a Whole Foods cashier changed my life, I’d been meditating for a few months. I knew I was fucking up my life, so I was looking for something that would help. I’d read some Zen books. I’d set myself a thirty-day daily meditation challenge and achieved it. And by grace, the Austin Zen Center moved into a house around the corner from mine.

It was hard to ignore a signal like that. I started to sit there occasionally, and I met a grouchy, incisive priest named

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