Day 47. The streak is no longer the point. What I notice now is how the body knows the cushion before my mind does. There is a kind of memory beneath thought. I am beginning to trust it.
After fifteen years of chanting morning and evening, what I now hear most clearly is the silence that follows. The Pali words land in the heart only because the silence is there to receive them. The same is true of meditation. Effort is necessary, but only as a doorway. The other side is already waiting.
Sat for 45 minutes this morning before the kids woke up. Then the day collapsed into noise. By 9 PM the practice was a memory. But the memory was enough. The practice does not need to be remembered to do its work.
TWIM session today: 90 minutes. The 6Rs are starting to feel less mechanical and more like breathing. Bhante was right — you cannot make this happen, only allow it.
Sat 30 minutes before work. The workday did not improve, exactly. But I noticed three small kindnesses I would otherwise have missed. The sitting widened the day.