There’s a lot of research and writing lately about how we form habits we want, and how we break the habits we don’t want. Basically a habit is a behavior, emotion, or thought that is repeated so many times that it becomes automatic. Habit scientists speak of four aspects to a habit: cue, craving, response, and reward, according to James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. I found that very interesting from a Buddhist perspective, because he has added one aspect that is not usually mentioned by habit scientists: craving. In this he has recognized that our habits are not simply the product of some external stimulus, but represent a connection between our thoughts, feelings and behavior. Why should Zen Buddhists be interested in this work on habits? After all, don’t we teach a path of spontaneity, liberation, compassion and wisdom? What do habits have to do with it?

There is an interesting connection between habits and spontaneity, for example. Spontaneity only makes sense within a context or against a background of regularity: otherwise, there is simply chaos. We know spontaneity by contrast with regularity, in the same way we can only know darkness in contrast with light. Habits are a form of regularity. We see this in our spiritual practice as forms. We bow when we enter a Zendo, and we do this over and over again. Within that simple repetition, we step into mindfulness, and yet each bow is a unique expression of our whole being, whether we are distracted, fully present, annoyed, joyful, confused, and so on. In traditional Zen forms and practices, we establish an attitude of inquiry and discovery that becomes, itself, a habit. So our healthy habits are a scaffold for a creative and liberated life: when we attend to our body’s needs through regular healthy meals and physical activity, we are free to move about and handle our lives with more ease and capacity. When we attend to our spiritual needs through regular practice, it is the same form of habitual nourishment. Furthermore, by regularly connecting with a community sharing our spiritual aspirations and investigations, we form social habits that also nourish us. 

So this is theme and variation: you have a daily meditation practice, then you get sick or go on a trip and that habit is interrupted, but you return to it as you are able to because it has the quality of all good habits: it organizes and focuses your life energy. This itself is freeing and conducive to wisdom and compassion. We train in monasteries which are extremely regulated spaces, with strictly determined schedules, in search of spiritual liberation. Why is this? I think it is because we recognize the importance of establishing deep habits of spiritual practice that open our hearts and minds to far more spacious ways of living, to true liberation. 

But James Clear makes a couple of interesting points. One is that having a goal, so often recommended by “productivity” experts, is the worst way to cultivate a desired or healthy habit. Having a “system” or method is the second worst way. Instead, we begin by small changes in how we think about what we are doing. He gives the example of a woman who lost weight and gained fitness simply by asking herself: what would a healthy person do here? For example, confronted by an elevator and a stairway, she would recognize the choice. A person quitting smoking, when offered a cigarette might say no thanks, I’m trying to quit. That person will never be able to quit, because he or she is identifying with trying. But the person who says, no thanks, I don’t smoke, will ultimately succeed.

In the context of our spiritual life, we have to stop berating ourselves for what we are not doing, for our shortcomings, lapses, and inadequacies and simply recall that same spirit of inquiry, the question at the beginning of most Mahayana sutras: how does a bodhisattva stand, walk, and control the mind? When we establish the tiny habit of daily sitting, we begin to experience its nourishment. So what James Clear teaches, is to make the initial effort so small that there’s no resistance to it. You can begin a zazen practice with one minute a day, and I can assure you that it would be better to do one minute per day every day than to go off to a long retreat or to a monastery in hopes of plunging into the deep end of the spiritual life. Set the initial conditions very low, the way they train horses to jump starting with a bar lying on the ground.

Having established a daily practice, even of only one minute per day, you can begin to nourish yourself even more deeply adding, let’s say, one minute per week. In a little more than seven months you will have a regular meditation practice of half an hour, and you will be seeing what impact that is having on your life. Within this habitual meditation practice, you will see that each time is unique, that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations are arising and falling away, and the scaffolding of regular meditation will expand your freedom in the midst of them. Regularity is key, including the opportunity to sit in meditation with others, as we offer here. This companionable sitting in stillness and silence together nourishes our hunger for connection at a deep level, beyond superficial social interactions.

So it is important to recognize that our habits in spiritual practice can help cultivate the wisdom and compassion that make spontaneity and liberation joyful and healing for ourselves and the world. Instead of trying to decide, every morning whether to get out of bed and come to the Zendo to sit together, let that become a habit and no decision needs to be made. Maybe your habit is inquiry, and somehow this regularity helps organize your week, or gives you a place of nourishment you can count on regularly. If so, it is serving our aspiration here. Together we have learned to share our ongoing inquiry: what is this life about? And more importantly, what do we want it to be about?