Tonight, I want to talk about meditation – specifically, how to actually stick with it when life gets chaotic. I think the title says it all: “How to Persevere Amidst the Chaos.” This is for all of you who practice meditation, but honestly, I think it’s pretty relevant and interesting no matter where you are on your journey.

I’ll try to share some thoughts about the challenges we run into during meditation and how to work through them, how to overcome them.

For those of you who don’t meditate yet – I’m guessing there are some of you out there – I hope you’ll still find this interesting. I won’t get too super-technical or narrow in my approach. I’ll try to keep things broad and accessible.

The Two Sides of Meditation

So, when we talk about meditation – and here I’m mostly talking about Buddhist meditation, specifically Chan meditation – we should know that meditation practice can actually be really tough. It demands dedication, perseverance, effort, discipline. All those qualities we often feel we’re missing.

But on the flip side, meditation can also be really, really easy. It would be wrong to present meditation as something that’s impossibly hard and difficult to stick with. It’s not really about meditation itself – it’s about us. It’s about our approach. It’s about a whole set of conditions we need to meet.

Still, if we look at the statistics, we could say that out of all the people who try meditation, take a course, and start practicing, only a small percentage actually stick with it and establish a regular, continuous practice. Why is that? That’s a great question. I keep asking myself that, and I hope those who practice are asking it too.

It seems to me there are many reasons for this. But I think the absence of certain conditions is often what kills our inspiration and makes us give up on regular practice – leading to inconsistency and eventually quitting altogether.

That’s why it’s so important to understand and establish the right conditions for both inspiration and continuous practice.

Let me share some of these conditions with you.

First Condition: Understanding the Bigger Picture

The first and most important condition is understanding the context of meditation practice.

Meditation never really stands alone. It’s always part of a larger philosophical or religious system. In this case, we’re talking about Buddhism.

Meditation is an integral part of that system, and within that framework, it serves a specific purpose. Different types of meditation – Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist – differ precisely because of their philosophical and religious contexts.

When it comes to Buddhist meditation, it’s almost impossible to understand the purpose of the practice without knowing something about that context. To understand meditation practice, you need to see that it doesn’t exist in isolation.

If we’re talking about Buddhist meditation – and Chan specifically – it’s really important to get familiar with the worldview, to understand within that context what meditation is for, why we should do it, and what the goals of meditation practice actually are.

Here’s why this matters: when this context is missing – when we just know the meditation method and think it’ll make our lives easier, help us with health, or bring mental and emotional stability – that’s actually a pretty limited understanding of meditation.

And that limited understanding limits what we can achieve. It also contributes to losing inspiration faster and weakening our perseverance. Sooner or later, we lose motivation and stop practicing.

That’s why getting familiar with the Buddhist teachings and perspectives is so important. When we understand the role and purpose of meditation within that bigger picture, it becomes much easier to establish qualities like perseverance and regularity.

Second Condition: Learning the Methods Properly

The second condition for meditation practice is proper instruction in the methods and how to use them.

I say this because these days, there are countless ways to learn about meditation – YouTube and other platforms, of course. But it’s really important that we start meditation the right way.

I’m afraid that video instructions you find online aren’t complete. I’m not saying they’re bad – they’re just not complete because there’s no interaction. There’s no teacher-student relationship, and those instructions tend to be pretty general.

Proper instruction in meditation methods – and in how to apply them to you personally – that individual approach is really important. It helps us not only use these methods but also stick with them and get real results.

Third Condition: A Clear Roadmap

Another really important condition is having a clear vision of progress in meditation.

If you don’t have a vision of progress – if you don’t know the path you’re on, its stages, or what you might expect along the way – then your enthusiasm and motivation will naturally fade. You simply won’t know where you are or whether you’re practicing correctly.

A clear vision of progress clears up so many doubts about “where am I going and why am I going there?”

Fourth Condition: Knowing the Destination

It’s also really important to have a clear idea of the goal of meditation practice – the goal as defined by the system within which you’re practicing.

Depending on our motivations (which can vary widely), we might set goals that seem useful to us. But in doing so, we might actually limit our ability to go beyond those self-imposed goals and achieve much more through meditation than we initially wanted.

Having a clear idea of the goal is connected to our motivation and our ability to generate inspiration – and then to persevere in practice.

Fifth Condition: The Heart of It All

And the fifth condition – which is no less important but also grows out of all the previous ones – is right motivation and inspiration.

Right motivation and inspiration.

But even when we’ve met all these conditions – when we have a pretty clear idea of the path we want to walk, when we know how to do it, when we know where it leads, and when there’s a certain level of inspiration within us – we still have to face what we could call internal and external obstacles.

Meditation practice is a path of inner transformation where we encounter all kinds of difficulties or obstacles. Some are external, some are internal.

External Obstacles: Time and Space

When it comes to external obstacles – which may or may not be obstacles depending on the person – we need to establish another set of conditions. We need to carve out time and space for meditation.

People often say they don’t practice because they just don’t have enough time. They’re too busy, too overwhelmed, and can’t find a moment to meditate.

I think that’s more of an excuse than the truth. No matter how many obligations someone has or how packed their schedule is, I think it comes down to priorities. The inability to find time is really a reflection of our value system and the fact that we don’t consider meditation important enough to make time for.

If we think meditation is valuable and can help us tremendously in life, we’ll certainly find that half-hour a day to practice.

Space can sometimes be an even bigger problem than time. If you live alone, no problem. But if you live with a big family in a small space, it’s trickier. Still not impossible – you can meditate before others wake up or after they go to sleep. You can always find both time and space if you’re willing to put in a little effort.

Regularity: The Common Struggle

The next thing – and this is often the biggest problem – is establishing regularity in practice.

Once you’ve found the time and place, you need to establish regular practice. This is incredibly important for meditation. Without continuity, there’s no real progress. And regularity is, I think, the most common issue people face.

So how do you practice regularly? You need to build a habit. All habits are formed through repetition. At first, you need discipline – you need to push yourself a little. But after a while, it becomes a new habit, something fully integrated into your daily life, like morning hygiene or any other habit you have.

Don’t Go It Alone

Beyond your individual practice, it’s also important to practice in a group.

You need to motivate yourself to not only establish your own rhythm but also to practice with others who meditate. Individual and group practice complement each other, and both are important for your motivation.

If you only practice alone and no one around you meditates, there’s a tendency to gradually lose your will. It’s important to know you’re not alone in this. It’s important to know others are practicing too. And it’s important to have the experience of practicing together – because that experience helps tremendously in your effort to persevere.

Going Deeper: Retreats

Next on the list are meditation retreats – the intensive form of practice.

Anyone who practices regularly, whether alone or in a group, should from time to time experience this intensive form of practice on retreat. Why is it so important?

As much as individual and group practice form the foundation, they still happen within the context of our daily lives. When we encounter all sorts of life situations and difficulties, it’s easy to lose the peace and mental stability we’ve gained – and along with that, our inspiration to practice.

That’s why retreats are places where, under ideal conditions, we can fully surrender to meditation, push our experiential boundaries, and regain motivation and inspiration if we’ve lost them. And when we return to our daily circumstances, practice feels so much easier than before.

So: space, regularity, group practice, and retreats – these are all ways we persevere in practice. They’re ways our motivation and inspiration grow. They’re the conditions that make our practice continuous and help us progress.

Meditation Isn’t a Separate Activity

Something else to understand – something incredibly important – is that people often see meditation as an isolated phenomenon. They treat it as just one activity among many, not seeing the connection between meditation and everything else they do in life.

Sometimes it seems like meditation is a way to retreat into a quiet corner and forget the world’s troubles. But then unfortunately, we have to return to that world, and we often don’t see the connection between meditation practice and other aspects of our lives.

When that happens, it’s not only a misunderstanding of meditation – it also prevents the practice from positively affecting everything else we do.

Cultivating the Mind

Practicing meditation really means cultivating your mind. And that’s perhaps a better term than “meditation.”

Cultivating the mind naturally affects all aspects of our lives. If we cultivate our mind in peace, stability, and clarity, then everything we do and encounter in life starts to feel different. Meditation practice directly transforms our entire life.

There’s a saying in Chan that captures this perfectly: “Meditation is daily life, and daily life is meditation.”

Of course, we start meditation practice in more-or-less ideal, isolated conditions. We practice sitting meditation. But cultivating the mind is broader than just sitting. At a certain point, once we’ve learned to cultivate our mind, we need to bring that experience into all our other activities.

Not just in sitting – but bringing that experience from sitting into everything else, into every aspect of life. And that’s what enables real progress in meditation.

As long as our practice is isolated, as long as it’s separated from the rest of our life, it can’t give its full results. Only when we bring it into all our other activities, into all other aspects of life, does it become truly deep. Only then does it have the power to transform our relationship with ourselves and with the world.

What Cultivating the Mind Looks Like Day to Day

Let me stop being abstract and tell you what cultivating the mind in daily life actually looks like. It follows a very simple principle: simply maintain your presence. Presence with whatever you’re doing.

In other words, whatever you do, be aware of it and give yourself to it completely – with your whole being.

Whatever the activity, this presence, this being in the present moment – it’s unfortunately become such an overused phrase that it sometimes loses its meaning. But being in the here and now, being aware of what you’re doing at this moment, and giving yourself fully to it – that’s how we cultivate the mind in daily life.

It could mean that when you’re tidying up your living space, you’re fully devoted to it, fully aware of what you’re doing moment by moment. But it could also be present when you’re talking with someone, in a relationship – that openness, that presence, that ability to hear and listen – that’s meditation practice.

And in that, of course, there’s no idea that you’re “practicing.” You simply let go of thoughts connected to the past and future. In that way, you gather your mind – you take that scattered mind and make it collected, present, aware.

This deeply deepens our understanding of ourselves, of others, and of all the life situations we encounter.

Because the scattered mind – which is often absent, doesn’t hear, doesn’t see, always occupied with something other than here and now, just distracted – can’t truly grasp this moment or see it deeply. So cultivating the mind in daily circumstances is incredibly important – for the quality of our own life and for the quality of life of the people we come into contact with.

Internal Obstacles: When the Body Gets in the Way

Now, beyond these external obstacles – whether we call them obstacles or not depends on our approach. If you’re not motivated, finding time and space will be hard. If you’re highly motivated, it won’t be an obstacle at all – you’ll do it easily. The same goes for regularity and different forms of practice.

But even when we’ve met all these conditions – when we’re practicing in various ways and have established regular practice – there are still internal difficulties and obstacles we encounter in meditation.

One common problem is posture. Traditional meditation postures can be problematic for some people simply because they don’t have flexible bodies or open hips to sit in those traditional positions. Maybe they’re too stiff or have some other issue. This can feel like a big obstacle.

If every time you sit in meditation you experience physical pain, then of course it’s easy to give up. Easy to think “this practice isn’t for me, I just can’t do it because of my physical problems.”

But here’s the thing – it really matters how you’re taught. You need to know that there are many different ways to sit. You can even sit on a chair and meditate. Everyone can find a posture that works for them.

If you start with the idea that you need to sit in full lotus and then you can’t – well, then you have a problem. But there are plenty of other postures. Put in a little effort, try them out, see which one suits you best, and adopt that as your meditation posture.

Also, your body changes. A posture you can’t sit in comfortably and stably at the beginning will change over time. What you might not be able to do now, you’ll be able to do later – if you persevere. If you don’t, you’ll never know.

The Deeper Truth About Pain

And even when posture itself isn’t a problem – when you’ve found a good posture and sit regularly – pain can still show up in the body. This is often because your body isn’t used to that posture, but also because pain can be a result of your mental reaction to the meditation practice itself.

When we sit down to meditate, what we encounter is ourselves. Meditation is really an encounter with yourself. Whatever state you find your body in, whatever state you find your mind in – at that moment, that’s you.

And I have to say, this encounter isn’t always pleasant. Sometimes it’s really hard. It’s hard to accept that picture of ourselves. It’s hard to face ourselves that way.

My teacher once said something that might sound drastic: that meditation at the beginning is often like opening up a septic tank – that unpleasant smell hits you. Now, you can relate to that in two ways. You can quickly close it and pretend everything’s okay. Or you can leave it open and let it air out, let it change.

It’s a drastic example, but I think it’s very clear.

If we give up immediately at that first encounter with ourselves and with the difficulties that arise – if we say “this isn’t for me” – then we won’t have the chance to change the state of our body or mind.

But here’s what you should also know: no matter how hard that encounter with yourself might be at the beginning, that first deep insight into yourself is incredibly important.

Because otherwise, we tend to prettify that picture of ourselves. We deny that things are as they really are. We avoid meeting ourselves and create a certain image that’s often prettier than reality. Living with that kind of illusion about ourselves definitely won’t help us change things for the better.

That encounter, that facing yourself – and then the next step of accepting yourself as you are at that moment – is actually the starting point of our path. And it’s immensely important.

What we encounter is our working material, so to speak. It’s our reality at that moment. But on the other hand, we have ways, methods, and perspectives that help us understand that situation and change it. And that’s where the great value of meditation practice lies.

Don’t get discouraged in that first encounter with yourself, with the state of your body or mind. All of it can be changed. The essence of meditation practice is inner transformation.

The Mind’s Turmoil

Another thing we encounter when we start meditating is our mental state. The state of our mind isn’t always ideal, not what we’d want it to be. You might sit down to meditate and be pretty distracted, really worried about something, or under the influence of negative emotions.

This is what we meet when we sit down to meditate. It’s not that we’re always cheerful, open, and calm – that would make practice easy. Instead, we meet these frequent emotional turmoils and inner chaos. And that encounter isn’t pleasant either.

But if – as with the body – we accept that state and start using meditation methods, then of course it can change. From that chaos, from those emotional turmoils, it’s possible to reach a calm, stable mental state – not just inner peace, but also incredible clarity of mind.

These are the two fundamental qualities we try to establish through meditation.

Wandering Thoughts

When it comes to internal obstacles related to the mind in meditation, what we’re usually talking about is something called wandering thoughts.

Why are they called wandering thoughts, and why are they a problem? First of all, any thoughts that arise in meditation that aren’t the meditation method we’re following are called wandering thoughts because they’re not thoughts we’re intentionally thinking. They’re not reasoning or thinking that we’re actively engaging in.

These are thoughts that separate us from the meditation method. They appear against our will, so to speak, and lead us away from focusing on the method. That’s why we call them wandering thoughts.

Everyone who practices meditation encounters this. And there are many ways to work with it.

The first and most basic thing is to realize that wandering thoughts are completely natural in meditation. They’re not something that shouldn’t be there. So don’t fight them. Don’t go into battle with wandering thoughts, trying to chase them away.

But on the other hand, don’t follow them either. If you follow them, you’re not practicing. And if you fight them, you’re also not practicing – plus you’re creating even more inner tension.

Instead, simply ignore those thoughts. And return to the method.

This is mind training. It can be demanding. You need to recognize when a thought arises. Don’t fight it, don’t follow it – just go back to the method.

In practice, what happens is that we wander off, and after some time we become aware that we’re no longer with what we sat down for – the meditation method. In that moment when we become aware, we return to the method.

The Hidden Ingredient: Your Attitude

Here’s something really important when you’re practicing, when you’re working with the method: the underlying attitude or atmosphere of your practice. It’s incredibly important.

If that attitude is negative, it will seriously disturb you and make practice really hard. If on the other hand the attitude is positive, practice will go much more smoothly.

This attitude isn’t always easy to recognize when we’re sitting, but it almost creates the context of our practice. It’s not just an attitude – it’s the atmosphere in which we practice. And of course, we’re the ones creating that atmosphere, mostly unconsciously.

That’s why it’s important to become aware of this atmosphere or prevailing attitude. Because we can change it.

A Simple Shift That Changes Everything

Let me explain how to do this using the example of wandering thoughts.

Usually, when you’re sitting and practicing and you keep wandering off the method and can’t focus, a certain dissatisfaction starts to grow. You feel unsuccessful. You feel like nothing’s going right. You become dissatisfied, and as you become dissatisfied, you lose motivation.

But here’s a simple shift – it might seem like a trick, but instead of being dissatisfied because your mind wandered off the method, you can be happy that you recognized your mind wandered, and then return to the method with a sense of satisfaction.

It seems like a small difference, but in practice it’s huge. In the first case, the negative atmosphere in your practice grows. In the second case, the atmosphere becomes positive – and of course it’s easier to focus and easier to practice.

Laziness: The Big One

One of the biggest obstacles in meditation is laziness. Laziness is responsible for not establishing regularity. Laziness is responsible for our general inability to persevere in meditation practice. This is very often one of the main causes.

But when we say we’re lazy, what does that actually mean? What’s behind what we call laziness?

Laziness is primarily a result of what you might call lethargy – a lack of energy, a lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation. Whenever that’s present, we become lazy. We can’t get moving. We can’t follow a set rhythm in what we’re doing.

Another aspect is procrastination – putting things off. “Oh, I’m not really feeling it right now, I’ll leave this sitting for tomorrow.” This constant delaying of what we should do now is how laziness manifests. It’s an inertia that’s not easy to break out of.

Then there’s also a tendency toward useless things in life – trivial or unimportant activities, a general interest in all sorts of things that aren’t beneficial to ourselves or others. When we cling to that kind of activity, that kind of action, then that further diminishes our inspiration.

Think about how much time we spend on our phones or in front of screens every day – not necessarily needed or important. Every such activity, every such clinging, every wasting of time on things that aren’t useful – it reduces the energy we need for meditation practice, and naturally our inspiration for that practice as well.

The third thing that can cause our laziness is a lack of self-confidence. That feeling of inadequacy – that sense that it’s not doable for us, that we’re not good enough for something like this. This loss of faith in ourselves is a form of defeatism. It’s also a huge obstacle in meditation, and it actually feeds and strengthens laziness.

When Meditation Feels Easy

So these are some internal causes or internal obstacles that can make meditation seem hard – and make establishing regularity and perseverance feel really, really difficult.

But I said at the beginning that while meditation can be seen as a demanding discipline requiring a lot of effort and perseverance, it can also be easy.

Meditation is easy when there’s inspiration for it. It’s easy when we’re motivated. And we’re motivated for meditation when we experience it as extremely useful.

In the Dharma teachings, meditation practice is described as medicine. If we understand meditation as medicine – as something that can help us in life – then practice will be easy. It will be easy despite the difficulties that arise.

That might sound like a contradiction, but it’s really not. In that light, those difficulties become challenges – not real obstacles. Something we can go through and learn tremendously from.

Everything in life that’s worthwhile doesn’t come easily. You have to put in effort, you have to discipline yourself. In that sense, meditation is no different from anything else in life.

The Trap of Expectations

Many people think that through meditation practice they’ll quickly transform the quality of their lives from the ground up – or at least they expect something like that.

Expectations are also a huge obstacle in meditation practice. If you sit down with big expectations about what should happen in the next moment, or about progress in meditation, then you’ve actually sabotaged that progress.

Having expectations means dividing yourself into what’s here now (which you’re not satisfied with) and something that should happen soon (which will make you happy). This inner division that you create through that kind of thinking is what prevents you from establishing that unity, that stability, that clarity.

It’s like an inner split. Division is always a source of chaos.

In that sense, when we sit in meditation, we shouldn’t have any expectations. We shouldn’t think about gain and loss – as the saying goes. Instead, focus on the process, not on the goal of the practice. Only when you make the process the goal are you at the goal in every moment.

And by being at the goal in every moment, that feeling of inner satisfaction grows – which is again an expression of that unity, that collectedness that happens in practice when you have no expectations and you’re not focused on the goal.

The Harmony of Body, Breath, and Mind

I think I’ve gone over my time. The topic seems simple – meditation and how to persevere – but it’s actually quite complex. Before I stop, I want to say one more thing so we don’t just leave things with all these difficulties, whether external or internal.

Meditation is a fine process. It’s a process of fine-tuning between body, breath, and mind. And that tuning – establishing harmony between these three fundamental aspects of our being – isn’t always smooth.

But if there’s inspiration, if you know how to do it, and if you do it regularly, then success in establishing that harmony won’t be absent.

Once you’ve established that harmony between body, breath, and mind – once you’ve arrived at that experience of unity between the three – that might be the moment you truly know what meditation really is.

That experience of unity, that experience of oneness or wholeness of your being – it’s incredibly deep and incredibly important. And as I said earlier, it relates to all aspects of your life.

That’s not the final goal – it’s not where meditation practice exhausts itself. But it’s a very, very important step you can reach. You can reach that experience if you practice regularly and if you don’t see meditation as an isolated phenomenon but instead cultivate your mind in daily circumstances as well.

And with that, we’ll stop here.

This is an edited transcript of a public talk by Chan master Žarko Andričević