Two hours a day seems like a huge investment until you consider why you’re doing it. We, as a society, spend so much time trying to solve issues like gun control, violence, and environmental destruction when we haven’t even solved the most simple and important questions that impact every moment of our daily life. First, how do I learn to love myself? Second, how do I learn to love my family? These are things we’re just supposed to do unconditionally, but do we? How much time do we spend criticizing ourselves or getting annoyed with our parent, siblings, and children? It’s like we all know these two things are of primary importance but we’re never taught exactly how to accomplish them.

Investing two hours a day in meditation is investing in these exact issues. My practice has methodically forced me to accept various unpleasant personal attributes and helped me grow into a person I’m more proud of. Simply, meditation has taught me to love myself more and more everyday. This same process has occurred with various family relationships. Instead of letting my family push my buttons, accidentally or purposefully, I’m learning to accept those unpleasant behaviors as part of who they are. This allows me not to feed into the negative cycle and I’ve noticed negative interactions are occurring less frequently. I’m learning to be more loving towards my family.

Unless we’ve completed these two steps, it might be impossible to help the world face the many challenges it faces. If love is truly the answer to the worlds problems, and I think it might be, we each need to start with our own small circles. If we each do this individually, the impact will slowly spread throughout our larger communities. Vipassana is the best tool I’ve discovered to help me directly work on these issues making the 2 hour a day investment a day easily worth it. Time to meditate.