Silent Meditation

This isn’t exactly true, but it is the right way to think about it. 

You should live as though all that matters is your practice.  You should organize your livelihood, your relationships, your physical and social environment, so that everything is maximally conducive to a peaceful and orderly way of life.  All other needs must be met fully, but with minimum fuss and effort.  The body must be healthy and balanced.  Your feelings must be clear.  Your desires and pleasures should be modest, neither excessive nor nor stingy.  Don’t do more than you have to, or want to.  Don’t let other influences fan the flames of ambition, envy, or anxiety about fitting in.  Do as little as possible to fix, remediate, or optimize the external appearances of how you have chosen to live. 

Clarify the habits and practices that are necessary and wholesome, and that require the very least work to maintain.  In this way, you will have the most time and energy to devote to your practice.  The practice I what matters. 

Do not ask what the practice is for.  Do not rely on any benefits that may arise from your practice.  It is true that disciplined practice amplifies happiness and contentment of various kinds: compassion, patience, zest for life and so on are natural outcomes of practice.  But these traits are not generated or even cultivated by practice.  These traits are the immediate expression of life itself living itself through you.  The practice merely removes obstacles and obstructions.  There is nothing you can or should do to create happiness for yourself or others. Focus on your practice.  Happiness is already there, waiting.