The Feed Had a New Best Practice Every Morning
Early in my spiritual life, I became what I now lovingly call a practice hopper. Every morning the feed had a new one for me. Every new TikTok video showed me THE best practice, the one that would finally do it, the one that would make me Zen as fuck. Not a bit calmer. Not kinder on a Tuesday. Fully, permanently, glowingly Zen.
So I hopped. Yesterday’s practice was fine, but today’s was the real one. Tomorrow’s would be even better. You can probably see where this is going. I couldn’t, because I was busy watching the next video. Somewhere in my head there was a finish line, a morning when I’d wake up sorted, and every new practice promised to get me there a little faster.
My Echo Chamber Had Excellent Acoustics
I shut myself in an echo chamber of Ho’oponopono, meditation and mantras for a better tomorrow. Ho’oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation; the version most of us meet online boils it down to four phrases: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Those are four good sentences. Meditation is good. Mantras are good. None of this was the problem.
The problem was the loop. Instead of being and living, I kept looping in hope. Each practice was a ticket to a better me who was always arriving next week. The room was full of beautiful sounds, and every one of them was my own voice, coming back to tell me that tomorrow would be the day.
Hope, Now With 20% Off
A lot of New Age spirituality sells exactly this: a better tomorrow, through a better mantra or a better meditation. All bundled with a promo. Sound familiar? 😛
It’s not a small market. By the industry’s own count, the Global Wellness Institute put the global wellness economy at $6.8 trillion in 2024. Some of that is genuinely helpful. But a lot of what reached me wasn’t really selling a practice. It was selling hope, the feeling that the real life starts after the next purchase. I’m not selling you a better practice either, and I’ve written about why I don’t push any path in Why I Choose Not to Promote Any Religion, Even Buddhism.
An Old Trick: Torches of Freedom
The trick is old. On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1929, a small group of young women walked in the Fifth Avenue parade in New York and lit cigarettes in public. It was arranged by Edward Bernays, the PR man working for the American Tobacco Company, and the cigarettes were framed as “torches of freedom”, a gesture of women’s equality. Historians argue about how much it actually changed sales. What’s clear is the move itself: attach a product to something people deeply long for, and the product starts to feel like the longing.
Freedom, then. Peace of mind, now. Same tune, new costume.
What the Buddha Said First
In the Theravada Pali canon, the Buddha’s first teaching after his awakening is about suffering, where it comes from, and how it ends. On where it comes from, he doesn’t say failure or bad luck. He says craving:
“Now this is the noble truth of the origin of suffering. It’s the craving that leads to future lives, mixed up with relishing and greed, taking pleasure there wherever it alights. That is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for continued existence, and craving for nonexistence.” (SN 56.11, tr. Bhikkhu Sujato)
That middle one got me. Craving for continued existence is also translated as craving for becoming: the thirst to be, and to keep becoming more. In my case, the Zen version of me. I wrote about craving in love in Love Fully, Hold Loosely. It turns out you can crave enlightenment the same way you crave a person: grabbing, comparing, never quite here.
Practice Hopping Is Craving in Yoga Pants
This is the bit that made me laugh, eventually. The hopping wasn’t a detour on the path. It was the same old craving, just wearing robes. Or yoga pants.
There’s even a name for one version of this. In 1984 the psychotherapist John Welwood called it spiritual bypassing: “this tendency to try to avoid or prematurely transcend basic human needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.” Using practice to skip life, basically. I wasn’t using practice to meet my life. I was using it to wait for a better one.
The same practices, done without the hunger for tomorrow, are just practice. Four phrases. A breath. A chant. Nothing to collect. Nobody to become by Friday. Just the thing itself, done because it’s what I’m doing, not because of what it might turn me into next month.
This Post Won’t Save You. Good.
I still chant. I still meditate. I’m just not doing it to get somewhere anymore. Most mornings it’s the same thing as yesterday, which is the whole joke: there was never a better practice waiting in the next video. There was only this one, today, done properly or done badly, but done here.
So no, this post won’t make you more Zen. It has no method, no programme, no “try this instead”, and no discount code. If it had a promo, it would be this: nothing, at full price, available right now.
Close the tab whenever you like. Your life is still going on out there, and it isn’t waiting for tomorrow.