Someone asked: why does sitting for a long time sometimes leave one restless, scattered, with headaches and body aches, even a sensation of being bitten somewhere with nothing visible there — while other times, sitting begins well immediately, open and light? And sometimes, with only five minutes available, the sitting goes well? This happens repeatedly — how can sitting go well consistently, without aches or other disturbances?

This is entirely ordinary. When we take up the effort of practice, it becomes a matter of contesting time. Worldly wars contest borders for resources; the inner war contests time, likewise for resources. Whichever side claims the time draws in resources for its own side. Energy never once stops flowing through us, every moment, day and night — asleep, awake, standing, walking, sitting, lying down — sometimes wholesome, sometimes unwholesome, sometimes neutral. The unwholesome's energy is demerit flowing in with suffering and impurity; the wholesome's energy is merit flowing in with happiness, purity, and refined treasure. Each side strives to seize its moment as master of the house, to draw in its own energy to drive its own system and expand its share of control over the human body.

When we sit in meditation, the unwholesome doesn't yield — and when it doesn't yield, it looks for ways to cause us trouble, manufacturing one obstacle after another. But if the time is short — say, only five minutes, three minutes, two minutes — the unwholesome knows it'll end soon anyway, so it lets the wholesome draw its energy for just that brief spell; sitting goes well, but only briefly. Once it's back to the unwholesome's own claimed time, though, it draws fully for hours. The neutral behaves the same way — letting the wholesome have five minutes is no cost to it at all.

The aches and obstacles arise precisely because we cannot claim the time. Time in each day has already been divided up; the unwholesome and the wholesome have each staked their claims. To take more requires waging war. Every war brings suffering — but this war is waged for our own benefit: our resources, our future. Going to war means preparing the mind to face suffering, but the reward is the ability to draw in merit-energy together with refined treasure and a blueprint of success.

Once we expand our claim over time — say, we used to meditate only from 9 to 11 a.m. — the early sessions won't go well; we must endure and fight through it. Once we've claimed that time, we must defend it, because the other side will try to take it back; we must endure, fight, and win decisively, however many times it takes, until that stretch of time belongs to us permanently. From then on, sitting becomes easy. But if we rarely sit at all, problems are guaranteed, because the unwholesome and the neutral have already staked their claim and won't yield it easily.

Give time to the unwholesome, and it brings us trouble. Give time to the neutral, and it shapes us into living a life squandered — spending our days and resources without producing any real benefit. What resources will we have to live on, in this life and the next, wandering through the cycle of rebirth? Without a clear anchor for the mind, our future life becomes like a wandering spirit, drifting without any foundation. Even now, we inhabit a house of body and mind — but if the unwholesome and the neutral seize control of it, forcing the mind to drift aimlessly toward sights, tastes, smells, sounds, touches, and mental objects, with no clear anchor from which to draw the stream of merit — what will our future become?