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WE DON"T HAVE TO REMIND YOU how toxic our lives can be. Stress at work, arguments with loved ones, poor diets, and too many hectic weekends conjure daydreams of Himalayan caves—guaranteed not to have cell phone reception. But in reality, even that retreat you’ve been planning for years feels like an impossible commitment.

Balancing a commitment to becoming more compassionate and wise with the responsibilities of a family, a career, and a checking account is a near-constant dilemna for many practitioners. To help, we’ve teamed up with one of the West’s foremost Buddhist teachers, Sharon Salzberg, to create an intensive meditation program designed for your busy schedule. No steep retreat fees, no putting newspaper delivery on hold, no out-of-office replies required.

Our twenty-eight-day Commit to Sit challenge puts that daydream of an intense daily practice to the test. How different will you feel when you meditate every day for a month? What happens when you commit to the five traditional Buddhist vows for laypeople, including refraining from intoxicants and minding your speech? The meditation instructions provided here come out of the Vipassana tradition, which can be traced directly to the way the Buddha himself practiced. The program schedule is based on Vipassana retreats popular in the West and has been constructed to encourage and support your practice.

Whether you have months of retreat under your belt or have never been able to keep up a regular meditation practice, the simple structure of the program and accompanying instructions will help you to deepen and reinforce your practice. We have combined introductory teachings with guided meditations and a simple practice schedule so that anyone can participate in the challenge. However, people with an extensive daily regimen already in place may want to practice for longer periods than recommended, or include elements from their regular practice.

Begin whenever you want. Everything you need to experience this at-home retreat is contained here, but for those of you with Internet access, further teachings and resources are available at tricycle.com. On our website you will be able to listen to inspiring dharma talks, read more detailed meditation instructions, and join discussion forums allowing you to communicate with fellow Commit to Sit participants—including members of the Tricycle staff—about your hurdles and successes. And for the month of March, Sharon Salzberg will be available to answer your questions online.

Good luck, and remember: this is a challenge. It is a structured four-week program intended to give you a taste of the benefits of intensive meditation training. Everyone will struggle to follow the program perfectly. Do not let missed meditation sessions or broken vows discourage you. Just return to the practice. As Sharon Salzberg often tells her students, it’s the coming back that deepens our practice.

—Alexandra Kaloyanides, Senior Editor

Getting Started:

The Five Precepts

We begin our retreat by taking the five “precepts,” the principles that lay Buddhists have taken for over twenty-five hundred years to express their commitment to everyday morality. We will make this commitment for the entire twenty-eight-day period. The precepts are simply training tools that help us to stay focused while we cultivate mindfulness. As many people on retreat have realized, the most purifying components of the experience are often the precepts. Our culture rarely provides us with occasion or motivation to relinquish alcohol for a month, and we all struggle with the consequences of the things we say. Taking twenty-eight days to pay special attention to what goes into our bodies and what comes out of our minds is a rare opportunity to live in accordance with our ideals. The five precepts we undertake are expressions of our goodheartedness, our care for ourselves, and our care for others. Consider them skillful means designed as tools for practice, not markers for self-judgment.

The first precept is a commitment to refrain from killing or physical violence. The idea is to use each day, each encounter, as an opportunity to express our reverence for life. This approach counters the tendency to feel separate and apart, objectifying other living beings to such an extent that we’re actually capable of hurting them. The first precept includes all sentient beings—people as well as bugs and animals.

The second precept is a commitment to refrain from stealing—or literally, from the sutras, “to refrain from taking that which is not offered or given.” This means having a sense of contentment; being at peace with what we have; not taking more than we actually need; being grateful for what we have, and so on.

The third precept is refraining from sexual misconduct. This means we resolve not to use our sexual energy in a way that causes harm or suffering to ourselves or others. When we don’t know how to deal with our sexual desire in a skillful way, there are endless possibilities for abuse, exploitation, and obsession. The third precept includes not harming ourselves, in the sense that instead of being driven by our desires, we’re able to make conscious choices.

The fourth precept is about using the power of speech in an ethical way. Traditionally, we commit to refrain from lying, but actually this precept also covers harsh or idle speech and slander. We recognize that our speech does, in fact, have tremendous power. Words don’t just come out of our mouths and disappear. Rather, they’re a very important means of connecting and have lasting effects and consequences. We need to be mindful of how we speak.

The last of the five precepts is a commitment to refrain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind and cause heedlessness, meaning drugs and alcohol (but not prescription medication). This precept is a traditional way of detoxifying our bodies and minds, but can be challenging at social events where alcohol is considered a means of social connection and relaxation. However, if we are dedicated to maintaining this commitment, these situations often prove to be less awkward than we had feared, and the benefits of keeping the vow turn out to be even more fruitful than we had hoped.

When you find that somehow you’ve broken a precept, the important thing is to take it again. Castigating yourself, or seeing the broken precept in light of the failure or an irredeemable character flaw, is pointless and counterproductive. Instead you might see the beauty and joy in living in harmony, and to use that inspiration to repair the fabric or wholeness in your life.