The first time I tried to meditate I'd been assigned fifteen minutes of walking meditation and fifteen minutes of sitting meditation by the monk who was leading a retreat I'd joined at a Buddhist monastery in northern Thailand.

Fifteen minutes. I managed about two before I exploded.

It was impossible. The pain was excruciating. Everything was on fire: my back, my hips, my knees, my feet, my butt. Hell, even my jaw started to hurt. There was no way I was going to sit for fifteen minutes. I couldn't even make it to three.

I tried again later that day and fared even worse. Ultimately, I gave up and took a nap then spent the afternoon shuffling aimlessly around the monastery grounds wondering what I'd gotten myself into and why.

The next afternoon I sat with the monk for our daily check-in and explained to him that I couldn't sit still that long. The pain was just too much to handle.

"It's okay," he said. "Let the pain come. Just observe: pain, pain, pain, and let it be. Understand?"

You've got to be kidding me.

"Yes," I said, lying, and surrendering the hope that he'd pity me and offer some sort of quick fix.

"Good," he said. "Today, twenty minutes walking, twenty minutes sitting."

Shit. No way.

I thanked him and walked down the hill and failed again.

So went all of the days following.

That first retreat was three weeks long. The assigned time kept getting longer, and I never did finish it. I'm not sure I ever even made it to the original fifteen minutes. Three times a day, I'd sit down, fold my legs, start my timer, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and eventually, explode. I never did figure it out.

I left the temple that last morning feeling like a failure, like I'd wasted three weeks of my life and that the benefits of meditation would be forever out of reach because I couldn't sit still long enough to grasp them. I spent the whole forty-five minute cab ride back to town consumed by defeat and disappointment.

And then I got out of the car.

It hit me immediately. Everything was different. The world had slowed down. It had become more colorful. It had become quiet. Life was humming and vibrating on some oddly perceptible frequency I'd never experienced but could sense in my core. I felt like I was observing the world simultaneously from afar and from the inside it. I noticed things I'd passed dozens of times but had never registered. I'm not really sure how to do it justice, but I spent hours that day walking around the city where I'd lived for a year just looking and hearing and smelling. I'll be honest, it was kid of bizarre. It was also kind of fantastic.

It was then I realized that there's something to this meditation thing. Clearly a lot had happened up on that mountain, and though I didn't understand it at the time, I had hauled down a suitcase full of lessons.

One of them addresses time.

Beginning students often ask, "How long should I meditate?"

I think back to that first retreat, when I thought I wasn't doing enough, to find out shortly after that I was doing exactly as much as I could, and that that was enough.

So my answer is this: "In the beginning, as long as you can, comfortably." If you struggle to sit for ten minutes, don't set the timer for ten then wrestle with it. Try for five. If that's too much, try three. If three is too much, do one. And if that's too much, start with thirty seconds. As with all challenging endeavors, we must start somewhere if we're going to start at all. We find our edge and work with it. Then the edge moves, and we move with it. Ideally, we'd like to be able to sit comfortably for around twenty minutes a day. If finding twenty minutes is a challenge, try splitting it up between morning and evening. Or break it up into four, five minute sessions. There is no concrete formula for this. My best advice is whatever works best for you. Experiment a bit. Remember, it's only meditation.

As important as duration is another common question: "How often should I practice?"

Here, consistency is the key. Daily is ideal, especially in the beginning. Fighting once a week to meditate for fifteen minutes will be much less productive than practicing for two minutes a day and building upon that. These short, manageable sessions are how we build consistency. Consistency is how we progress and how we begin to experience all of the wonderful gifts of meditation.

We don't want to wrestle the clock; we want to embrace it.