Is the 'best meditation you do' the meditation you do? There is a pithy saying for keeping fit that goes


  The 'best exercise you do' is the exercise you do


i.e. the most important thing is to find something you enjoy and you can stick with rather that do the scientifically proven 'more effective exercise' that you maybe don't enjoy as much.

So I was wondering is the same true of meditation i.e.


  The 'best meditation you do' the meditation you do


So to fill it out - is it more important to find the meditation that suits you personally and perhaps adapt and tweak it until it really suits or is it better to pick a tradition and follow their methods to the letter and force your way through it?
I have not heard of any teacher in any tradition that would say: "Yes, go ahead and shop around, get the best elements from every tradition and construct a teaching and practice that works for you" -- Never.

Every teacher seems to have confidence in their tradition. That said, some of the teachers I personally came in contact with, stayed fairly hands off and minimalistic when it comes to meditation instructions.

My Zen Master famously said "Don't go with the thoughts; don't go against the thoughts" - that's it. No other instructions! He did write a book that had a chapter on meditation, so anyone could read that if they wanted, but he never insisted on meditation to follow a strict order.

Dza Kilung Rinpoche gave rather verbose instructions, as is customary in Tibetan Buddhism but as a Dzogchen Nyingmapa his sentiment has always been that meditation only begins as something guided, because that's how beginner's mind operates, but then as you progress you get to pick your own course in the overall direction prescribed by the teacher or the level you are on.

In my own opinion, meditation is something impossible to pin down and put in a box no matter how hard you try. So even if someone would speak about some particular type of meditation as if many people had the same meditation experience - that would only be a theoretical construct, a figure of speech. In reality every person's meditation, and every meditation session, is different and unique.

It also depends on the situation, the person, the problem, the level, the question, and the current goal. For example in my case, my meditation for many years has been to avoid getting carried away by thoughts. That's what I did, sat and fought with my thoughts and tried to stay in the present. As that did not work too well, I tried meditation that focused on subtle feelings in the diaphragm and lower abdomen, with the goal of discovering and letting go of all tensions and blockages. That worked better and has been helpful. Then for a period of time I meditated on the overall well-being, trying to generate a bright and open, happy mind. That worked quite well. These days I meditate on "no conflict in the mind", in other words the focus of my meditation is sukha-approaching-suchness.

From my perspective, any rigid meditation method is a lie that depends on the student either being blind to the fact, or pretending to not see, that their mind is a not simple mechanical machine but an endlessly fluid spontaneous process with multiple feedback loops.

So in my own personal opinion, of course "it is more important to find the meditation that suits you personally and perhaps adapt and tweak it until it really suits" and no, I would never recommend to "pick a tradition and follow their methods to the letter and force your way through it" - regardless of how many traditional teachers would say so.

That said, it is important that your meditation is not an act of fooling yourself, not an act of indulging in what rubs your ego the right way, but an authentic discovery process. Meditation is the time and place to be absolutely honest with yourself, to see what you normally don't want to see, to feel what you normally don't want to feel, and to get clarity about all this.

For me this type of honesty with yourself is a lot more effective than "to force your way through it".