Category Archives: Vipassana

What Yoga is Good For

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Needless to say, yoga has been found to be pretty beneficial. Scientists have learned about a great deal about the benefits of yoga, and they’re still discovering new ones everyday. (Here is a list of 54 health conditions benefited by yoga compiled by Dr. Timothy McCall, updated this month-Jan 2011. [PDF])

Different people get different things from their yoga practice, so I can’t speak for them. But for me, one thing, one big thing, that yoga is good for, is that it gives me a process, a technique, to work to cultivate my ability to pay attention.

As part of Generation Y, well known for our ability to talk, roll our eyes, and chew gum at the same time, I grew up honing the craft of multitasking. I do it well, and I like it. I won’t be quick to condemn multitasking. I’m grateful for certain times of multitasking, even, like driving and listening to NPR, or climbing with my headphones on.

The problem with multitasking is that I use it too much, and I single-task too little. It’s like any skill in life, when you don’t use it, you lose it. I’ve been reading the book The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, and the author, Dr. Tony Swartz says:

“Because a short attention span and fractured focus are now so widely accepted as the norm, we’ve failed to recognize that attention is a capacity that must be both intentionally trained and regularly renewed.”

So, I would say that my yoga practice helps me sit, and sitting is a way for me to intentionally train and regularly renew my capacity to pay attention for a prolong period. I’ve got a long way to go, and the uphill incline is steep. But, I guess it’s all about taking that proverbial first step.

A Motivational Tip to Meditate (and Do Other Things in Life)

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“If you can’t be disciplined, be clever.” – Shinzen Young, The Science Of Enlightenment.

Motivation and Discipline are in that category of abstract concepts that sells books, DVDs, and seminars, not to mention hopes and dreams that we will be a better person tomorrow than we are today.

It is also elusive to us at one point or another. For me, it’s daily. Everyday, I keep thinking that I will go to bed earlier tomorrow, that I will read more books, that I will organize my closet. But when tomorrow becomes today, I lack the same motivation or inspiration that I had yesterday.

For the longest time, I struggled with the motivation and/or discipline to meditate daily. Then I discovered Shinzen Young and his Science of Enlightenment lectures where he gave one little tip that rocked my world. He was addressing the typical challenge of finding time to meditate and … well, just doing it. “If you can’t be disciplined, be clever”, advised Shinzen. Sign up for a retreat and send in the full amount of money. Put it on your calendar. Buy the plane ticket. Create the conditions where you can’t easily back out.

Following this advice, I went on a 10-day Vipassana retreat to kick off my sitting practice. I figured if I could survive that, I just might pick up the habit. This worked, to some extent. After sitting for 14 hours a day, sitting for 10 or 15 minutes doesn’t seem so bad any more. However, I’ve had much more time to practice *not* meditating daily. 10 days is nothing compared to two decades plus. And because the habit of not meditating is that much more ingrained than the habit of meditating, it’s still a daily conscious act of telling myself: I will meditate today.

Telling myself that I will do something doesn’t always mean that I do do it. More often than not, I find an excuse not to follow through. Having an intention is well and good, but without execution, it’s moot. So, I’ve  devised some clever means to “trick” myself into doing my meditation.

  • First, I put my cushion right by  the side bottom of my bed . I see it every day, and if I don’t do my sitting, it’s there to remind me, or actually, to make me feel guilty. I don’t do well with guilt trips, and I’m using that to my advantage.
  • Second, I have a meditation clock (from Now & Zen) which I place right in the center by my bed. I can’t get in bed without stepping over it. Sometimes I put the clock on my bed before I leave my room in the morning. I can’t get under my covers without touching the clock and putting it elsewhere. That extra little bit also reminds me to do my sitting.
  • Third, I put my yoga mat next to my bed as well, not rolled up, but spread out, basically to block the entrance into my bed. I put it there because I know that I would make excuses that I’m feeling “too tight” to meditate, and that I just need to stretch out a bit, maybe do a down dog or two. If my mat is elsewhere, there’s no chance that I would make the extra effort to go get it, especially if it’s night time and I’ve already changed in my PJs. Since my mat is right there, I have one less excuse.
  • Fourth,  I decided that I would meditate before I go to sleep every day. So, the only time that I don’t meditate would be when I don’t go to sleep. This makes it so that I have to do it every single day, save a few exceptions. Night time also works because, again, I have less excuses. In the morning, I might be running late, I might need to do this and that, etc.

The success of building a habit, any habit, depends on the consistent timing. I know many teachers would tell you to meditate whenever you can. The idea is to just do it, regardless of when. I understand this philosophy. Instead of enforcing a time, which can be rigid, giving yourself the permission to do it any time can increase the probability that you’ll do it. However, for someone like me, who can come up with a really good excuse *not* to do it virtually any time of day, this doesn’t work so well.

In yoga, and in life, having a will, determination, goal, or purpose is often the first step to making some sort of desirable changes. I don’t usually lack motivation. Staying focused on what I’ve resolved to do, though, takes more work, since I’m not always focused :) . To make up for that, I try to be clever and trick myself into doing the things I know I want to do, if only my will weren’t so weak and I had more discipline.

Does my cleverness work perfectly all the time? Not even close. There are times when I’m so tired that I trip over my meditation clock and don’t even think twice about meditation. There are times when I don’t spend the night at home with my clever arrangements. But, most of the time is better than none of the time. As Shinzen Young said, “any number of time is infinitely more than zero.”

I write this post in hope of giving you one way to kick your meditation practice in gear. If it works for other things, so much the better. If you have any tips, for meditation or otherwise, please let me know.

10 Days of Silence: Is a Vipassana Boot-camp For You?

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Last year, I went on a 10-day Vipassana mediation retreat. The word “retreat” may conjure up images of sandy beaches, blue ocean water, luxurious bed linens, and faraway lands. This was not one of those. I woke up every morning at 4:30 a.m. and sat for 12 hours a day on a cushion on a cold stone floor, trying desperately to focus on my breath, or something, *anything*.

My friend Aron Schoppert recently finished the same course, and he was awesome enough to do a long write up about it and agreed to let me publish it here. It’s a long piece, so I will put out some quotes and summary, and put the full article in PDF document for your reading pleasure.

Aron’s Story

I recently became a first-time participant to a 12-day Vipassana meditation retreat near Onalaska, Washington at the Northwest Vipassana Center, as taught by S.N. Goenka in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin.   I first became aware of Vipassana and the center back in 1997, but found the schedule and set of restrictions daunting with the potential for 100+ hours of seated meditation over the course of the 10 days of silence.  It is the only one of its kind in the northwest region.

Why He Did It

I was not seeking to fix anything, but knew that I could stand to benefit on some level.

Did it “Work”?

I feel very fortunate that Goenka started this movement and provides the teachings free of charge.   While this may turn out to be a short-sighted claim, I feel I will be forever changed for the better good because of it.    This is not to say that I don’t realize how easy it is to get caught back up with my old patterns and lose the bulk of said benefit.  There is more work to be done, and I plan to stay on task.   The benefit is too great.

… With Some Caveat

Despite the amazing amount of progress I made in the course of 10 days, I am not a complete advocate of Goenka’s retreat or teaching style.  There are a number of shortcomings and dangers in its application that I believe limit its potential or its goals in helping others… There are public, well-written critiques of Goenka teachings that I recommend reading before taking the plunge.

And Now for the Vipassana Elevator Pitch

Vipassana is one of India’s most ancient meditation techniques.   Vipassana is a word in Pali which translates literally to insight or seeing within.   It is described in the center’s brochure as the process of mental purification through self observation and introspection.

And Who’s This Goenka Dude?

S.N. Goenka is widely known as one of the foremost non-sectarian teachers, and it is important to note his 10 day course focuses on what many in the meditation world consider a highly selective form of Vipassana.  Vipassana is also known as “mindfulness meditation” where one looks within, utilizing all the senses.

Just Scratching the Surface

Goenka’s version focuses specifically on awareness of body sensations and his technique is arguably for simplicity, but this is not explained in the course.   Upon further research I found that his teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin, was documented in 1961 as saying that once awareness of body sensations is practiced, one may move on to the other senses.

Goenka, Here, There, and Everywhere

At the retreat, assistant teachers are present to help answer questions at the end of each day after they “push play” on Goenka’s pre-recorded video and audio instructions.  The version in rotation was created in 1991, and heard and watched at over 200 centers worldwide which Goenka insists upon to maintain consistency of the teaching.

Vipassana Psychology

Vipassana psychology (in simplified terms) breaks the mind into 4 parts, which I found helpful to understanding the breakdown of the technique.   Cognition or acknowledgement of the sense objects, Recognition or discrimination of the type of sense,   Sensation or the experience thereof, and the mind’s Response (sangkara), which is the sub or unconscious response to the actual sensation.

The crux of what Buddha learned was that the mind does not crave the actual sense objects, but the resulting sensations.   The technique allows one to retrain the associations of these sensations. In order to be successful, one must practice equal parts awareness and equanimity as you experience the sangkara.

Okay, Seriously, You just Sit Around All Day?

You could say that. Here’s the daily schedule.

4:00 a.m.                             Morning wake-up bell
4:30 – 6:30 a.m.               Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30 – 8:00 a.m.               Breakfast break
8:00 – 9:00 a.m.                Group meditation in the hall
9:00 – 11:00 a.m.               Meditate in the hall or in your room
11:00 – 12 noon                  Lunch break
12:00 – 1:00 p.m.               Rest, and interviews with the teacher
1:00 – 2:30 p.m.                 Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30 – 3:30 p.m.                 Group meditation in the hall
3:30 – 5:00 p.m.                Meditate in the hall or in your room
5:00 – 6:00 p.m.                Tea break
6:00 – 7:00 p.m.                Group meditation in the hall
7:00 – 8:15 p.m.                 Teacher’s discourse in the hall
8:15 – 9:00 p.m.                Group meditation in the hall
9:00 – 9:30 p.m.                Question time in the hall
9:30 p.m.                             Retire to your room; lights out

Critique of Goenka and the Retreat

While there were strong claims of non-sectarianism, and how scientific the technique is, most of the discourse is based around Buddhist tradition, mixed with jokes and anecdotes tinted with the lens of traditional beliefs.   In particular, expect to hear mentions of sentient beings in other planes, and information pertaining to how we can’t escape the poor decisions of our past lives.

I also was uncomfortable at times with Goenka’s frequent jabs at certain religion’s rites and rituals, which was completely unnecessary.   I would say at least 30% of the discourse material had little to no relevance to the technique and should have been edited out.

So, Is it For You?

I would not recommend this program if you have any kind of emotional instability and would seriously question attending unless you were comfortable re-living past disturbances and facing them on your own.  The environment felt very safe and supportive in a hands-off kind of way.

However, there is no trained staff, and I would go into this as if you were working in isolation.   I did find personal reports online of people being hospitalized, reliving forgotten child abuses and an example of someone bi-polar disorder spiraling out of control on the 10th day.

That is the power of this technique, and the fact that there is no real support system present made me question some of the dangers associated, even for myself.

Here’s Aron’s full write up: Aron Schoppert’s 10 Day Vipassana Write-up

My one advice? Be sure to have backup while you're gone without the internets for 10 days.

My one advice? Be sure to have backup while you're gone without the internets for 10 days.

Resources for Beginning Meditation

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Over the years, I’ve listened to and read a lot of books on meditation (because, um, you know, reading and thinking about something is almost like really doing it ;) ).

These are my top three books/audiobooks for Meditation for Beginners (and I do think we’re beginners for a very long time).

The beginner’s guide to meditation by Shinzen Young

I consider Shinzen Young my teacher for his clarity in vocabulary and ability to explain abstract concepts in concrete terms.

The beginner's guide to meditation by Shinzen Young

The beginner's guide to meditation by Shinzen Young

Introduces the listener to the tradition of meditation. Explains how meditation works, what different methods offer, and guides the listener through the practices. Includes a 3-part session for beginners.

Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield is a teacher that makes me smile and soften when I hear the sound of his voice, really gentle and soothing, but packed full of wisdom and authority.

Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield

Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield

Introduction to a form of meditation drawing on Buddhist practices. Covers: daily exercises; body postures and breathing; clearing distractions and cultivating awareness; the energy of love as a healing power; how to “make friends” with anger; the importance of forgiveness; how to focus healing attention on the body.

The posture of meditation : a practical manual for meditators of all traditions by Will Johnson

Many guides on meditation do not discuss How To Sit, but the proper posture is the base for any kind of meditative work, so this little book is highly recommended.

The posture of meditation by Will Johnson

The posture of meditation by Will Johnson

“Ordinarily,” Johnson opens his superbly calm little manual, “we think of meditation as an activity involving our minds, but in truth meditation is initiated by assuming a specific gesture with our bodies.” That gesture or posture is the cross-legged sitting familiarly associated with Buddhist meditation and consists of three elements: alignment, relaxation, and resilience.

The objects of these physical practices are to offer gravity the least resistance while in an alert yet resting state and to experience the subtle movements of existence. Johnson explains the functions of each element, offers instruction and advice on achieving each of them, and discusses how they may be carried into everyday life in a prose so limpidly intelligent that this book may become a standard text for beginning meditators. – Ray Olson, Booklist

How about you? What are some meditation resources that you have enjoyed?

Sit, Human, Sit! Good Human

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Last November, I announced a Meditation Competition–a Sit-off, if you will–as a response to the debate on Yoga Competition (or more accurately, Asana Competition).

It was a joke, that is, until now. I’m calling a Sit-off, and this time, it’s for real.

The competition is not who you think, though. We won’t have anyone judging your posture, how long you hold it, or the height of your cushion. We won’t care how coiffed your hair is, how cute your clothes are, or really, if you care to wear any at all. (And we certainly will not play Cotton Eyed Joe until your ears bleed while you attempt to reach samadhi.)

To blatantly rip off a famous saying, we have met the competition, and he is us. The only person stopping you from doing this is you and only you. I’m willing to bet that no matter how busy you are, you have 60 seconds to spare, to slow down, to watch your breath, close your eyes, and sit on a comfy cushion.

The rules

For all 28 days of February, 2010, sit. That’s it. No, really, that’s it. Just sit.

Sit every day. Sit for a minute a day, or 10, or 20. If you ask, what good will one minute of meditation do? You’re right, it won’t do *much*, but remember this one message from meditation teacher Shinzen Young: “one is infinitely more than zero.” The point is to start a habit, and like Mark Twain said, “Habit is to be coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”

If you need some structure, check out Tricycle Magazine’s Commit to Sit 28-day challenge.

28 Days and 28 Nights – Why 28

I’m doing this in February because it’s the month with the least amount of days. For the same reason that $9.95 seems cheaper than $9.99, and $9.99 seems cheaper than $10, committing to doing anything for 28 days seem so much less daunting than 30 or 31 days.

For those of you looking for more meanings behind 28, there are all sorts of interesting observations behind it.

You’ll Never Sit Alone

Some of us are more private about our work, others benefit well from support, encouragement, and a sense of camaraderie. So, if you’re on Twitter, simply tweet #sitoff. You can host your own tweetup, meetup, Sunday Sit, Sit and Knit, Sit and Sing, Meditate and Medicate (wait… maybe not that one).

And Now, A Note From Our Sponsors

What kind of competition has not “winners”, no scores to keep, and no awards? Ah, well, in the effort to rectify this shortcoming, I am looking for businesses who, in HR parlance, lend a hand in incentivizing, businesses who will offer some kind of discount for the participants of this challenge. For instance, a coffee shop could offer 10% off a latte (you know, so you can wake up a bit earlier or stay up a bit longer to sit).

If you are a business, whether local or online, please let me know if you’d like to be a part of this. The terms of the discount are entirely up to you. For example, if someone had to prove it with a note from their mom, or “Sit Ten Times, Get a Latte Free”, or, “Meditate for Your Martini” ™. Hey, you can even set up a Sit and Sip ™ corner in your store. See, the possibilities are almost endless.

If you know a business who would be up for this, please tell them and encourage them to join in. Please tell your friends, please tell your friends to tell their friends. Please mention this to your favorite coffee shop, barista, restaurant, bookstore, bakery, bartender. Really, the more the merrier.

Yes, this is 100% based on an honor system, but I have faith in it. Honestly, if you lie about whether you’ve meditated or not, you’re gonna have *that* much more to work through when you finally do take a seat. And, as the song lyrics goes, “Your cheatin’ heart, will tell on you.”

What do you get as a participating business? I will feature you on my blog. If you care about this sort of things, this site has a Google PR 3, which may help increase web traffic to your website. This is also a great way to attract more customers through word of mouth marketing.

And you’ll get that warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that you’ve helped someone who wants to meditate good and “wanna learn to do other stuff good too”.

Stop. Collaborate. Meditate. Sit, sit baby.

Stop. Collaborate. Meditate. Sit, sit baby.

An Open Letter of Grace

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One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, once wrote:

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

…

To be here now; alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living thing that have existed since the dawn of time, most—99.99 percent—are no longer around.

…

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, color, species affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly… The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walruslike on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely—make that miraculously—fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundindly, and all too briefly—in you. – Introduction, A Short History of Nearly Everything

I usually laugh, imagining myself licking algae, and often get quite emotional and teary-eyed after reading that. It’s similar to that feeling that you get when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, and you look up to see the whole entire Milky Way spread out above you. You feel so small yet so big, and you just marvel at the wonder of it all, and the fact that you are alive and that you can see this incredible sight.

This post is an expression of gratitude, a huge THANK YOU, a giant virtual hug.

If you were to look at things from a certain perspective, it has been a very tough year for me personally. (I know most people don’t start counting a new year until January 1st, but for me, the new year occurs in November, my birth month.) I’ve gone through lay-offs, rejections, financial losses, physical injuries, family issues. After having lived on my own for so long, I moved back home, waving goodbye to my dear apartment and the carefree, blithe, “single girl in the city” lifestyle.

In theory, I should have slipped into some kind of depression, or at least periods of low self esteem and pity, given everything that happened, and given that I had been well conditioned to being on the other side of the fence: straight A student in high school, Dean’s list in college, groomed to be in a leadership, fast-track career path, etc.

Yet, for some strange reason, the opposite thing took place. I have been living rather, well, ecstatically, running around and appreciating, marveling at life like a goldfish who’s seeing everything for the first time, over and over again.

“Are you okay?”, friends would ask out of concern that I haven’t found a “jobby job”, and I would say, “Oh god, yes! I woke up this morning and went to the bathroom, and there was toilet paper! And a toilet that flushed! I went to turn on the shower and there was hot water! Isn’t that incredible? I’m *more* than okay. I’m like, so lucky to have what I have!” “Um, okay, really now, are you okay?”

I am okay, I am very okay, and I have to say, that I owe a lot of it to yoga.

Now, I know that I may sometimes come across as a bit irreverent, skeptical, cynical, a little disrespectful, even, of “this whole yoga thing”. I know that sometimes it seems like I’m not quite sold on any spiritual context of modern yoga. But, let me say it here and say it now, I am a staunch believer in the transformative and healing power of yoga, for which I could not be more grateful. (And besides, in my humble opinion, doubt is an integral part of a healthy belief.)

Before we go on, I want to emphasize that yoga did not, does not, and will not remove or eradicate any of life’s oopsies and resulting ouchies. It also does not make you numb to life’s realities and ignore your responsibilities. It can, however, help you live more fully in the moment, which is something that all those smart people, living and dead, have been urging us to do since the beginning of time.

“Things are more like they are now than they ever were before”

A little over a year ago, when I started my teacher training at Pacific Yoga in Seattle, little did I know that beyond getting bendy, I was going to be equipped with something akin to a flashlight for the dark and rugged sections of the hike. The flashlight may not tell me where to go and how to get there, but it surely helps me get a good sense of where I’m at, and what’s happening right now.

Right now, I have a dad who’s almost 70, in good health, and driving my mom crazy with his landscaping projects. I have a mom who constantly tries to convince me that I need to eat more (of her food, of course), and who will come nudge me every night to set her up in a Restorative yoga pose. I have a brother who’s also my best friend and occasional drinking buddy, and who will come to me when our parents start to drive him crazy.

Right now, I have a boyfriend who is so supportive of my dedication to yoga, even though he cannot possibly fathom why anyone would voluntarily go without the Internet for 10 days, and how on earth did I not talk during “Meditation Camp” (it was a Vipassana 10-day silent retreat). Right now, I have my health. Today, all my cells have agreed to continue to be me.

Right now, I have been transmitted the teaching of yoga, and I have taken on the responsibility of giving it away in the role of a yoga teacher. These are the two things that I will never take for granted.

I think teaching is the most sacred, the most important thing in life. The subject doesn’t matter—yoga, bicycling, whatever —because it is not what you do that is important, but what you awaken in the other person. – Dona Holleman, from Yoga Journal September/October 1982

It is Wednesday, November 25th, 2009. In the context of yoga, I want to send out an enormous amount of gratitude from the bottom of my heart to all my teachers, mentors, peers, and students (who also teach me much more than they realize). I want to thank you, my readers, whomever you are, for coming by and getting to know me “mo’ betta’” virtually.

And of course, since yoga isn’t separate from my life, and my life isn’t separate from yoga, gracious thanks, too, to my awesome family and friends, old and new, near and far. You may not know it, but you help me practice my yoga, and you help me, you know, keepin’ it real. And I’d like to thank the Academy… oh wait, wrong speech.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gratitude, I has it.

Gratitude, I has it.

Why I Do Yoga

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I am often asked why I do yoga, and I often say, “so I can sit”, an answer that often elicits laughter, the kind that you would get when you give a smart-ass answer to a serious question.

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a smart-ass answer, and on the surface, it might look like one of those cop-out answers one may say when one doesn’t feel like saying much, but in fact, there’s nothing lazy or facetious about it.

If you’ve ever tried sitting down to meditate for any length of time, you might find that there are all sorts of agitations going on, not just in the mind but also in the body. If my hips and shoulders are tight, and my back and knees hurt, there is little chance that I will be able to quiet down the mind. Yoga is a tool for me to condition my body for sitting.

Okay, great, so you do yoga so you can sit. But why sit?

Why I sit is a topic worth another blog post altogether, but I want to quote here my teacher Shinzen Young in the Science of Enlightenment. And for an impeccable CD by CD review of The Science of Enlightenment, check out my friend’s C4Chaos’ post: The Science of Enlightenment is Paving the Way for the Enlightenment of Science.

If you follow a path that doesn’t involve sitting still on a regular basis, you run the danger that you might be fooling yourself. You might think that your transcending of conditions is a lot more than it actually is.

Sitting still and not moving is a special activity. It’s the zero activity. It’s the activity of no activity. And against that milieu, you can really see to what extent you have transcended conditions. So it becomes a sort of barometer or gold standard that you can use to measure the degree to which your practice is allowing you to become a free person.

Because if you think that your practice is bringing you freedom, which is to say that it is showing you a happiness independent of conditions, then you can most clearly see that in the situation where all conditions have been taken away.

And you’re just sitting absolutely still with nothing, nothing going on, and how do you relate to that nothing, if you’re really becoming free, it’s gonna be heaven.

But, if after half an hour, an hour, or two hours, or four or five hours of just sitting still, you find yourself in hell, you can’t do it, you find a reason to rationalize the fact that you need to get up, then obviously you haven’t transcended conditions yet.

Nothing wrong with that. You’ve gotten a reflection, you’ve gotten some feedback, a real objective barometer of how free you are. And so, okay, you go back to your practice, and maybe six months later, maybe a couple years later, try it again. See if you can sit there, five hours, six hours, without having to move, without having to change conditions, and once again, you’ll get a real clear picture to what extent are you free from the the thoughts and feelings that come up as you sit there, and to what extent you’re not free, you’re identified with the thoughts and feelings.

A person doesn’t have to sit, I would never say that a person has to do a sitting practice to become liberated, but I would strongly suggest that sitting still and doing absolutely nothing is the quick and dirty easy test to see to what extent is the practice that you *do* do taking you to unconditional freedom.

I don't need no yoga to do this. Clearly much more enlightened than humans.

I don't need no yoga to do this. Clearly much more enlightened than humans.