Why Meditate?

If you can find peace, freedom, and poise sitting on the floor without the support of devices or assets or social corroboration or entertainment or stimulation or worldly preconditions (i.e. the prerequisites you deem necessary in order to not feel like a miserable wretch) - just you sitting contentedly on the floor in some unexciting locale without any signals confirming that you're tantalizingly on the brink of WINNING...then you can enjoy peace, poise, and freedom anywhere, anytime, regardless of what the world is doing. It's inside, not outside.

That's what meditation is good for.

When you do find yourself with a cool device, or substantial assets, or reassuring corroboration, or immersive entertainment, or galvanizing stimulation, and you are momentarily endowed with the stuff you've decided you can't live without, it can all certainly be enjoyed with enthusiasm. Why not? But it's not necessary (remember The Monks and the Coffee). If it's all taken away, then the peace, poise, and freedom remain. They're bulletproof.

Those three lofty things have always been present, but we imagine they're tied to certain worldly circumstances, in order to pretend to dramatically suffer from their lack. Meditation doesn't cultivate peace, poise, and freedom. It eases the impulse to pretend they're missing.


This is the meditation practice I settled upon years ago after trying many others. I'd suggest you ignore the rest of the author's web site (and especially the forum). And if you do embark on a meditation practice, and eventually feel moved to add another element, try pranayama. I do both. And if you really hit a groove after a year or two, consider a mantra enhancement or two. And that's enough. Just don't quit. Stopping is worse than never having started.

P.S. Meditators inevitably fall into the trap of awaiting confirmation that they're tantalizingly on the brink of WINNING...at meditation. It's maddeningly stupid, and you can expect to waste decades until you recognize your own foolishness and knock off that nonsense.