Excerpt
The first thing to do is stop whatever else you are doing.
Sitting meditation has two aspects. The first is stopping and calming. The second is looking deeply.
When we hear the word meditation,” sitting meditation may be what comes to mind. But meditation can be practiced almost anywhere.” We can practice meditation when we walk and when we perform our daily activities. Whenever we practice mindfulness were practicing meditation.
Now we should ask, What is the purpose of sitting like that?” If we could ask the master, he would say, Im not sitting here for any purpose, Im just sitting for the sake of sitting, just to enjoy the sitting.” It would be like asking a child eating chocolate, Why are you eating chocolate? The child wouldnt be able to give a reason; he just enjoys eating chocolate. Theres no purpose in eating the chocolate. Its like when you climb a hill and stand on top to look. If someone were to ask you, Why are you standing on the hill?” you wouldnt have an answer. Theres no purpose in standing on the top of the hill. Youre just standing on the hill and feeling happy standing on the hill. Theres not a reason for doing it. There are people who take slow footsteps up the hill in walking meditation. There are people who see me walking like that who ask, Why are you walking like that?” And I say, I dont have any purpose in doing this. I just do it to be happy.” That is our practice. I just do that and I feel happy. I sit in order to sit, and I stand in order to stand.
When we do sitting meditation, we dont think that were doing sitting meditation in order to become a Buddha. We sit to be happy. We sit merely to be there, to have the awareness that we are there, that the wonderful world is there, inside us and around us. If we sit like that, that is happiness already, and that is mindfulness.
Wherever we are when were sitting, we can become aware that over our heads there are so many stars. There is the Milky Way, our galaxya river with trillions of stars. We are sitting on a planet, a very beautiful planet, which is revolving in the galaxy. If we sit and we see that, why else do we need to sit? We see clearly the wonders of the universe and of our planet Earth.