It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it's not just a set of mental exercises. Meditation is the cultivation of mindfulness and the application of that mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while washing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it must be applied to each and every activity of one's life. This isn't easy.
-Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English, Chapter 15, paragraph 7"
I am very thankful to Henepola Gunaratana for helping me to understand how important meditation is.
Just because I sit on my butt with my back straight, that is not meditation. Just because I am able to understand what Buddhism is, that too is not meditation.
For the cultivation of mindfulness is awareness, and application of that awareness to all my activities is mindfulness!
This is difficult to do during every living moment.
We cannot practice meditation while asleep.
Yet we can apply the awareness that is mindfulness in all our activities!
It all begins with a single breath.
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