Lessons from 600 hours of meditation

How meditation changed my life and became a life long practice

“The path of Dharma is the path of truth.”

I became a tree. There was no other way to get through the sitting except to become a tree. My body was firmly rooted to the ground. Hot searing pain in my back felt like a thousand needles penetrating my spine, but all I chose to do was observe. Be a tree. It felt like an eternity.

The sound of a gong broke my concentration. And I came back to being me.

I don’t claim to have reached any sort of enlightenment; in fact, I continue to wake up every day as the imperfect human being that I am. I have, however, started on the spiritual path, and I feel blessed by whatever good karma has come to pass in my life that lead me to this point.

Six hundred hours of meditation is minuscule in the grand scheme of potential time one could dedicate to this practice. Long term meditators are those who have sat at least 10,000 hours of meditation. That would equate to 2 hours a day for 13 years or 5 hours daily for 6 years. The former would be more realistic for us ordinary folk (those who still live in society and have livelihoods) and the latter a monk who has given up the worldly life.