Why Do Sitting Meditation When You Can Do Hiking Meditation?

[r0ckyreed]

What I’m really asking is why would you choose to sit on your ass for 10 days when you could instead be hiking in the forest?

Why would you confine yourself to sitting to meditate if hiking is also a meditation?

I hope you can understand my question. 

This is one of my main thoughts that holds me back from doing a 10 day meditation retreat. After all, I think I would get more out of a 10 day hike in Yosemite than a 10 day sit in my room. 

The longest I ever meditated was 5 hours and didn’t feel like I gained much from it. Compare that to a 5 hour hike in Yosemite, and I got so much more out of that. I had a stillness and gratitude like no other, and I got in some exercise.

I think I would have regrets of wasting my time if I did sitting meditation for 10 days. Imagine 10 days of hiking. That would be quite the adventure. Adventure is a deep value of mine. I see limitations of sitting meditation. It’s not good for your back or for your mind long term because your spirit will long for adventure. If you just sat in one place and meditated, it would be as if you were already dead. 

Edited yesterday at 03:47 AM by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

I think I made a good point. It makes no sense sitting for 10 days straight when you can travel the world, hike through a forest, or run a marathon for 10 days. I don’t understand why the modern conception of meditation is sitting. Afterall, there is walking meditation. Why is walking meditation not as popular as sitting meditation? Walking is so much healthier than sitting.

[Ishanga]

@r0ckyreed With Sitting Meditation, You could say its the most serious sort of Sadhana one can do, the other ones are serious too but not in the same way.  Like Temples, not all Temples are meant for the same purpose, its the same with certain Sadhanas and Meditations, some have specific goals, general wellbeing, clearing of the chakra paths and sushumna, prana intensity, Kundalini activation, etc etc, so Sitting Meditations/Sadhana are for the serious practitioner, that wants to go all the way, total Liberation and Moksha, Annihilation of Individuality and Union with Absolute, the activities You mentioned are not for this, they are for General Wellbeing, maintaining the Body, Mind, and Human aspect of what You are, Pleasure and Enjoyment, much different than wanting Enlightenment and Liberation/Moksha...

[r0ckyreed]

Thanks for your answer. 

Couldn’t marathon running meditation be a serious form of meditation that could lead to genuine insight?

If sitting meditation is for serious meditators who want to go all the way, then is eyes closed meditation for those who go all the way vs eyes opened meditators? You see where I’m going with this? If I can stand and meditate vs sit and meditate, and if I can have eyes open vs eyes closed, then what really is meditation? If I can meditate while I run, walk, and go shopping, then the concept seems to lose meaning. When someone says meditation, I think of a monk sitting cross legged with eyes closed. What I’m asking is why is that the automatic picture or most common conception of meditation? If you asked 10,000 people to draw a person meditating, they will draw a person sitting cross legged with eyes closed. But you could also draw them running or working out, and that could be meditation as well? Osho says everything is a meditation because meditation is all about witnessing.