Can you make progress and have insights if you practice one hour a day?
Or do you need a retreat to progress and have insights?
Of course it takes longer, but maybe after one or two years of one hour a day.
Can you make progress and have insights if you practice one hour a day?
Well, I think one person had an insight or enlightenment after just hearing the Buddha speak.
Very true.
possible, I guess.
So it very much depends who you are because for some of us that doesn't work.
One hour a day.
So if you're meditating for one hour a day, I would assume you'd want to keep your practice going throughout the day.
Not just leave it on the cushion, so to speak.
For sure.
But you're only meditating for one hour a day.
I think at the beginning, that is a long time.
I know when I first started, I didn't think I could meditate for five minutes.
And meditation is something that gets easier and easier.
And at the beginning, I used to time myself.
And then you get to the point where you're worried about meditating too long.
So that's...
One thing, you know, and for me at the beginning, one hour in a day would have been a lot of meditating.
It's just something that just got easier and easier for me.
And so for a beginner, I think if they take small steps, they're more likely to stick with it.
And also if they know ahead of time that, hey, it starts off tough, and I think it's probably tough for most people at the beginning.
I can only say that hours are not so much important as moments when you are meditating.
You can sit for hours and sit and sit and don't make progress.
For sure.
And that's sort of how I wanted to approach this.
For sure, what Alfred said is a perfectly good answer, and your answer as well.
One thing that can reassure us about such situations where you're only able to do X number of minutes or hours per day is that at every moment that you're mindful, you've done something good for yourself.
You've created what we call a wholesome karma.
One moment of acknowledging, one time of saying to yourself, rising or saying to yourself, falling.
One moment of recognizing something for what it is and fixing your mind on it as it is.
You're changing something about yourself and about your future in a positive way.
So if you do that lots of times during the day, even an hour's worth, of course you can't do a full hour's worth, but if within an hour you're able to do that many times,
then that's many, many instances of wholesome karma.
It's purified some aspect of your existence.
So the question, as Bill said, some people can become enlightened just listening to a teaching.
And so as I replied, it very much depends on who you are.
There's no guarantee that if you do intensive meditation for a year or two years that you'll become enlightened.
I mean, it's much more likely, but it's not a guarantee.
It totally depends on who you are, of course, who your teacher is and what center you're staying at and all of these things.
what your past karma is.
Sometimes your past karma is such that it gets in your way.
You get sick or somehow you're not able to practice.
Some people even go crazy because of intense bad past karma.
It can happen.
So there's many aspects.
You should never...
be set on a time limit, that I want to become enlightened in X number of days, we should try to go as quickly as we can, or to the best of our ability, to train ourselves.
But you have to be realistic that you might take lifetimes to become enlightened.
Some people, even in the Buddha's time, didn't become enlightened, but made a determination to become enlightened in the time of Maitreya Buddha.
And so they are angels up in heaven right now or wherever they are.
And because of their determination and their intentions, they're going to be born sometime in the far, far future as disciples of Maitreya Buddha, supposedly, or possibly.
So moments of mindfulness are in and of themselves beneficial, let alone a daily practice of one hour or two hours a day, which is a great thing if, as Paulina said, you're actually mindful every moment of that.
Or even if you're mindful for many moments, it's a great thing.
But I'll tell you what people say when they come here, especially now that I'm teaching on the internet, that they are shocked at the difference between doing one hour, even one hour a day.
and coming here and dedicating their waking hours to it that in and of itself has been an obstacle for people coming here now because of their expectations of how easy it is or you know of course it's difficult to do an hour a day but
They say, okay, well that kind of difficulty I can handle.
So they now come here expecting it to be that difficult or a little more difficult.
It's an order of magnitude more difficult.
And I would say it is an order of magnitude more beneficial.
You can't compare one hour or two hours a day of meditation to...
8, 10, 12 hours but moreover just an utter dedication to the meditation practice with no interruptions and the knowledge that when you wake up in the morning that's what you're going to start doing until you fall asleep at night
That's where very quick changes occur.
So the question of whether after a year or two one can expect progress and insights, I guess the question one might be asking is, or is it futile?
And I would say, no, of course it's not futile.
If we don't do good deeds, the alternative is only to do bad deeds.
And
that leads us definitely to a bad state.
If we inject into our lives of good and badness, if we inject more goodness and purity, it can't help but lead us in a good way.
So it will lead us closer to Buddhism, closer to meditation.
It will make it easier to meditate.
I mean, without question, people who have started practicing in this tradition, based on the teachings in the internet I put up,
Without question, it is actually easier for them when they arrive.
They can already do half hour walking, half hour sitting, which in my day we started at 10 minutes walking, 10 minutes sitting.
So to have already started is a great thing.
It can only lead you closer to enlightenment.
If the question is whether you can become a Sotapanna in that way, I would say it's quite difficult in a couple of years.
Now it might happen in a couple of lifetimes, but if you're looking for something quicker than a couple of lifetimes, you really are advised to at some point take up intensive practice.
So an example we have is of people doing one or two hours a day, two hours I think minimum a day,
and then spending a weekend of intensive practice where they put it all together.
And, you know, I've never done this, but I've heard of good results from people who have led their students through it.
Now, you know, they say it's good results, you have to trust them, and how do they really know?
Because, of course, the Dhamma is to be realized for oneself, but...
I think the best we can say with certainty is that it's certainly beneficial and it's absolutely worth doing and it will change you it will bring you closer to the Dhamma it will change many things about your life and it will help you prepare for eventual intensive practice if you do decide on it and it may even lead you to profound insights and even enlightenment depending on your qualities and perfection and your dedication to it
Depends how you're living your life, as Bill said.
If you're mindful throughout the day, it's better than some people who come to meditation centers and just sit around or fall asleep on their sitting mat.