You have to learn the correct spirit of sitting. If you make a lot of effort when you sit, you become tense and that creates pain all over your body. Sitting should be pleasant. When you turn on the television in your living room, you can sit for hours without suffering. Yet when you sit for meditation, you suffer. Why? Because you struggle. You want to succeed in your meditation and so you fight. When you are watching television you don’t fight. You have to learn to sit without fighting . If you know how to sit like that, sitting is very pleasant. When Nelson Mandela visited France he was asked what he like to do the most. He said that because he was always busy, what he liked to do the most was just to sit and do nothing. Because to sit and do nothing is a pleasure – you restore yourself. The problem is not to sit or not to sit, but how to sit.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Be Beautiful, Be Yourself, Shambala Sun