Standing meditation is another posture that you use throughout your life. The more we meditate when we're standing, then we can apply that when we're standing in our life. We'd like to learn how to do the formal practice in every posture, then we can apply it to our life. As I've said before, the only reason we don't teach lying down is that most people just fall asleep. Although it's something that you should be doing in the evening before you do go to sleep. Hopefully you are doing some Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation or something similar. Standing is just another posture. What happens to you when you stand in line to get your food? Do you get bored sometimes? Do you get upset, somebody's taking too long or somebody's just taken four pieces of pineapple? Do you get angry, do you get violent on the inside when you can't even say anything here? What happens when you're standing in line to wash your dishes? Somebody's so slow you could just scream. Yeah, these things happen when we're standing throughout our life, so standing meditation is another way to learn how to deal with those moments in your life.
Why shall we stand at least 30/45 minutes, even if it's not comfortable? Let me ask you something, how many of you have ultimate bliss in sitting meditations? Every sit? Is it beautiful? Is it not comfortable or what? You can be comfortable for a certain amount of time, okay, and then the pain takes over, right? When you get to my age the pain is just kind of there in the beginning, you don't have to wait any longer. Don't worry that the standing's comfortable or uncomfortable, it's just the practice. People will never ask that question about the sitting, why do we sit for 45 minutes when it's uncomfortable? It's the training, it's the training. Keep in mind if you've ever done sport, competitive sport, or if you've not done it, try to identify with what the competitive sports person goes through. It's training, it's hard work, it's boring, you do it over and over, every day, every day, it's uncomfortable, it's this or that. But you have in mind what you're doing it for. So whenever you find that the practice is uncomfortable in any way, keep in mind what you're doing it for, then that gives you more energy to get through those uncomfortable times.