{"id":906,"date":"2009-11-05T11:42:40","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T11:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/11\/why-we-meditate-otis-redding.html"},"modified":"2009-11-05T11:42:40","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T11:42:40","slug":"why-we-meditate-otis-redding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/11\/why-we-meditate-otis-redding.html","title":{"rendered":"Why We Meditate: Sittin’ In The Morning Sun, Sittin’ When The Evening Come"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"meditation_buddhism_meditate.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
\nby Ethan Nichtern<\/a><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

This is the last installment of “Why We Meditate” before the 24 Hour Meditation Marathon.<\/i><\/p>\n

On Friday and Saturday, the Buddhist<\/a>-inspired Interdependence Project<\/a> (which creates this blog<\/a> for your education and\/or amusement) will be hosting our largest event to date in the form of a 24- hour Meditation<\/a> Marathon in the
\nwindow displays of ABC Carpet & Home<\/a>, a wonderful and sustainable<\/a> store in New York City.
\nWe are raising for our non-profit organization to develop as a true
\ncommunity center, develop a radio show, and develop our activism
\nprojects (environmental and prison<\/a> work) in the coming year. We also need additional support to continue providing great
\nclasses, events and projects for the upcoming year, and expand the
\nscope of our transformative community.<\/p>\n

About 90 people have signed up to participate. Three of us, myself
\nincluded, are meditating for 24 hours straight! So why do we practice
\nmeditation<\/a>?
\nThat’s a great question to ask yourself before you do it around the
\nclock on one of the busiest streets in the world. Every week for the
\nnext six weeks leading up to
\nthe event, we will share with you five answers to that questions from
\nmarathon participants. If you like an answer, please consider making a donation in support of the meditator who wrote it<\/a> (many thanks to the 600 or so sponsors so far!) Any amount is appreciated, and it helps our little nonprofit with a big
\nheart tremendously. The donation is deductible to the full extent of
\nthe law. <\/p>\n

Here are this week’s top five reasons we sit:
<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\n1. “<\/span><\/font>“Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come,
\nWatching the thoughts roll in, And I watch ’em roll away again, yeah
\n(apologies to Otis Redding<\/a>)”
    -participant Raquel Cion”<\/p>\n

2. “I sit to turn up my Heartlight. (Like E.T.<\/a>)”
    -participant Shelley Dague<\/p>\n

3. “I sit because I’m going to die.  Before I do I want to live consciously and fully.”
    -participant Hal Lanse<\/p>\n

4. “I meditate becasue the alternative is not pretty.”
    -participant Ellen Scordato<\/p>\n

5.  “I sit because sanity can’t be bought or sold.”
     -participant Ethan Nichtern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ethan Nichtern This is the last installment of “Why We Meditate” before the 24 Hour Meditation Marathon. On Friday and Saturday, the Buddhist-inspired Interdependence Project (which creates this blog for your education and\/or amusement) will be hosting our largest event to date in the form of a 24- hour Meditation Marathon in the window…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-meditation"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy We Meditate: Sittin' In The Morning Sun, Sittin' When The Evening Come - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/11\/why-we-meditate-otis-redding.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why We Meditate: Sittin' In The Morning Sun, Sittin' When The Evening Come - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Ethan Nichtern This is the last installment of “Why We Meditate” before the 24 Hour Meditation Marathon. 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}