When it comes to meditation supplies, finding the perfect meditation cushion was practically like looking for the Holy Grail.

Since I began meditating in 1970. I've tried every form of meditation cushion that was ever invented. In fact, I used to spend hours trying to design my own perfect meditation cushions, one that would allow my back, to be totally straight, my knees to be comfortable and pain-free, my spine to be perfectly aligned. And then, just by sitting on that cushion, I hoped, I would achieve an instant kundalini awakening and full enlightenment.

I know that sounds like a joke, but I really thought that I needed the right meditation cushion, otherwise my spiritual progress would be hindered.

I tried the various forms of zafu — whether they were filled with cotton or buckwheat. It didn't make a difference. I used the zabuton, a cushion invented by Trungpa Rinpoche, but that didn't seem to speed me along the spiritual path either.

I went Japanese and tried the seiza bench. No noticeable acceleration.

I tried the Nada chair, which is a series of straps that support your lower back and hold up your knees. It was sort of a meditation seat bondage, and once again, no luck.

I resorted to just rearranging stacks of pillows of various sizes.

No matter what I did, none of these meditation products made any difference in my practice. Sometimes I had knee pain, sometimes I didn't, sometimes I sat up straight, sometimes I slouched, sometimes I was alert, sometimes I fell asleep.

And then I noticed something that had been right in front of my face for decades. None of my teachers had any special meditation supplies!

During a trip to Nepal, I sat in a room of a hundred Nepalese meditators and not one of them owned a meditation cushion. They just sat on the floor. None of them had ever seen a catalog full of meditation products and the infinite varieties of cushions that I had been experimenting with.

In fact, in a significant number of my teachers were sitting on a rather unusual device. It's called a chair.

That's right, a chair.

And they were sitting on it in some sort of special way. They were just sitting on a chair, leaning back against the back without perfect posture. Just sitting on the chair.

Some of the meditators to whom I pointed this out commented that the teachers were able to relinquish all of their meditation supplies because of the heightened state of their spiritual awareness. Other meditators said that these teachers were using a chair because their bodies had become unable to sit properly and, in fact, this was hurting their continued evolution.

I decided to put to the test and see what happened if I just sat in a chair, using my own experience as a laboratory.

I can tell you as a result of careful observation over a number of years that I've witnessed two results:

First, my body stop hurting. Second, my practice became easier, in part because my body wasn't hurting.

Oh sure, every now and then I would fall asleep as result of the added comfort but, hey, wasn't I meditating to relax anyway?

I've since discovered that it's possible to attain very deep states of meditation without any meditation supplies whatsoever, no meditation cushion, no meditation shawls. No special chairs, no pulleys and winches. Any chair will do. And often a hot tub is even better.

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