Disclaimer: information might not be 100% accurate from memory, it comes close though. In meditation retreat I was told that meditation (Vipassana in this case

Disclaimer: information might not be 100% accurate from memory, it comes close though. In meditation retreat I was told that meditation (Vipassana in this case) is actually practicing in being prepared to die. According to this idea by doing this you can live fully. For me this seems a bit vague, but it did plant a seed in my head. The thing is, meditation teaches you equanimity, which from my understanding means being able to feel but without judgement. When I was in deep meditation I experienced equanimity a couple of times. At one point my muscles were aching so much by sitting perfectly still that I walked like a cripple after that meditation session. My body just could not perform normally, which I found odd in a sense. Yet, I never felt any pain, I noticed my body was having a hard time sitting perfectly upright in a still position, that was it. Or perhaps better said: I did feel a form of pain (aka that something is wrong with my body), but I never experienced any suffering from it. The converse is also true with regards to pleasure (e.g. small forms of non-clinical addiction). What I learned from practicing equanimity is that I prefer to die while using this skill. Because to me it means I won't die by suffering from pain or pleasure, I just die and experience how it feels. It could be pain, it might be pleasure, either way I just experience it and nothing more. Note: while equanimity has to be explained through language, it's not an intellectual concept in the sense that riding a bike isn't an intellectual concept. It's something you do. Intellectualising about riding a bike won't get you anywhere, same goes for equanimity in the way that I've been taught.