The Importance of Meditation in Buddhist Practice

Meditative techniques of various sorts have always played some role in Buddhist practice if you like but it doesn't always mean that they involve sitting cross legged as it were on the floor. It still seems like a pretty striking difference between some of the philosophical traditions that we're familiar with in Europe where you know you don't think of David Hume as meditating even though he has some of the same points to make about the self as you were saying. So basically you're searching for this liberating knowledge through which you can only ultimately you can get some sort of idea of what that might be like. But it's quite different from realizing you need to do something to realize.