A. Your experiences of different postures is something that I personally haven’t had, so there is little I can say about what is best. It would seem to make sense to suggest that you use the posture that you feel most comfortable with, however, you do have a good point about swapping and changing.

It could be said that the totality of Dharma practice is nothing more that the taming of restlessness. If we take this to heart it should make us wary of wanting to change aspects of practice -in this case the posture used in sitting meditation. It is interesting that the hands are often held quite differently from tradition to tradition and sometimes from teacher to teacher, with each telling us why they use their particular style and why it is the best. Very confusing. It would make sense to follow the method of your tradition, but if you are someone who isn’t committed to a specific tradition you will have to make a choice.

Your awareness that changing around frequently could be just restlessness is well founded, and I’m delighted that you are concerned about this. Any sort of change can often bring a “honeymoon” period because of the novelty of what you are doing. When this period goes into change there is the temptation to change again, and so it goes on. My understanding of Dharma is to stick with things and for the most part let change take place of itself, whatever the aspect of practice may be. Letting yourself use different hand positions runs the danger of opening the door to other things, the ‘thin end of the wedge’ syndrome. All I can say is that it is not normal to change hand position regularly, so I would say stay with the convention . Pick one and resist the urge to change.