Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?
And I still don’t get it.
Honestly It still looks like a big scam to me.
Some “teachers” say that you just focus your attention on breath or whatever you choose as a focus point.
But then isn’t our whole life a sequence of meditations? Because we always focus on something (with sleep breaks).
And then following Occam’s razor - why need separate concept for that?
Other gurus teach that meditation is “doing nothing”. Okay, but then again there’s nothing special about it, we all do it from time to time.
More than that, it means you can’t really practice such meditation, by its definition.
Another way to look at it - just sit peacefully and observe your thoughts.
Then again, aren’t we doing it anyway on a regular basis without introducing a word for it?
Can you please share your own personal specific definition — what exactly is a meditation for you?
Please be as detailed as possible and avoid abstract discussions and arguments (I’ve had enough of it already :), just your own experience.
Thank you.
162 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadTo give you my own answer to your question: First, you say, "we always focus on something". In truth we rarely achieve concentrated focus that tunes out everything else. We rarely "just sit peacefully and observe .. thoughts", though we might think we do, we are constantly evaluating and making judgements about our thoughts. So meditation practice can help refine the skills of focusing and observing. Second, everything you say about not needing a separate concept or word is true in an intellectual sense, but to actually know and experience mindfulness is different from merely having a rational understanding of the ideas.
But you don’t need to buy the whole meditation myth for that, do you?
You just accept this assumption and go on with your life without ever thinking about it, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_tea_ceremony
The items you raised as commonplace things we all do anyway is understood, but it seems you assume that most people are present for their own life, when actually people are often a million miles away thinking about something else.
Did the dinner you had last night taste good or did you not stop to enjoy the taste? Do you remember what you had for dinner last night? When you went on your last vacation were you really there enjoying it or were you enjoying the concept of it and how you could record it and share it with others on social media? There is even a psychological condition called disassociation that many people suffer from but don't know what it's called. Disassociated people see their life as a passive observer, like watching themselves act in a play.
Mindfulness is an Eastern solution attempt to counter these tendencies. In fact, mindfulness may be the only solution for disassociation because there isn't a pill you can take for that. Disassociation comes about because of trauma and a person's need to disengage from the pain. The "thousand yard stare" of war vets is an example. Mindfulness training is used as therapy by the VA but they don't call it that.
https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/prolonged-expo...
I'm not saying there aren't "mindfulness" scam teachers, but that's true of just about any topic, at least in America
Mindfulness meditation is a technique where you learn to keep the default mode network inactive while not engaged with any external activity. The resulting subjective state feels quiet (as opposed to constantly occupied with stray thoughts) and somewhat like Csikszentmihalyi's flow.
"...practicing meditation is a process of exploring the heart and mind, of fully experiencing the richness of awareness itself. This implies that meditation is not meant to eliminate the things we don’t like about ourselves, or even to become “better” people. Meditation helps us to see that we are already whole and complete. It is a practical tool that enables us to get in touch with our true nature.
The path of meditation unfolds in two stages: We begin by recognizing that the nature of awareness is fundamentally good and pure, and that it is the source of true and lasting happiness. Once we have directly experienced the basic goodness of awareness, the path of meditation then consists of nurturing this recognition and allowing the qualities of awareness to manifest fully."
[0] https://tergar.org/meditation/what-is-meditation/
So I go and know what to do, and some criteria to know if I’m doing it right.
- Our every experience has two parts: its content (for example, a thought "pizza") and awareness (our ability to know / feel / experience it). Usually, we just notice the content, but do not recognize our capacity of being aware. As a counter example, unlike us, a computer can store the word "pizza" in its memory, but it does not have the conscious experience of it.
- Meditation consists of simply being with both, in a natural, relaxed way, but without getting lost
- Being with awareness is easy because it is a core part of every experience. Noticing it can be hard for the exact same reason.
- So, we practice being with awareness again and again, both in short formal meditation sessions and informal, while we go about our daily lives
- We gradually discover the built-in qualities of awareness: openness, freedom, creativity, joy...
The signs that we are doing it (any kind of meditation) right include:
- Being able to better handle ups and downs of life with a relaxed, curious attitude
- Increased sense of humor, creativity, spaciousness of where our life happens
- Kindness toward ourselves and others
The opposite would be signs that whatever we are doing is not benefiting us.
[0] - https://tergar.org/programs/
If consciousness is a stream of "nows" the idea is to be aware of the stream instead of being a passenger, if it makes sense.
I think it has value, it can help with anxiety, i'm too lazy to make a habit of it.
For example, while we eat, we get all kinds of thoughts, and we can easily get lost in them. Planning about the future, thinking about the past. We can get lost in our mind and our thoughts carry us around.
This is our default mode.
With meditation, we can learn to focus on what we are doing much more precisely than "typical" focus that we think is focusing, but the typical one we consider mainly "what we think our body is actively doing". We do not typically consider what's going on in the mind.
With meditation, we can learn to let go of the thoughts in our mind, so that we do not get dragged around this way or that way easily.
Training the mind is a skill that one learns over months and years.
When I meditate, I deliberately let the thoughts pass, and every session of meditation trains me to automatically be able to do it during my daily activities.
So when I am eating, I am only eating, with my body, but also my mind. When I am relaxing, I am truly relaxing. When I am thinking about something, I am truly thinking about only that thing.
How do you know that?
How do you measure and decide if you focus enough?
I am distracted 5 times a minute. Is it good enough or should I continue practicing?
And in the end - why is this a bad thing, to be distracted? If it’s in our nature in the first place?
I’m not being sarcastic - I truly want to know the deep answers from someone knowledgeable, but didn’t find any answers yet.
There are no "right and deep answers" for questions like this.
Everyone has their reason to be interested in meditation.
The original Buddha was simply "not satisfied" and wanted to know why. So he discovered the causes and effects and removers of dissatisfaction in itself.
Part of his discovery that dissatisfaction comes from within, from all of the thoughts that poke us, especially when we let them to affect us.
Mindfulness meditation is only part of the puzzle of Buddhism.
I’m trying to find those personal specific seeds that drove people to meditation.
Judging by the comments here - there are not that much. Most just repeat common mass media Knowledge about meditation.
Although some comments feel deeply personal, this is why I try to find more evidence, not just put a label on this meditation thing.
I had been overly self critical most of my life, and that made me unhappy. Additionally, I had a friend tell me that I had "too much ego". I did some research on "how to reduce your ego", and Buddhism appeared on my radar. I explored deeper, and started practicing. It showed me not to get too attached to a lot of the thoughts that I was very attached to. I was also very attached to a particular kind of self worth. I realised that I did have too much ego, not necessarily like the typical form of narcissism, but I was still too "self-centred", except instead of the "self-loving" narcissism, I was the "self-blaming" kind.
With meditation I learned not to pay too much attention to some of the thoughts, which helped calm me down. My complete solution did involve more than meditation, though, I went to therapy as well. Meditation feels more like a kind of "supplement" rather than a cure-all, tbh.
Some people are drawn to the spiritual and it isn’t if I do this X amount then I get Y.
Others above and below have pointed out a few great points about “meditation” that I find relevant:
- It serves to introduce a delay between stimulus and action
- It gives you the time to discover subconscious thoughts that you haven’t noticed prior that may be causing negative emotions like anxiety
I personally meditate by taking the time to think extensively about things people say to me and things I feel when I’m not in some urgent situation. Also, my extremely supportive and mindful wife and therapist are highly involved in this and I’d never have found success without them. I have a history of anger and anxiety issues. The mindfulness I describe has been my ticket out of the personal impulsive hell I built into my early 30s. Others discovered their ticket via meditation of the breathing, etc.
For me, meditation is sitting at my desk, sometimes idly and sometimes not, contemplating everything I feel, why I feel it, if it’s valid, what others feel, what my goals are (most important part), what my next steps toward those goals are (other most important part), etc.
Hope this is insightful. I think meditation is a very weakly defined term in the US.
The bar is where you set it for yourself. And that's part of the point - complete internal reflection, rather than awaiting someone else's instructions and/or approval.
But is it indeed in our nature? That comment assumes: if a condition exists, then that condition is correct. But, for example, it's in our nature to overload on sugar and fats, but that's not a healthy way to live.
Is that different from the kind of focus during strenuous exercise?
Think of your focus like a spotlight. Most people have very little control over their spotlight and it gets aimed at whatever is the latest thing to enter their awareness: a thought, a sound, another thought, a visual, etc. It's bouncing all around, all the time. A proficient meditator can more effectively control where the spotlight points. Over time, as the mind slowly learns to do this better, the stuff outside the spotlight fades and become less intrusive. This leads to increasing states of calm and peacefulness which extend even after the meditation session ends.
As for concentration training vs mindfulness meditation, I do think there's a difference. Concentration is a tight single-pointed focus, while mindfulness is a broad focus on the present moment. I found mindfulness meditation basically impossible without practicing concentration meditation extensively first, my mind was too overactive to settle in the present without an anchor to focus on.
Think of yourself like a wireless radio and think of the meditation like putting yourself into monitor mode.
It's definitely not a scam and it has been practiced a lot in the Eastern culture for long periods of time with observable true benefits.
However, like everything that gets popular in the west, there are many charlatans out there who are scammers.
Are you frustrated in your life? Are you sad and lonely? Is your life a living hell and you feel lost without direction? Sign up in this meditation course to solve all of your problems for only $9.95! 30-day money back guarantee!
Yet people still think that "if I pay this money, I'll get the healing in return" because of the "modern" capitalist way of thinking.
Anyway since you asked for personal experience, in my experience it's a nuanced thing.
- It's you being able to be aware, being able to reflect, and being able to re-calibrate on the way you do things.
- It's you being able to pause every once in a while and take a perspective. It sounds woo-woo but it's simply you taking a moment to really fucking gauge where you are right now based on your past and where you're fucking heading to.
- It's you being able to put yourself in perspective. This is you being one in seven billion people on earth, on a tiny pale blue dot of a planet across the universe, yet smaller than you is billions of organisms, atoms, and quantum stuff.
- It's you being able to check yourself in terms of politics, religion, faith, science. Do you find yourself in a sweet spot, or do you find yourself polarized, or do you find yourself biased, what shaped your beliefs right now, what beliefs are you not questioning, what beliefs are you questioning too much.
- It's you being able to tolerate and forgive yourself and other people to a degree (not on everything). It's you being able to let some things slide, and let things just the way they are.
- It's you being able to discern how you respond to something, how you think of it, how you feel it, how you experience it.
- It's cheesy. Not everyone will take you seriously when you talk about it. Other people are deep in it and very serious about it, other people are light about it and just chill about it. Other people have different terms of it.
- It's probably a sham. What makes one a 'guru' anyway? Haha. What's the product here? Are you being sold into a product or a service? Sales is about emotions and emotional stuff tend to sell. Peace of mind sells. Sex sells (mind you, even pickup gurus teach meditation). Happiness sells. Being a grounded alpha male sells. Being a holy person sells. Being something else sells. Experiencing something else sells.
So there you have it. I say define it as you wish and go on with your life. As someone else said (they say it's bruce lee, but whatever).. Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.
I'm speaking to two of your points, I think:
1) "isn't our whole life a sequence of meditations? Because we always focus on something"
2) "aren’t we doing [sit peacefully and observe your thoughts] anyway on a regular basis without introducing a word for it?"
In my direct personal experience, sitting in awareness, noticing thoughts and sensations, etc. is simply a materially different experience from... the rest of my time when I'm not doing that. It's materially different from when I'm focusing on an activity like coding (perhaps in a deep state of focus or "flow" [0]) or just habitually/pathologically scrolling through HN.
Did you ever get fully engrossed in a coding session and "lose time"? And eventually you "came around" or "landed" and realized you were "back" and 2 hours had gone by in deep focus? Did you ever realize that you'd been ruminating about some stupid thing for ages? E.g. repeatedly going over a difficult interaction from earlier in the day, or thinking about a difficult interaction that's coming up tomorrow and imagining how it might go? Did you ever snap out of that?
That feeling of "huh... I'm back - here I am." - that's what I am recruiting when I deliberately practice mindfulness. And then I get distracted... and when I notice, I bring my attention back... repeat.
To the second point of yours I quoted, i.e. are we doing this "anyway" on a regular basis? Maybe you are. For me, regular moment-to-moment thinking is generally not the same as mindfulness. I'm thinking, but I'm basically lost in the thoughts. I'm not observing them, I'm just thinking them - or they're thinking me. (And not just thoughts - this all applies equally well to emotional, interoceptive, and sensory experience.) Mindfully observing my experience is materially different, although I do get flashes of it throughout the day without reaching for it deliberately. Whether that's something I had before I started sporadic practice and just didn't have words for, or something the practice has unlocked for me, I can't say, because I can't faithfully recall what my moment-to-moment experience was like that long ago.
Maybe you're experiencing mindfulness frequently throughout your daily life, so you don't notice anything different when you set out to practice it deliberately. Maybe when you practice it you are getting lost in thought and not noticing. We'll never know, given the subjectivity of the experience and our limited tools for communicating about it, but I enjoyed the attempt :)
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-...
What keeps this going is the phenominon of thinking without realising you are thinking. You are simply being captured by thoughts that on the face of it (from the first person perspective) are coming out of nowhere. The analogy used is a dream. When you go to sleep you dream and usually you are not puzzled by the fact that a moment ago you were in your bed and the next you are in this dream situation. You completely lose the perspective that you are in a dream. Thoughts have this same quality. At the core of this issue is the sense of self.
Meditation is a means of becoming aware of this process (hence the practice of becoming aware of your thoughts). To do this successfully you need to develop a certain level of concentration (which is why there are practices that involve focus on the breath/some other meditation object singularly).
Sometimes people get caught up on the whole idea of meditation and try too hard (hence the gurus saying 'do nothing'). They revert back to the idea of a self and they try to improve themselves in some way. Really in meditation we are trying to become aware of something, a continual process playing out in your minds, a perpetual stream of thoughts that we are completely unaware of that is distorting our perceptions, creating an identity (in the first person sense) from which then arises all the emotional and psychological problems we tend to encounter in our daily lives that are as relevant today as when the Buddha was knocking around.
> Other gurus teach that meditation is “doing nothing”. Okay, but then again there’s nothing special about it, we all do it from time to time.
This makes me wonder: have you ever felt overwhelmed by anxiety? Or experienced a panic attack? Or like you had so much stress that you couldn't eat, sleep or focus at all?
If so, you said that you tried meditation: did it help you at all?
Honest question, because from these statements sound to me like you perhaps don't see the value proposition of meditation.
"Have you ever been overwhelmed?" "Experienced a panic attack?" "Blah blah lotsa stress?"
That is an advertisement. It's a way to sell something. It is no route to the truth.
And "honest question" is laughable. Those questions are leading.
Personally I haven't tried it, but I can see the value proposition, precisely because it sometimes can get rough with my anxieties, so whatever helps me stay on the present sounds interesting.
I wasn't trying to sell anything.
And only substantial value I got is a relaxation and calmness, some rest for the body and mind.
But I might as well call it “self relaxation techniques” and ignore the whole meditation industry.
So part of my question is - is there anything there except some common sense relaxation techniques?
It was explained to me as the opposite of CBT. It's being aware of what you're feeling and acknowledging it. That can be physical sensations or it can be emotions.
No amount of googling will not find a Guru. It is your intense desire to find a "Guru" will attract you towards the "Guru".
Yes, it is all bullshit.
But to a lot of people it's meaningful bullshit. Your mileage may vary.
What specific meaning they find in it.
Particularly when observing the Buddhist monks it is clear that by and large they practise what they preach. And a big component of that is meditating.
> ... And then following Occam’s razor - why need separate concept for that? ... Then again, aren’t we doing it anyway on a regular basis without introducing a word for it?
Every mind is unique. There might easily be people out there who naturally have such organised and orderly thoughts that meditation is useless to them. Or view the world in such an unusual way that the standard meditation practices are useless. But for most people, practising how to perceive the world is useful and so is actively focusing on the present.
There is a reason that meditation gets classed with the religious practices. There is a leap of faith at some level in believing that raw instinct alone will not lead people to perceive and respond to reality in a practised way.
What? Mindfulness is an industry in itself. Books, videos, podcasts, seminars, trainers. You name it people will take your money to teach you mindfulness, especially in enterprise
Deep in Covid lock down we had a virtual off-site for a load of the management. They hired (hired!) some mindfulness expert to come and do a session over zoom. "Just think about all of your frustrations, all of your interruptions, all of those things that take away your attention and just let them evaporate away". 10 minutes later my toddler burst in the door and zoom-bombed the meeting (I had left my.mic unmuted) screaming something about Peppa pig. Turns out you can't mindfulness your way out of looking after your kids while trying to work.
TL;Dr - if you can just ignore your problems and frustrations and not have any consequences from doing so, then they are probably not real problems you need to worry about anyway
In the case of mindfulness,"mindfulness meditation" is just a tool to train being mindful. So basically you train being in a mindful state and cultivate the trait of mindfulness. When training mindfulness via meditation, we often use the breath as an anchor, because it is easy to focus on. You could also just focus on a pebble in front of you for example.
The concept of mindfulness has been known in eastern cultures with contemplative traditions and particularly in Buddhism for at least 2500 years. Fostering the ability to be mindful is sometimes also referred to as "the heart of Buddhist meditation".
The interest in the concept has only really sparked in the western world in the second half of the 20th century. During the 1960s and 1970s, the concept was introduced to the western world because of inter-cultural exchanges due to Buddhist monks being forced to leave Tibet and choosing to emigrate to western countries.
One of the early enthusiasts, who saw the potential of mindfulness in a medical context is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He initially studied mindfulness to find an alternative method in treating patients with the primary application being intended as a treatment for chronic pain disorders and stress in clinical populations
There is no general agreement on how to characterise mindfulness and no singular, clear definition of mindfulness but rather a plethora of constructs and operationalisations are used throughout the available research, which is why there is so much confusion around what it is.
Kabat-Zinn suggests mindfulness is "cultivating our ability to pay attention in the present moment as we suspend our judging, or at least, as we become aware of how much judging is usually going on within us", which is a widely used conceptualisation.
Another interesting model is the Two-Component Model by Bishop et al. 2004
According to Bishop, mindfulness consists of the components, Self- Regulation of Attention and Orientation to Experience and is a psychological process developed through practice. Bishop et al. hypothesise that mindfulness is more of a state than a trait, arguing it can only subsist, while an individual focuses their attention on the present.
Self-regulation of attention is described as a metacognitive skill. Bishop et al. postulate it is comprised of three elements:
- vigilance, which describes the ability to maintain attention over a more extended period, - attention switching, the ability to deliberately change the focus of attention, - and inhibition of elaborative processing, which is the ability to suppress cognitions.
Orientation of experience is described as a quality of awareness, in which a person is open, curious and non-judgemental towards what they are experiencing in the present moment.
When it comes to mindfulness, in my experience, for SOME people, their mind is so far overthinking things. About themselves, about the people around them, every possible factor in life is fair game really. This can end up causing anxiety and impulses to take control of actions. It's possible to have so much physical tension built up all around the body all the time that it feels shut down. In these cases, learning how to just close your eyes and let go of all those thoughts and all that tension... in your face, in your shoulders, around your hips... bringing your mind away from those thoughts and that tension by focusing on your slowwww breath, might just bring you to a place of comfort that you didn't realize was possible. In the end what all of this represents is stress. For someone who has stress and benefits from this practice, it's an actual battle to let go of the thoughts and tension. But if you get there, you have a whole new level of growth you can do from there. In that case, this practice feels like a super power. So you might want to let everyone know. But if none of this applies to you, it will probably look like a scam.