Essay on the relationship between mindfulness and meditation

Mindfulness and meditation are neither completely equivalent parallel concepts, nor do they have an either/or relationship. They are a cross-set of "states and paths" and "goals and methods" - mindfulness is a state of mind that can be learned through meditation training and maintains non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. It is also the core practice goal of some meditation schools.； Meditation is a collective term for a variety of attention training techniques including mindfulness, but not all meditation aims to cultivate mindfulness, and not all mindfulness exercises need to be completed in the form of meditation.

When I participated in the corporate mindfulness intervention project of the National Mental Health Center of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2021 as a teaching assistant, 80% of the questions I received in the first class were related to the confusion between the two concepts: "Does lying down and relaxing for 10 minutes every day count as practicing mindfulness? ”“Can I do mindfulness meditation if I don’t believe in Buddhism? ”Some students even directly equate meditation with mindfulness, thinking that as long as they sit for half an hour, they can naturally achieve a state of mindfulness. This misunderstanding is actually a common deviation caused by the simplified dissemination of concepts in popular science on the market.

Interestingly, the dispute over the relationship between the two can be traced back to the origin of the concept. In the traditional practice system of Theravada Buddhism, "mindfulness" is a core component of the Eightfold Path, and the corresponding Pali word *sati* originally means "awareness and recollection." The practice of the four foundations of mindfulness is through the training of Vipassana (that is, insight meditation, which is a type of meditation), and ultimately obtains a stable state of mindfulness. In this context, meditation is the core path to achieve mindfulness, and mindfulness is one of the ultimate goals of meditation training. When I experienced the Theravada meditation camp in Yunnan last year, the instructor would not even mention the word "mindfulness" alone. He only required students to continue to be aware of the ups and downs of breathing during sitting and walking meditation until awareness became a habit that did not require deliberate mobilization. For traditional practitioners, it is almost meaningless to talk about mindfulness without meditation.

But in the context of modern clinical psychology, the relationship between the two has a completely different interpretation. When Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), defined mindfulness, he directly stripped away its religious attributes and defined it as "purposeful, non-judgmental attention to the present moment." And "mindfulness meditation" is just a type of training method in the intervention program he developed, and it is a branch of many meditation techniques. This definition is now generally accepted by academic circles and the public, and has also led many people to have the understanding that "mindfulness is a subcategory of meditation." Many meditation apps on the market even directly classify all mindfulness-related content under the meditation column, further strengthening this impression.

Don't tell me, I have seen many practitioners who completely escape these two definitions. I once worked for a senior product manager of an Internet company. He suffered from severe anxiety and sleep disorders. After trying zazen meditation for half a year, he couldn't sit still at all. Whenever he closed his eyes, his mind was filled with demand and scheduling. Later, he developed a "workstation mindfulness method" on his own: during lengthy demand meetings, he noticed the pressure of sitting on his buttocks in the chair. He used force, felt the concave and convex feeling of the keycaps when typing the keyboard with his fingers, felt the temperature of the ceramic when holding the water cup, and gently brought his attention back every time his mind wandered, without making any judgment. After three months of persistence, his anxiety scale score dropped by 40%, which was even better than that of many students who insisted on meditating every day. On the other hand, I have also seen many aunts who sit down and meditate for 40 minutes every day. When they sit, all they think about is "today's groceries are 50 cents more expensive" and "will my son's blind date succeed next week?". After sitting, I should be anxious or anxious. I have done enough meditating movements, and there is no trace of mindfulness.

In fact, it is very simple to clarify the relationship between the two, as long as you first jump out of the "either/or" classification thinking. First of all, not all meditation is about mindfulness: Transcendental Meditation pursues the chanting of specific mantras to enter an ethereal state beyond ordinary consciousness, without the need to maintain awareness of the present moment. ； The goal of some religious visualization meditations is to construct images of gods and Buddhas in the mind. The core is the directional projection of concentration, which has nothing to do with non-judgmental present awareness. Conversely, not all mindfulness exercises need to be in the form of meditation: Mindful eating, mindful walking, and mindful communication, which have been clinically proven to be effective, are all essentially mindfulness training. They do not require you to cross your legs, close your eyes, or find a quiet space. You should eat more slowly when you eat, and feel the chewiness of rice grains and the sweetness of vegetables. That is mindfulness practice and has nothing to do with meditation.

At present, there is no unified conclusion in the academic circles on the boundary between the two. Researchers in the field of cognitive neuroscience prefer to divide it from the perspective of brain mechanisms: as long as the training process can suppress the over-activation of the default mode network (which is the neural basis of what we often call "distracted thoughts") and improve the attention control ability of the prefrontal cortex, it can be included in the category of mindfulness training regardless of whether it is in the form of meditation or not. ； Many scholars who study Eastern religious philosophy insist that mindfulness must rely on the ritual sense of meditation to establish stable neural pathways. Fragmented daily awareness can only be regarded as temporary attention adjustment and cannot be regarded as true mindfulness practice. Both views are supported by corresponding empirical research, and there is currently no unified consensus.

To be honest, for ordinary practitioners, there is no need to worry about the conceptual affiliation of the two. If you like a quiet environment and enjoy sitting and noticing your breathing, then take 10 minutes a day to do mindfulness meditation. ； If you can't sit still, integrate your awareness into the fragmented time of washing dishes, walking, and drinking coffee. No matter what method you use, it will eventually make you less regretful about the past, less anxious about the future, and more aware of the present. The purpose of training has been achieved - after all, concepts are dead, but people are alive, right?