The difference and connection between mindfulness and meditation

The difference and connection between mindfulness and meditation can actually be explained in one sentence: mindfulness is a "state of awareness without judgment and staying in the present moment", while meditation is the most commonly used formal method to train people to enter and maintain this state. The two are the intersection of "goal state" and "realization path". However, in the context of different practices and application schools, the boundaries of the two will be different, and they will occasionally be used interchangeably.

Let’s talk about the most common scenario: you are stepped on by someone on the subway during the morning rush hour. Your first reaction is to frown, and anger is about to rush to your throat. Suddenly you pause and notice that your chest is tight now, your temples are twitching, and even the thought of "wanting to curse" clearly comes to mind - -You neither judged yourself for "why you can't hold your breath" nor blamed the other person for your anger. You were just clearly aware of your current emotions and physical reactions. At this time, even if you were standing in a crowd of people without closing your eyes or crossing your legs, you were still in a state of mindfulness, but obviously you were not meditating.

Many people confuse the two. In fact, most mindfulness training courses on the market use meditation as the core practice content. For example, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the most popular therapy in the world, Kabat-Zinn clearly defines mindfulness as “awareness that arises through intentional attention, living in the moment, and non-judgment.” The fixed exercises in the course, such as body scanning, sitting meditation, walking meditation, and mindful eating, Essentially, they are all different forms of meditation - you spend dozens of minutes sitting in a quiet place, and deliberately practice bringing your attention back to your breathing or body feelings. In essence, you are repeatedly honing your "awareness" ability, so that you can call out this state at any time when you encounter something in life.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this division. For example, in the practice system of Theravada Buddhism, Vipassana (also known as Insight Meditation) itself is a meditation practice centered on cultivating mindfulness. Many practitioners will directly equate Insight Meditation with mindfulness practice. At this time, the boundary between the two is very blurred. ； There are also many teachers in the yoga school who believe that mindfulness itself is a branch of meditation, which belongs to the category of meditation that emphasizes "awareness", and is in a parallel relationship with meditation practices that focus on relaxation and concentration. These differences are essentially different usage scenarios. There is no absolute right or wrong, and there is no need to quarrel over definitions.

When I led offline mindfulness experience classes before, I met many novices who said, "I sit and meditate for 20 minutes every day. Does that mean I am a mindfulness expert?" ” Not necessarily. There is a student who works in Internet operations. He meditates and clocks in before going to bed every day. However, when his boss comes back to the plan, he gets angry on the spot and complains to his colleagues for half an hour. Later, I found out during the chat that when he was meditating, he was either reviewing the day's work or thinking about the next day's to-dos. He was completely distracted during those 20 minutes and was not even aware of the thought "I am distracted now." So this meditation was just a clock-in task that lasted only a short time and had nothing to do with mindfulness.

The converse is also true: you don’t need to practice meditation specifically to enter a state of mindfulness. I know a master who makes handmade leather goods. He has never heard of mindfulness meditation, but he said that when he was cutting leather and sewing, he didn't think about anything, he just stared at the stitches in his hands. He didn't even know it was raining outside. A few hours passed by in a flash, and he felt very comfortable when he was done. This is actually a typical dynamic mindfulness, which highly overlaps with the "flow" state mentioned by many runners. He has not done any formal meditation exercises, but when doing what he loves, he naturally enters into non-judgmental present awareness. Of course, there are many practitioners who do not recognize this kind of "accidental mindfulness" and feel that only the awareness gained through formal meditation training is stable and can be invoked when encountering bad things. The state triggered by interest is too fragile and will break when encountering pressure. This statement is also reasonable. I have practiced it for 5 years, and I really feel Awareness must be trained to be more "smooth". The last time I encountered a burst water pipe at home and flooded the living room, in the past I would have jumped up and cursed immediately. That day, my first reaction was "Oh, I'm a little panicked now, my heartbeat is a little fast." Then I quietly went to find the real estate agent and wiped the floor, and there was no emotion at all.

In fact, let me tell you, you can think of mindfulness as the "low-power mode" of your brain: usually, in the background of our brain, there is either the regret process of "Did I offend someone by what I just said?" or the anxiety process of "What should I do if I can't meet the KPI next month?", which is stuck, hot and consumes power. However, the mindfulness state turns off all these backgrounds, leaving only the process of what we are currently doing, which is extremely smooth. As for meditation, it is "power consumption optimization training" that you take time to do for your brain - you can use the official standard training package (formal meditation courses, fixed-duration sitting meditation exercises), or you can turn off the background at ordinary times (taste the taste carefully when drinking coffee, feel the touch of your feet on the ground when walking), whichever is more convenient, as long as it can reduce the internal consumption of the brain.

Really, there is no need to worry about "should I practice mindfulness or meditation?" There is no need to compare the length of meditation. After all, no matter what method you use, it can make you less inexplicably irritable and feel more of the small beauty of the moment, which is better than anything else.