The difference between mindfulness and meditation

Mindfulness is a mental state of "focusing on the present moment consciously and without judgment", and meditation is a common practice method to achieve this state (as well as other physical and mental regulation goals). The essence of the two is the difference between "state" and "path", and they are not parallel concepts in the same category at all.

Let’s talk about a little thing that happened to me last week. I was queuing up to buy an iced Americano at a coffee shop. There was a girl standing in front of me, clutching her cell phone and frowning so hard she could kill a mosquito. She was muttering about how she was going to finish her afternoon report. After two minutes, she suddenly took a deep breath and looked down at the toes of her shoes. Within a few seconds, her shoulders relaxed. In those seconds, she was not thinking about the report, nor was she anxious about being scolded by her boss. She was concentrating on feeling the feeling of her breath sinking into her stomach. This was a real state of mindfulness, but you can't say that she secretly found a corner to meditate for three minutes, right?

Of course, not everyone agrees with this division, and the boundaries between the two are indeed blurred in different contexts. For example, in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, "mindfulness meditation" is the core practice module. Many introductory science charts directly equate the two to save trouble. After it was spread to China, many bloggers followed suit when selling courses, which led to many people being confused now. It’s even more different when it comes to the practice system of Theravada Buddhism. Mindfulness is the core branch of the Eightfold Path. It is a quality that can only be stabilized through long-term meditation (that is, what we now call broad meditation) and deliberate practice of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Meditation is the collective name for the entire set of practice paths. Mindfulness is just one of the “core experience values” you need to accumulate on this path.

I was confused when I first started practicing. I spent hundreds of dollars on a meditation course. After practicing for half a month, I realized that what I actually wanted was a state of mindfulness that could free me from anxiety at any time. I didn’t have to force myself to sit for 20 minutes every day. Later, I changed to not checking my phone when eating. I chewed every mouthful of food carefully and tasted it, and slowly I found the feeling.

Don’t think that meditation is just for practicing mindfulness. There are many types of meditation on the market. I have met an art therapy teacher before. The meditation she taught asked the students to close their eyes and imagine themselves walking in a forest, what the sound of stepping on fallen leaves would be like, what the temperature would be like when the wind blows on their face, and finally draw the imaginary picture. The goal of this kind of meditation is to awaken the sensibility, and it does not require you to maintain "non-judgmental present focus". If you wander around and think of the hills behind your grandmother's house when you were a child, you will be pleasantly surprised. There is also specialized compassion meditation that guides you to first send blessings to yourself, then to family and friends, and even to people who have hurt you. This practice is about empathy, which is completely unrelated to the goal of mindfulness.

Many novices always ask, "If I can't sit still, will I be unable to practice mindfulness?" 」, Chun Chun was fooled by the misunderstanding of "mindfulness = meditation". I used to work as a teaching assistant for a friend who works in child psychology. I conducted mindfulness intervention for children with ADHD tendencies. They were not allowed to sit at all. When they were playing with plasticine, they were allowed to feel the process of the plasticine changing from hard to soft in their hands. When shooting a ball, they counted the number of times they hit it. If they missed the count, they started over again. If they did not sit down or close their eyes or play white noise, they were still practicing mindfulness. The same goes for the opposite. If you sit there and meditate for half an hour, your mind will be all about what to eat for dinner and the report due tomorrow that you haven’t written yet. It looks like you are meditating, but in fact you are not even mindful at all.

To put it bluntly, there is actually no need to worry about the definition of nouns. Whether it is taking 10 minutes to sit down and meditate every day, or not using your mobile phone to taste the food carefully when eating, or feeling the touch of the wind blowing on your ears when walking, as long as it can help you escape from the endless regrets of the past and anxiety about the future and feel the reality of the present moment for one more second, then whether it is called mindfulness or meditation, it will be useful to you.