The difference and connection between mindfulness and meditation

Meditation is a broad category that covers all spiritual practices that practice concentration and awareness. Mindfulness is a branch that was born in the Buddhist meditation system and was later transformed into an independent psychological intervention technology through secularization. The two are not in a parallel relationship. They both include and overlap. In the current public context, the two are often equated. The essence is that mindfulness is currently the most popular type of meditation practice and is often directly used as a synonym for meditation.

I first came into contact with these two concepts in 2017. At that time, I stayed up late writing plans for a long time and suffered from insomnia. I downloaded three or four meditation apps, and the homepages were all about "mindfulness stress reduction" and "mindfulness sleep aid." I assumed that these two were different names for the same thing. It wasn't until I went to Fujian to participate in a ten-day meditation camp that I discovered that fellow practitioners were quarreling about this: Some people say that when you are walking, you are aware of the touch of your feet on the ground, which is also mindfulness. You don't have to sit cross-legged at all. Can that be called meditation? Some people say that mindfulness was originally a practice method in meditation, but now it has been taken out and sold as a tool to relieve anxiety, which has completely changed its flavor.

Let’s first talk about the boundary issue that is most likely to be confused by everyone. If we look at the academic definition, "meditation" is actually an imported general term. It was originally a general term for the methods of practicing concentration and awareness in various religions in India and East Asia. It covers a particularly wide range: you need to visualize images, recite mantras, focus on breathing, and even Taoist breathing and Buddhist sitting meditation, which can all be considered meditation in a broad sense. But what we often refer to as "mindfulness" mostly refers to the technique that Dr. Kabat-Zinn of MIT extracted from the Four Mindfulness Foundations of Theravada Buddhism in the 1970s. The core is "awareness of the present moment without judgment." There is no specific observation goal, and you do not need to achieve any special state of "emptiness". You don't even have to sit down. You can be aware of the aroma of rice when eating, and stop for 3 seconds to touch your tight chest during an argument. These are all mindfulness exercises.

To use a popular metaphor, meditation is like a large refrigerator filled with various drinks, and mindfulness is the best-selling sparkling water among them: You are right to say that sparkling water is a drink, but you cannot say that all drinks are sparkling water. Moreover, sparkling water can be bought readily without opening the refrigerator, which also corresponds to the characteristic that mindfulness can be separated from the formal sit-down meditation scene. Oh, by the way, this boundary is not completely dead. Many senior practitioners call daily mindfulness awareness "meditation in motion". Do you think he is wrong? It doesn’t count. After all, meditation in the broad sense is not limited to the form of sitting cross-legged, but everyone’s conventional usage is different.

I have a friend who practices Transcendental Meditation. He sits for 20 minutes in the morning and evening every day, reciting a special mantra silently throughout the process. His pursuit is to enter a peaceful state that "transcends thinking." He always says that he practices meditation but not mindfulness: "When I practice, I have to empty all thoughts. Mindfulness requires you to watch the thoughts come and go without interfering, which is completely different." The converse is also true: last time I gave an anxious client a homework assignment, asking him to stop for 3 seconds and notice the stiffness in the back of his neck every time he checked the work group. This is a typical mindfulness exercise, but you can't say that he was meditating in these 3 seconds, right?

But you're saying they have nothing to do with each other? Not right either. After all, 90% of the mass meditation classes on the market now use mindfulness technology as their core, so it’s no wonder that everyone calls it a mixed name. And from the core, the ultimate goals of the two actually have a lot of overlap: whether it is traditional meditation practice or modern mindfulness intervention, they are essentially training you to control your attention and prevent you from being led by messy thoughts. It is just that the path and goal are different. Later, based on mindfulness technology, multiple clinical intervention programs such as mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) were developed, which have been proven by a large number of empirical studies to have a relieving effect on anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. This is the core reason for its rapid popularity.

Of course, this topic is still not understood in the circle. Traditional meditators always feel that the current approach of equating mindfulness and meditation is short-changing them both: originally, mindfulness was one of the Eightfold Path, and was used to clarify the mind and nature. Now it has become a tool to relieve the anxiety of working overtime. Meditation was originally a way to seek liberation, but now it has become a traffic password for paid courses. I know a Zen master who lives in a monastery and said that the core of mindfulness in the Eightfold Path is "the true awareness of the body, feelings, mind, and dharma, which ultimately leads to liberation." The essence of the mindfulness used to relieve KPI pressure is completely different from the current mindfulness. The confusion is actually a misunderstanding of the traditional practice system. Researchers in clinical psychology feel there is no need to worry about this: last year I participated in a youth emotional intervention forum, and a professor took 3 years of follow-up data and said that doing 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation three times a week can reduce the anxiety level of middle school students by 27%.

Both statements are reasonable, but they are essentially conflicts in different contexts. I have been practicing for so many years, and I don’t really worry about how to call it. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and sit cross-legged for 20 minutes and notice my breathing. Sometimes I say that I just meditated, sometimes I say that I did a mindfulness exercise, and no one will hold me back to correct me. For ordinary people, there is no need to bother with these definitions: if you want to relieve stress, just follow the APP and do 10 minutes of breathing awareness. Call it mindfulness or meditation, it just works. If you really want to learn more deeply, it's not too late to sort out the boundaries of different schools - after all, whether it's mindfulness or meditation, it ultimately helps you understand your own heart better, right?