On the difference and connection between mindfulness and meditation

Meditation can be used to cultivate mindfulness, but mindfulness does not have to be obtained through meditation, and there is more than one goal of meditation. **

Many people will get confused when they first come into contact with these two concepts. When I was just getting started two years ago, I also made a joke that "mindfulness is not practiced until I sit down and meditate cross-legged". Today, I will combine practical experience and definitions in different fields to make it clear.

Interestingly, people in different circles have a very different understanding of the boundary between the two: I chatted with a friend who studied in Southern Buddhism before, and he firmly said that "Mindfulness is a branch of meditation and a part of observing dharma" and turned me to attend a workshop on clinical psychology. The lecturer clearly stated that "Mindfulness is an independent psychological trait and has no bound relationship with meditation". What both sides say is not wrong, but their contexts and goals are different. We can make a distinction from the objective dimension first:

Is this comparison much clearer?

The reason why people easily equate the two is that the core is the mindfulness practice that ordinary users come into contact with, and 80% of them are based on meditation: observing breathing, body scanning and mindfulness listening to sounds. These are all technical paths of meditation to achieve the goal of cultivating mindfulness. After listening more, they will naturally bind the two.

But the two can actually exist independently. I used to know a girl with anxiety disorder who couldn't sit still. When she closed her eyes cross-legged, she was panic. The exercise that the doctor gave her was "mindfulness brushing": every day when brushing her teeth, she concentrated on feeling the touch of toothbrush bristles brushing her teeth, the cool feeling of mint flavor spreading in her mouth, and the slight acid swelling feeling of holding the toothbrush in her hand. When she was distracted, she pulled it back. After practicing for two months, her score on the anxiety scale dropped by almost 30 points, and she never did a formal meditation. This is a typical "mindfulness can be practiced without meditation". On the other hand, my dad was dragged by me to practice meditation for a while. He sat for 20 minutes every day, and fell asleep eight times out of ten times. When he woke up, he said that he was "very comfortable after meditation", which really achieved the goal of relaxing meditation, but he didn't make any awareness in the whole process, which was equivalent to meditation, but he didn't touch the edge of mindfulness.

Seriously, there is still controversy about the boundary between the two in academic circles and practice circles: in the context of traditional practice, mindfulness is indeed a branch of meditation practice, which belongs to the practice of "observing" in "stopping the view", and even many traditional practitioners will think that the separation of mindfulness from meditation in psychological circles is a "fragmented practice" and cannot achieve a deeper practice effect; However, the empirical data in the field of clinical psychology is here again: no matter what method you use, even if you don't meditate, as long as you can improve the level of mindfulness of the subjects, you can effectively relieve anxiety and improve your emotional adjustment ability, and there is no need to stick to the form of meditation.

Both views are tenable. To put it bluntly, it depends on what purpose you are in contact with: if you want to do traditional practice, you really have to inherit it and practice mindfulness as part of meditation; If you just want to adjust your mood and reduce the internal friction in your mind, you don't have to worry about defining boundaries and how to use them.

I have been practicing by myself for the third year, and I have long since forgotten whether I have been sitting for 20 minutes every day. When waiting for take-out, I feel the coolness of the wind blowing over my arm, when eating hot pot, I feel the crispness of my hairy belly after being scalded, and when I am scolded in a meeting, I take two seconds to feel the speed of my heartbeat. These broken, non-judgmental awareness moments pile up, but they are much better than the "ineffective meditation" that I used to sit for half an hour and still think about KPI in my mind.

In the final analysis, whether it is mindfulness or meditation, the essence is to give us a grasping hand that can be pulled out of the chaos of the brain, which can make you less regretful about the past and anxious about the future, and more really live in the present moment, which is enough, so you don't need to dig so hard.