What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

Putting it in the popular context that everyone is most exposed to, meditation is a very broad term, and mindfulness is one of the most dereligious and widely used modern branches. However, practitioners in different fields have always disputed the boundaries between the two, and many people who practice daily do not even bother to distinguish between the two.

You can think of meditation as a big basket that contains all exercises related to awareness and breathing adjustment. From the meditation, walking meditation, and visualization done for ultimate liberation in the traditional practice system, to the popular singing bowl healing meditation, relaxation guided meditation before bed, and even the awareness training in some stance courses, they can all be stuffed into this basket. There is no unified standard action, and the practice goals vary widely. Some people pursue a state of tranquility without distracting thoughts, and some just want to use this to cure insomnia.

Oh, by the way, I made a joke when I first came into contact with it, thinking that I had to wear loose clothes and sit cross-legged in a quiet room for half an hour to be called mindfulness. Later, after practicing for half a year, I figured out that when Jon Kabat-Zinn separated mindfulness from the traditional Theravada practice system and made it into a scientific transformation, the core requirement was only "being aware of the present moment without judgment", and there were not so many formal requirements at all. When you are waiting in line for the elevator at work, you feel the real feeling of your feet on the ground. When you eat takeout, you savor the sweetness of a mouthful of rice. You even scroll through your phone until you suddenly realize that you have been distracted for half an hour. Instead of scolding yourself for wasting time, you just gently draw your attention back to the screen in front of you. These are all real mindfulness exercises, and you don't even have to close your eyes.

Of course, there are also many friends who are deeply involved in traditional meditation who do not agree with the statement that "mindfulness belongs to meditation." In their understanding, the core of traditional meditation is "stopping", which means to steadily anchor thoughts on a fixed object through long-term training, and finally reach a state where distracting thoughts do not arise. It is like trying to completely clear a pond of muddy water, without even a ripple.； But mindfulness allows all thoughts and emotions to emerge freely. You just need to watch them come and go like you are standing on the shore watching the waves. You don't need to reach out to push down the waves. They are different from the core goals to the practice logic and cannot be classified into the same category at all.

In fact, for us ordinary practitioners who just want to relieve anxiety and improve concentration, there is no need to dig into the precise definitions of these two words. When I stayed up late late at night to catch up on projects and was so anxious that I couldn't sleep, I would sometimes do 10 minutes of mindfulness awareness of breathing. When my mind was so confused that I couldn't calm down at all, I would do 20 minutes of relaxing meditation with imagining forest scenes. As long as it makes myself comfortable, there is no strict right or wrong.