What is the difference and connection between mindfulness and meditation

To put it simply, the relationship between the two is between inclusion and being included - mindfulness is the most popular branch of contemporary meditation practice. Many people confuse the two. The essence is that the popularity of mindfulness in recent years has been too high, and it has been deeply bound to the public perception of "meditation".

When I first came into contact with related practices, I made a joke. At that time, I signed up for a class called "Deep Meditation Training Camp" and paid thousands of dollars, thinking that I could learn some advanced methods of emptiness and tranquility. As a result, the first seven days were spent teaching "awareness of breathing" and "body scanning". After asking the teacher, I found out that the main focus of their camp was mindfulness meditation, and in their context these two were the same thing. In fact, if you go back to the source, meditation is a general term that spans multiple religions and cultures. From ancient Indian yoga meditation and Buddhist meditation, to Chinese Taoism's Zao Wang and Xin Zhai, and even the transcendental meditation and guided meditation developed in the modern West, they can all be classified as "meditation". "In this big basket, the practice goals and methods of different schools are very different. Some pursue the liberation of consciousness, some need to sense the body's energy pulses, and some even need to achieve specific psychological suggestions through imagination. Not all meditation is related to "awareness of the present moment."

The mindfulness that everyone often refers to now was originally a Buddhist practice method of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. In the 1970s, Professor Kabat-Zinn stripped it of all religious content and transformed it into a quantifiable and clinically verifiable psychological intervention technology. The core is eight words: without judgment, be aware of the present moment. Unlike many traditional meditations that pursue "emptying your mind and thinking about nothing", mindfulness does not even require you to eliminate distracting thoughts. When you are sitting and practicing, you may think about the PPT you have not finished writing or what you want to eat at night.

There has been debate in the circle about the boundary between the two. Many practitioners who are deeply involved in the traditional meditation school feel that mindfulness is a commercially transformed "fast food meditation". Even the most basic meditation requirements and precepts of traditional meditation are gone. It cannot be regarded as orthodox meditation at all, and can only be regarded as a kind of meditation at most. Attention exercises; however, practitioners in clinical psychology feel that it is this de-thresholding transformation that has brought the originally niche meditation method to ordinary people. Many patients with anxiety and depression have relieved their symptoms through eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction exercises. There is no point in worrying about whether it is "orthodox" or not. A while ago, my colleague suffered from insomnia. I recommended a 10-minute guided exercise before going to bed. After half a month of practicing, she slept a lot better. She still doesn’t know whether she is practicing mindfulness or meditation. In fact, for ordinary people who want to improve their state, there is really no need to worry about the difference between these two terms. Useful is enough. If one day you really want to study the different schools of traditional meditation in depth, it is completely time to slowly clarify the boundaries of different concepts.