One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself.
The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about.
Excellent point. I think something like "Doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes a day where you try to focus your mind on your breath will give you certain benefits" is a lot more useful than nebulous claims about "meditation" that end up getting spun up with people's ideas about spirituality and enlightenment.
Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.
i beg to differ. the more i practice and read about meditation the clearer i understand what it is and that it is something very specific definable in a single short sentence: "observing without judging". understand what that actually means takes some practice, though. but each and every school of meditation (every type of yoga, zen, mindfulness, tai chi, ...) boils down to this and only this.
one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.
The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about.
Anyway.