Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us in the following 6 paragraphs what meditation is and isn't. It's a helpful read.
It is a
commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the
world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression. Meditation
is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing things clearly, and
deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.
People who
come to our clinic quickly learn that stress is an inevitable part of life. While
it is true that we can learn, by making intelligent choices, not to make things
worse for ourselves in certain ways, there are many things in life over which
we have little or no control. Stress is part of life, part of being human,
intrinsic to the human condition itself.
But that
does not mean that we have to be victims in the face of large forces in our
lives. We can learn to work with them, understand them, find meaning in them,
make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and
compassion. A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of
all meditation practice.
One way to
envision how mindfulness works is to think of your mind as the surface of a lake or
of the ocean. There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big,
sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The
water’s waves are churned up by winds, which come and go and vary in direction
and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, which
stir up waves in our minds.
People who
don’t understand meditation think that it is some kind of special inner
manipulation which will magically shut off these waves so that the mind’s
surface will be flat, peaceful, and tranquil. But just as you can’t put a glass
plate on the water to calm the waves, so you can’t artificially suppress the
waves of your mind, and it is not too smart to try. It will only create more
tension and inner struggle, not calmness.
That doesn’t
mean that calmness is unattainable. It’s just that it cannot be attained by
misguided attempts to suppress the mind’s natural activity. It is possible
through meditation to find shelter from much of the wind that agitates the
mind. Over time, a good deal of the turbulence may die down from lack of
continuous feeding. But ultimately the winds of life and of the mind will blow,
do what we may. Meditation is about knowing something about this and how to
work with it.
--John Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
