What Is Meditation?
There are a lot of kinds of meditation.
But most meditation involves focusing your attention on something like your breath or your body.
The point of these kinds of meditation practices is to train your mind to be able to focus on objects in your experience.
A focused mind can be more peaceful.
A calm mind can feel good.
If your mind is unfocused, it can feel like you're out of control.
And if you're experiencing painful thoughts or emotions, it can be uncomfortable to not have the ability to focus your mind on other things.
But for spiritual teachings like those in Buddhist traditions, meditation has a deeper purpose — to become enlightened.
Or in other words, the purpose of meditation is to recognize lasting peace and freedom from within.
The problem with most meditation practices, however, is that they don't directly cause enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the recognition of your true nature.
And you do not need to train your mind through meditation to recognize what you already are.
And so true meditation is not a practice.
True meditation has nothing to do with focusing your attention on the breath.
True meditation is surrendering to what is.
True meditation is simply being aware.
Do you need to do anything, or become anything, to be aware?