Some characteristics often associated with meditation, such as sitting posture and closed eyes, are not included in our description. This is especially true in the case of so-called contemplative states of consciousness.
- These factors have little bearing on the definition, which emphasizes long-term characteristic changes rather than short-term condition changes.
In this regard, our precise use of the word "meditation" differs from common English use, which often refers to brief shifts in condition, sometimes as a consequence of practice and other times as a spontaneous shift with no connection to effort.
The Arabic muraqaba, mushahada, and mu'ayana, as well as Sanskrit yoga, dhyana, and samadhi, and Chinese chan, all have this lexical ambiguity between practice and state of mind (borrowed from Sanskrit dhyana).
In many contemplative traditions, transitory states of consciousness play a significant role, and the transient experiences described in the meditation literature are often considered to be transformational in the sense of changing a person's relationship to himself and his environment.
- This also applies to many of the techniques such as the seven kinds of samadhi in the Yoga tradition.
- Meditation is often connected to particular states of thought, and the nature of such transient experiences may occasionally differentiate it from other techniques.
- Long-term changes in characteristic are more difficult to describe and identify, although most meditation traditions have words that indicate states or stages along the process.
- State-oriented activities are not excluded from the proposed definition, but they must also be designed to bring about long-term reforms.
- Sufism, for example, acknowledges a variety of common transitory moods (ahwal) but connects them to a variety of long-term stages (maqamat).
Many traditions caution practitioners about the dangers of transitory experiences, which may lead them away from true transformation.
- Da-hui (–), a Chinese Zen teacher, condemns those who seek silence instead of “breaking[ing] [their] consciousness of birth and death.” Xu-y un (?–), another Chinese Zen teacher, cautions against "greedily pursuing the world of purity" and labels it "a Zen disease to be avoided by every practitioner."
- In the Christian tradition, “The Cloud of Unknowing” warns against the practitioner mistaking “a spurious warmth, engendered by the fiend” for “the fire of love, lighted and fanned by the grace and goodness of the Holy Ghost,” and “The Epistle of Prayer” instructs the practitioner to “neither care nor consider whether you are in pain or in bliss.”
In today's world, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the most well-known proponent of mindfulness meditation, says unequivocally that "any state of mind is a meditative state," whereas Acem Meditation's free mental attitude is defined as "neither an emotion, nor a specific experience, nor a state of mind."
The broad interest in contemplative states of mind reflects a significant preoccupation with "experience" that has dominated religious thinking from the late eighteenth century, particularly contemporary religious studies since William James' landmark work The Varieties of Religious Experience.
The “experience” approach of religious studies in general, and Asian religion studies in particular, has been slammed as a contemporary Western concept foisted on premodern and Asian religions.
- Modern Hindu and Buddhist adherents and academics have been chastised for putting the Western concept of "religious experience" onto texts that are frequently prescriptive and performative rather than descriptive and experience-oriented.
- However, both contemporary and traditional meditation discourses are often concerned not just with long-term inner development but also with the more immediate changes in mental state that meditation is believed to bring about.
Even though they are not always present or included in the definition, some alterations of state are archetypal aspects of meditation.
The following list attempts to provide a concise summary of physiological, mental, and spiritual states that are often associated with meditation:
- arousal decrease.
- absorption of the mind
- mental lucidity
- a feeling of being in touch with the most basic elements of reality
The historic focus on:
- silence,
- serenity,
- stillness,
- quietude,
- and tranquillity,
As well as contemporary scientific interest in mental and physical relaxation, are covered in the first point.
- According to some academics, the degree of arousal distinguishes contemplative from ecstatic and shamanic states, with ecstasy and shamanism suggesting a rise in arousal and meditation meaning a reduction.
- The scientific emphasis on temporary relaxing of logic and preconceived assumptions, referred to as "logic relaxation," in which "ego-related worries and critical assessments are postponed," also fits here.
The second point is that meditative experiences are linked with a high level of mental concentration.
- Absorption differs from concentration in that it is spontaneous rather than active, but the words often overlap, so that Sanskrit dhyana and samadhi, for example, may refer to both the act of focusing and spontaneous mental absorption, which may or may not be the result of meditation.
- Increased mental immersion is often interpreted as implying less or even no random thinking activity, also known as mind wandering.
The third component is the subtle awareness and attentive presence that are often associated with meditation.
- Sleep, sleepiness, or sloth are considered one of the five barriers to contemplative development in Buddhism.
- Note that this kind of awareness and presence is usually accompanied with relaxation, as opposed to the vigilance and watchfulness frequently associated with words like "alert" and "wakeful."
- This combination has been dubbed a "wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state" in the scientific literature.
The fourth point is about fleeting experiences that are more obviously connected to our worry for a person's long-term grounding in more basic elements of life.
- The experiences in question are typically couched in metaphorical and strongly culture-dependent language, referring to a personified god, the self, a way or path, or more abstract notions such as emptiness or timelessness, or, "a deeper, subtler, meditative state."
- It's debatable if various reports of such experiences relate to the same ultimate reality, as the perpetual perspective claims, not only because such descriptions are often culturally contextual, but also because the words themselves are so vague.
- Even among members of the same culture, descriptive similarities may mask significant experience variations, ranging from faint glimpses of a transcendent reality to inebriated hallucinations produced by psychedelic substances.
Arousal reduction, in the idealized picture, allows for mental absorption when thoughts slow down, resulting in greater mental clarity and, eventually, closer touch with basic elements of reality:
- When a person's long-term relationship to himself and his environment is redefined, this feeling of touch becomes transformational.
- The image's simple beauty, however, is deceiving, and not only because of the apparent problems in describing the basic elements of reality mentioned in the fourth point.
The first, second, and third points are all difficult to understand.
- Regarding the first point, certain traditions associate meditation with ecstatic experiences rather than any kind of arousal reduction, and religious historians have disputed Mircea Eliade's famous distinction between (high-arousal) ecstasy and (low-arousal) enstasy.
- The unpleasant and not very soothing sensation of uncertainty is frequently mentioned as a prerequisite for contemplative development in one Zen Buddhist school. In terms of the second issue, efforts to clear the mind of random ideas have been divisive throughout meditation's history.
In the Buddhist tradition, contemplative techniques that do not aim for mental absorption are classified as vipasyana (commonly translated as "insight meditation"). Hanshan Deqing, a Chinese Zen teacher, shifted his attention from purging the mind of ideas to recognizing the illusory nature of thoughts and therefore no longer being tied to them.
- Furthermore, although current research seems to support the first argument, namely arousal decrease, the evidence on the second point is much more ambiguous.
- On the one hand, experienced practitioners of breathing meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and "choiceless awareness" reported less mind wandering during meditation in two scientific studies, and self-reported time on task during breathing meditation increased in a third study, all seeming to support this point.
Another research, which asked participants to push a button every time their mind wandered during meditation, found no difference between expert and novice meditators, with mind wandering happening on average every eighty seconds during a twenty-minute session in both groups.
- Some meditation benefits have been found to be stronger in techniques that allow the mind to wander rather than in concentrative practices.
- In terms of the third point, some contemporary forms of meditation, such as Transcendental Meditation and Acem Meditation, see sleep as simply one of many distinct mental states that may occur during meditation.
- Meditation's benefits may include mental clarity, but it's also possible that sleep and sleepiness play a role.
- During a visit to a Chinese Zen monastery, I talked with a monk who grumbled about falling asleep as soon as he began meditating, but noted that his mind got much clearer after such periods of meditation-induced sleep.
- Yoga Nidra is a kind of lucid sleep that is considered contemplative in the Yoga tradition.
To summarize, meditation is not necessarily about particular mental states, but rather about processes that may involve a variety of moods or feelings.
As a result, our definition of meditation excludes any physiological, psychological, or spiritual experiences usually linked with contemplative practice.