Most Western meditation practices focus on calming the mind, largely under the umbrella of “mindfulness meditation.”  It’s becoming especially popular as stressed, over worked employees at large companies are recognizing the benefits of mindfulness meditation (check out Google, Facebook, and Twitter for their programs).  I worry that people trying meditation for the first time and who do not see the benefits initially will be like me and give up on it, maybe entirely. Because calming the mind for the sake of calming the mind doesn’t make much sense. Because what hasn’t caught on yet in the Western world is that mindfulness meditation is not the real practice, it’s only one part of actual meditation.

Mindfulness meditation is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction as, “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”  In brief, the point of mindfulness meditation is not to solve your problems, but to become aware of them, and instead focus on the present moment.  Just becoming centered and aware of your thoughts has been shown to not only reduce but prevent depression in participants in clinical studies (see Biologic effects of mindfulness meditation: growing insights into neurobiologic aspects of the prevention of depression).  While mindfulness meditation does help with mental disorders and anxiety,  this is a limited benefit.  It doesn’t solve the root causes of suffering.

When I attended the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the stages of the path to enlightenment in Kushal Nagar, India, he told us a story of a monk that came to visit him.  The monk proudly told the Dalai Lama that he had taken solitary refuge for over 20 years and had spent the majority of those hours in calm abiding meditation (the equivalent of mindfulness meditation). The Dalai Lama asked him, “Yes, and so what did you achieve?”   The monk admitted that he actually felt slower than before he began and not as intelligent.  The Dalai Lama explained that this is a natural response to too much calm abiding meditation. If you don’t use single pointed focus to achieve something, you are in essence training your mind to simply focus.

The Lamrim teachings (“path to the stages of enlightenment”) that I am testing go beyond calming your mind.   According to these teachings, calming the mind is important, but it’s only the first step to actual meditation.  Once your mind is calm and you are able to develop single pointed focus, you engage in a different type of meditation, called analytical or insight meditation. This type of meditation analyzes and tests the incredibly deep and complex logic required to understand the nature and root causes of suffering. Put another way, you are able to acquire and analyze content faster and more comprehensively because you have trained your mind to focus better.  So whether you are trying to digest Buddhist philosophy or just want to be more effective at studying or analytical thinking, this kind of meditation can be hugely beneficial.  If practiced at the highest level, this meditative practice is the only remedy for truly solving all aspects of suffering.  

Analytical meditation or insight meditation is more advanced, but should not be excluded from the discussion entirely.  It’s worth recognizing that mindfulness meditation is the first step, and that it’s an important step.  Just being able to focus for longer than 30 seconds on an object is thought to be a huge endeavor.  But it’s not the only step. It’s a journey towards eventually deriving insight into the very basis of our suffering. Because after all, we’re looking for long term sustainable happiness.  Not just a rest stop.