What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

The core difference is actually the difference in the boundaries of affiliation - in the mainstream public and psychological context, meditation is a collective name for all physical and mental practices that actively regulate attention, while mindfulness is a type of practice technology that is subordinate to meditation and has the widest audience.； But in the context of traditional practice, the relationship between the two may be reversed.

When I first started practicing, I followed the APP and did 10 minutes of breathing awareness every day. I always thought that was what meditation was all about. It wasn’t until I attended a ten-day meditation camp and saw fellow practitioners practicing visualization, chanting mantras, and practicing other branches of samatha and vipassana practice that I realized that these were all meditations, but most of them did not fall into the category of mindfulness. The current definition of mindfulness commonly used in the mainstream psychology community was simplified by Jon Kabat-Zinn of MIT from Theravada Vipassana meditation. The core is to be aware of the present moment with purpose and without judgment. There is no religious threshold and it is quick to get started.

For example, you take 20 minutes to sit on the mat on the weekend, and follow the guidance to bring your attention back to the current breath, touch, or the sensations of various parts of the body again and again, without judging yourself for being distracted again, without thinking about yesterday's bad things, or planning for next week's work. This is a typical mindfulness meditation.； But if you sit there and follow the guide and imagine golden light pouring into your body from the top of your head to cleanse negative emotions, or recite familiar scriptures silently throughout the process, this is meditation and has nothing to do with mindfulness.

Of course, there are also many teachers who have been practicing for many years who do not recognize this subordination. They feel that "mindfulness" is not a practice technique at all, but a stable state of "clear thoughts, non-clinging and non-judgment" achieved after long-term practice. No matter which meditation method you use to practice, the ultimate goal is to achieve this state. In this context, mindfulness has become the goal of meditation, and naturally it is impossible to talk about who belongs to whom.

To be honest, the two terms are often used interchangeably in the market today, and it’s not all because everyone is mistaken. The main reason is that modern mindfulness is so popular. It has been endorsed by a large number of psychological clinical studies and has clear effects on relieving anxiety and improving concentration. Nine out of ten meditation exercises accessible to ordinary people are mindfulness-based. Over time, the two have become equated.

There is another small scene that is easy to distinguish. If you deliberately put down your mobile phone while eating, chew every mouthful of rice carefully, feel the aroma of the rice, the crispness of the vegetables, and pay special attention to the saltiness. Even if other thoughts pop up in your mind, you will quickly bring it back to eating. At this time, you are not meditating, but practicing mindfulness. This is also the biggest difference between mindfulness and other meditation techniques. It can be completely separated from the cushion and used in every moment when you are crowded on the subway, in a meeting, or even when you are about to quarrel with your family.

To use a less precise analogy, meditation is like all "sports", and mindfulness is jogging - most people may start with jogging for the first time when they try exercise. The threshold is low, the rules are simple, and it is friendly to most people, but you can't say that jogging is equal to all sports, right? Of course, some people think that reaching the "runner's high" at a deep level after jogging and being completely immersed in the present state is the core pursuit of sports. When it comes to the relationship between mindfulness and meditation, it actually makes sense.