Meditation: What’s The Point? Healthy Living or Spiritual Enlightenment?

Is meditation a self help method? Is it about healthy living? Medical Treatments? An antidepressant? Spiritual growth and enlightenment? All of the above? None of the above?

In the past few years, meditation has been promoted as a cure-all for personal and world troubles, with studies suggesting that meditation can lower blood-pressure, lift depression, reduce cholesterol, combat the effects of aging, and make physical changes to the brain, among other things.

These benefits have been so widely promoted that it’s starting to backlash - a recent review of the data concluded that were not enough solid clinical trials to prove the benefits enough for doctors to recommend meditation, which the media somehow twisted into ““Meditation Won’t Boost Health!” That, in turn has produced its own backlash, with researchers declaring the study itself flawed.

The whole thing had me ready to rant about everyone’s prejudices, sloppy science and journalism, when along came a post from GNF Brainblogger to put it back in perspective, pointing to the traditional intent behind meditative practices.

Here’s my take on it:

What most people (and most research studies) mean by “meditation” is a disciplined practice of concentrated attention, usually based on one of the traditional Buddhist practices.

Different forms of meditation focus attention through different means, but the tested and traditional practices all share the same eventual goal: spiritual enlightenment, and through enlightenment, the elimination of suffering.

“The Elimination of Suffering” sounds in tune with Western medicine, the self help movement, and ideas about healthy living, doesn’t it?

But here’s the rub… The traditional intent of meditation is not to eliminate suffering by lowering blood pressure or stress or even reducing physical pain, but to eliminate suffering by shifting perspective.

Meditation teaches you to turn attention *away* from the mundane physical and personal experience of world (where the problems seem significant), and learn to experience life through a broader, more interconnected perspective… “being one with everything” so to speak. The process transcends and changes our sense of self, so that our problems seem less meaningful and less troubling. The point is not to reduce the physical causes of discomfort through improved health, but to change the importance we place on that discomfort — many long term meditative practices actually increase physical stress and discomfort.

So the very same meditations…

… that now get all the attention for their health benefits were designed to to de-emphasize the importance of an individuals health, stress levels, and personal issues. With this in mind, approaching meditation practices with a single-sighted goal of health-improvement is somewhat counter productive, and certainly counter-intuitive.

Additionally, traditional meditation is difficult, time-consuming and frustrating to master (especially without proper instruction and guidance). Though rarely mentioned by those promoting the practices, meditation can cause emotional issues to surface, raise fears and doubts, and even anxiety. On a spiritual path, these things are expected, even sought after… but if meditation is being used in its traditional forms to treat depression, anxiety, and stress — these difficulties become significant. It’s easy for beginning meditators to feel a profound sense of failure, which can deepen depression.

So Where Does This Leave Meditation Studies?

With a lot of research that suggests (but doesn’t prove) that meditation may have a lot of physical and mental health benefits. The research also doesn’t yet tell us *why* meditation has those benefits, or what aspects of it create the positive changes. There’s a lot of promising research being done, but its still far too early for the media and self-improvement seminars to be pushing generalized meditation as a cure-all.

Personally speaking, I still respect, admire, and recommend a solid meditation practice for everyone. A long term practice will do more than tweak your mind — it’s closer to an extreme makeover that affects body, mind, and spirit.

But it’s not the effective quick-fix and cure-all that headlines often suggest, and it’s more difficult to achieve than generally believed.

People suffering from depression, anxiety, and major health issues may not have the focus and discipline to succeed at such a practice, much less the cope with the challenges fears and concerns that crop up along the way… and challenges do crop up, even in healthy, long term practitioners. Meditation is difficult -inspite of the claims of the new age gurus tell you otherwise.

A good teacher with a gentle, supportive and encouraging approach will go a long way towards minimizing the difficulties, and is almost a must if you want to use meditation as an aid for depression, anxiety or stress.

It’s worth considering other methods, too.

For health results and changes in energy and stress levels, it’s worth considering other techniques, methods that provide some of the same stress reduction, increased focus, lowered blood pressure, etc. Brainwave entrainment techniques, hypnosis, self hypnosis, and brain-training programs are easier to start and maintain than meditation, though admittedly they have less lofty goals than enlightenment.

I don’t want to leave the impression I’m discouraging meditation… I’m all for spiritual enlightenment, being in the now, and a disciplined mind — and I believe there are immense and many layered benefits to a meditation practice. But reducing traditional forms to a ”healthy living technique” does both the practice and its practioners a disservice.

So What’s The Point?

Meditation has a lot of benefits — some health related, some in the areas of personal development, some focused on spiritual growth.

But before investing time and energy into an in depth meditation practice, examine your goals and your resources. Are you looking for short term mental relief, general health improvement, or a life-altering spiritual practice, or all of the above? How disciplined are you? How much patience do you have with difficult new practices?

As much as I believe in meditation, as tempting as it is to suggest it as a catch all solution, other methods are worth considering as well… some of them may turn out to be just as effective, less difficult, and less stressful. _________________________

MindTweak:
Do not try to become anything.
Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator.
Do not become enlightened.
When you sit, let it be.
What you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing.

If you haven’t wept deeply,
you haven’t begun to meditate.

.Ajhan Chah
_________________________