You can measure how many times you get distracted, and how far do you get dragged. This is very easy to do during meditation.
I am distracted 5 times a minute. Is it good enough or should I continue practicing?
And in the end - why is this a bad thing, to be distracted? If it’s in our nature in the first place?
I’m not being sarcastic - I truly want to know the deep answers from someone knowledgeable, but didn’t find any answers yet.
There are no "right and deep answers" for questions like this.
Everyone has their reason to be interested in meditation.
The original Buddha was simply "not satisfied" and wanted to know why. So he discovered the causes and effects and removers of dissatisfaction in itself.
Part of his discovery that dissatisfaction comes from within, from all of the thoughts that poke us, especially when we let them to affect us.
Mindfulness meditation is only part of the puzzle of Buddhism.
I’m trying to find those personal specific seeds that drove people to meditation.
Judging by the comments here - there are not that much. Most just repeat common mass media Knowledge about meditation.
Although some comments feel deeply personal, this is why I try to find more evidence, not just put a label on this meditation thing.
I had been overly self critical most of my life, and that made me unhappy. Additionally, I had a friend tell me that I had "too much ego". I did some research on "how to reduce your ego", and Buddhism appeared on my radar. I explored deeper, and started practicing. It showed me not to get too attached to a lot of the thoughts that I was very attached to. I was also very attached to a particular kind of self worth. I realised that I did have too much ego, not necessarily like the typical form of narcissism, but I was still too "self-centred", except instead of the "self-loving" narcissism, I was the "self-blaming" kind.
With meditation I learned not to pay too much attention to some of the thoughts, which helped calm me down. My complete solution did involve more than meditation, though, I went to therapy as well. Meditation feels more like a kind of "supplement" rather than a cure-all, tbh.
Some people are drawn to the spiritual and it isn’t if I do this X amount then I get Y.
Others above and below have pointed out a few great points about “meditation” that I find relevant:
- It serves to introduce a delay between stimulus and action
- It gives you the time to discover subconscious thoughts that you haven’t noticed prior that may be causing negative emotions like anxiety
I personally meditate by taking the time to think extensively about things people say to me and things I feel when I’m not in some urgent situation. Also, my extremely supportive and mindful wife and therapist are highly involved in this and I’d never have found success without them. I have a history of anger and anxiety issues. The mindfulness I describe has been my ticket out of the personal impulsive hell I built into my early 30s. Others discovered their ticket via meditation of the breathing, etc.
For me, meditation is sitting at my desk, sometimes idly and sometimes not, contemplating everything I feel, why I feel it, if it’s valid, what others feel, what my goals are (most important part), what my next steps toward those goals are (other most important part), etc.
Hope this is insightful. I think meditation is a very weakly defined term in the US.
The bar is where you set it for yourself. And that's part of the point - complete internal reflection, rather than awaiting someone else's instructions and/or approval.
But is it indeed in our nature? That comment assumes: if a condition exists, then that condition is correct. But, for example, it's in our nature to overload on sugar and fats, but that's not a healthy way to live.