What is the relationship between mindfulness and meditation?

To put it simply, in current public perception, mindfulness is generally regarded as a core type of meditation practice. However, there is actually another school of thought among practitioners and academic circles, which believes that mindfulness is a state that can permeate all actions, and meditation is only one of the means to cultivate mindfulness.

I was confused when I first came into contact with this type of practice. I always thought that sitting on a futon with a soft cushion and counting your breaths with your eyes closed was the proper form of meditation. The courses I bought at that time were all mindfulness meditation collections, so naturally I equated the two. It wasn’t until I later worked with a teacher who practices Southern Vipassana. Xiu, he said, don’t always check how long you have been sitting. When washing dishes, you focus on the cool porcelain feel on the edge of the bowl, and the warmth of the water flowing through your fingers. If the plan to be written later is not floating in your mind, or if you are not complaining about the unpleasant words the leader said today, then you are in righteous thoughts at this moment, so why do you need a futon? It was then that I realized that there was a completely different logic of understanding.

In fact, from a tracing point of view, the concept of "mindfulness" that everyone is familiar with today mostly comes from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) launched by Dr. Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s. At that time, in order to facilitate its promotion in the mainstream medical system, it was specially designed as a standardized 8-week course. The core content is a fixed-duration daily mindfulness meditation practice. It is no wonder that most introductory content on the market binds mindfulness and meditation. For novices, starting to find the feeling of awareness through structured meditation practice is indeed the safest path.

But if you stay in the practice circle for a long time, you will find that there is really no need to tie the two to death. Meditation is essentially a type of "deliberate practice that actively adjusts attention and enters a specific state of consciousness." It can be subdivided into many categories, such as compassion meditation, transcendental meditation, and visualization meditation. Many of them are not actually aimed at cultivating mindfulness. Some even guide you to actively imagine specific scenes, without the need for you to be aware of the wandering thoughts at all times. The core of mindfulness has always been "non-judgmental present awareness". This is not something that can only be done while sitting. When you are out of breath while running for the subway, stop and feel the rise and fall of your chest for two seconds. Don't scold yourself for being reckless and worry about whether you will be late. In those few seconds, you are not meditating, but you are actually in a state of mindfulness. ； Even if you get into an argument with someone, and you suddenly pause and realize, "Oh, I'm angry now," this is also a moment of righteousness.

To put it bluntly, there is no need to worry about the definition. The purpose of practice is to make yourself comfortable. If you like to sit quietly and practice mindfulness meditation, which can relieve stress and relax, then it is absolutely fine to treat mindfulness as a kind of meditation.； If you are born with an inability to sit still, and you can bring awareness to small things such as eating, walking, or squeezing on the bus, even if you have never done a structured meditation practice, you can still be considered the doorway to mindfulness.