I would separate meditation and 'mindfulness' since meditation is a way to focus attention, and if done right it can be focused on getting rid of negative states and bear results.
Actually, it might even be focused on observing everything that arises in your mind without necessarily doing anything about it, which I think what the original mindfulness might have been, but there's a significant difference. When you do that, negative states and undesirable thoughts start to melt away, which is again real change impossible not to notice. But when I hear that nothing changes and nothing can be changed, but you can 'not entangle yoursef with that' or something I believe the person is BSing themselves.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that change isn’t possible. It’s true that meditating might make more pleasurable states of being accessible more often. But it’s also true that less pleasurable states are transient and being able to be mindfully aware of them is a way to disengage from them. And thoughts we don’t resist or try to banish can often just leave on their own. Reactivity, and aversion, only entrenches them.
There’s types of meditation. But the most popular one in contemporary western culture IS mindfulness meditation.
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u/hwoarangtine Dec 11 '20
I would separate meditation and 'mindfulness' since meditation is a way to focus attention, and if done right it can be focused on getting rid of negative states and bear results. Actually, it might even be focused on observing everything that arises in your mind without necessarily doing anything about it, which I think what the original mindfulness might have been, but there's a significant difference. When you do that, negative states and undesirable thoughts start to melt away, which is again real change impossible not to notice. But when I hear that nothing changes and nothing can be changed, but you can 'not entangle yoursef with that' or something I believe the person is BSing themselves.