The Effect of Meditation and Mindfulness

February 16, 2024

Why do people meditate? Why should one meditate?
What's the point of mindfulness? What's the purpose of meditation and mindfulness?

"Isn't it just about becoming less of an anxious stress-head and more of a cool, calm, relaxed, chill person or whatever?" — [the general public opinion]

Quick aside: Let me introduce you to the Waking Up app. It's pretty neat.
It's essentially just a bunch of audio media that is excellently curated around the topics of meditation and mindfulness.
It features different people sharing important ideas about the theory and practice of meditation and mindfulness.

The Purpose

Here is Sam Harris in "How Is Waking Up Different?" talking about the actual purpose of meditation and mindfulness.

"The purpose of meditation is to truly wake up from the unhappy dream you call your life, not merely to lower your blood pressure in that dream. [...] The purpose of meditation isn't merely to de-stress, or to sleep better, or to learn to be a little less neurotic. The purpose is to radically transform your sense of who and what you are. [...] There are benefits to meditation, and many of them are now being studied by neuroscientists and psychologists. But most of this research is actually of secondary importance. [...] The real purpose of meditation is to have fundamental insights into the nature of your mind — insights that change your whole approach to life. [...]

Most people who begin practicing meditation do so for the purpose of solving some apparent problem in their lives; they're unhappy, and meditation has been recommended as a remedy. Embraced as a tool, in this way, it becomes a trap. It's a better trap than most. But when practice as a method of producing more pleasant states of mind, meditation is just another way of staying asleep. [...]

So [meditation] isn't about merely reducing stress or having better relationships. Though I would say it's good for those things, too. It's about confronting some of the deepest questions in human life. [...]

The point is to realize specific things about the nature of your own mind that very few people ever realize, and to be changed by these discoveries. And then the point is to integrate these new ways of seeing and being with a growing commitment to making the world better than it was yesterday."

An Analogy

And here is Sam Harris again, this time on "Don't Meditate Because It's Good for You"

"There is a growing literature on the benefits of meditation, but I want to suggest that there is nothing likely to appear in that literature that represents the deepest reason to meditate.

For instance, there are studies that suggest meditation improves immune function or reduces stress or that it is associated with less age-related thinning of the cerebral cortex.

Well, having a good immune system, reducing stress, and not suffering neurodegeneration are good things, in general. But those studies might fail to replicate tomorrow. And should that happen, my recommendations in this course would not change at all.
There really are deeper reasons to meditate and to live an examined life in general.

Meditation is a skill that opens doors that you might not otherwise know exist. And to say that you should do this because it reduces stress or confers any other ancillary benefit is really to miss the point.

Consider an analogy to reading:
Is reading good for you?
Does it reduce stress?

Do you see what's peculiar about that framing?
Given how profound the difference is between being an avid reader and being illiterate, these are strange questions.
Just think about it:
Does reading reduce stress?
It sort of depends on what you read, right?
Is reading good for you?
Well I think we can all imagine ways in which it's not good for somebody, in any kind of straightforward way.
But, reading is one of the most important skills our species has ever acquired. Almost everything we care about depends on it.

Of course, mindfulness is a very different sort of skill, but it also has sweeping implications. [...]"

The Change

There is a significant change that occurs to people who cross a certain threshold of insight through meditation and mindfulness. This change is fundamental, yet it is also hard to study, research, examine externally, or observe empirically.

Perhaps this is the best summary, in another one minute reflection by Sam Harris:

"It can be hard to say how or why it changes one's life. [...]
Consider by analogy the difference between drowning and swimming.
The difference is extraordinary. But it is pretty subtle when you consider what a person is actually doing with their arms and legs. It is a bit of a mystery why furiously kicking and grabbing at the water isn't sufficient to keep a drowning person afloat, especially when it's possible to tread water and swim in a very relaxed way. [...]
It's a very subtle shift, but it makes all the difference."

Conclusion

Altogether I think meditation is about a set of skills, including: awareness, attention, presence, mindfulness, recognition, realization, prioritization, openness, understanding, acceptance, insight, clarity, equanimity, and truly examining life, the mind, and human nature.

And then it's about wisely using these skills to address the deepest questions in human life and to fundamentally change your life and your relationship to your thoughts (cognitions and emotions), to the people in your life, to yourself, and to your experiences.

The effect of meditation and mindfulness is something far more important and far deeper than the ancillary benefits of "less stress and anxiety" and "more calmness and relaxation".

Why not find out what it is for yourself?