For over 20 years, I’ve been teaching both mindfulness and meditation using the simple word ‘attention.’
I assume you have heard the Zen story related to this:
A student wanted Zen to be summed up in a short phrase.
The teacher said “Attention.”
Well, the student hadn’t wanted it to be this brief so asked if something more could be said.
The teacher answered, “Attention, attention.”
The student, now frustrated, asked, “But what does that mean?”
The teacher replied, “Attention means attention.”
Sandra noted that in the Buddhist tradition sometimes one aspect of meditation is referred to as “calm abiding,” (the other is insight).
I like that but it’s also, as you point out, aspirational. The nice thing about “attention” is it applies to the absolute beginner (fractured, divided attention) to the master (perfectly unified attention). It requires no religious association, nor does it single out one activity (as if “meditation” is something you only do for a tiny part of the day)
Nowadays, when people say they hate meditation, or don’t understand it, or say they can’t do it because they can’t sit still, I ask them, “Have you ever gone to sleep in your life?”
Then I say: “Tell me what this is:
1. You make the room very quiet, and turn off or turn down the lights.
2. You make your body very still.
3. You relax the whole body.
4. Slowly attention is withdrawn from emotions and all thoughts, ideas, memories, etc
If they say, “it sounds like meditation. I don’t want to do that!”
And you point out, “that’s what you do every night of every day since you were born. It’s called “going to sleep.” So you’ve been meditating all your life.
Sort of. The only difference is, in going to sleep, once the mind is sufficiently quieted, you become unconscious. In fact, in many attempts to meditate, the same thing happens. But in the most successful meditation, when the mind is quiet, you remain blissfully aware.
Withdraw attention from all phenomena, and stay aware. Then once attention is returned to phenomena, that awareness underlying all experience remains.
There. That’s perfectly successful meditation, without using the word “meditation!”