Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. I hope you are doing great in your corner of the World! Let’s start with a breath and a smile. What a great day!

What Is Meditation and What Is Mindfulness?

This week I started talking about some misconceptions, and about meditation in particular, and why it happens. Now let’s talk about what meditation really is.

This may come as a surprise, but the word “meditation” originates from latin “meditor” or its present form “meditari”, which means think, contemplate. There’s no word meditation in Yoga. There’s Dhyana. Dhyana is the same as Chan’ in Chinese Buddhism, or Zen in Japan. However I found the word meditation multiple times used in English translation of the Bible.

The word meditation is used in the West to describe variety of techniques from different traditions and religions. And if we are not careful we may fall into stereotyping without any knowledge to support out conclusion.

Meditation is a process of thinking about any specific topic. It is not religious. It is a thinking tool. And the subject will be different in every tradition. It may be godly or demonic, or totally neutral, like listening to the waves by the ocean. That’s why western people created word Mindfulness, to eliminate confusion and even opposition. Mindfulness is also meditation, but not connected in any way to any specific philosophy. Just a great all purpose very beneficial exercise.

Want to know more? Send me a message or come to my class. You can find me through my site HPLN.org.

Thanks for tuning in!
Now let’s breathe and smile. I will talk to you next time.

PEACE!
Jin

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