What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

In the current mainstream understanding, mindfulness is one of many meditation techniques. However, in the actual practice context, the boundary between the two is actually quite blurred, and the cognitive differences between different groups are not small.

The broad category of meditation is very broad, ranging from ancient Indian meditation techniques to later derived transcendental meditation, compassion meditation, visualization meditation, and even domestic Taoist meditation and Buddhist meditation. As long as it is a formal practice that adjusts the state of mind by intentionally adjusting attention, it can be classified into the broad category of meditation. The most popular and widely accepted branch in recent years is the mindfulness meditation defined by Dr. Kabat-Zinn. The core requirements are very simple: consciously anchor your attention in the present moment, do not judge the thoughts and emotions that arise, and just pull back gently when your mind wanders. There is no hard KPI of "getting into concentration or letting go".

However, if you practice for three to five months, you will most likely hear another saying: mindfulness is not a subcategory of meditation at all, but has a much wider scope of application than meditation. This is actually true. For example, when you are fishing at work, you suddenly realize that you have been browsing irrelevant webpages for ten minutes. Instead of scolding yourself, "Why are you lazy again?", you naturally draw your attention back to the report at hand. This is a mini mindfulness exercise. ； You didn't check your phone while eating, and you carefully tasted the ginger flavor in the food and the steam from the pot. This is also mindfulness, but you can't say that you are "meditating" while working or eating, right? For most practitioners, meditation refers more to a formal practice of deliberately setting aside time and finding a quiet place to sit cross-legged, while mindfulness is a state that can be integrated into every second of life.

When I participated in an offline mindfulness camp before, I met a girl who worked in Internet operations. She first practiced meditation with the APP for three months, sitting for 20 minutes each time. When commuting every day, she just felt the touch of the wind on her face and the coolness of the subway handrails. Instead, she recovered within half a month. Only then did she realize that the "must meditate before it can be called meditation" that she struggled with before had lost the core of mindfulness of "non-judgment".

To be honest, if you want to forcefully draw a boundary between the two, it is a bit like comparing sports and running: sports in a broad sense include various activities that can get you moving, and running is the category with the lowest threshold and the highest popularity. Mindfulness is like running. It can not only be run on a track (that is, on a meditation mat), but also jogging to catch the subway to work and slow walking after meals. They are essentially extensions of the same core logic and are not limited to specific scenarios. There are also many academic studies making a clearer distinction between mindfulness and traditional meditation. After all, traditional meditation is mostly tied to religious contexts, while mindfulness has been completely de-religious and is widely used in clinical psychological intervention. However, for ordinary practitioners, there is really no need to worry about the name. Whether it is meditation practiced while sitting or mindfulness that can be done while walking and eating, it can make you less regretful about the past and anxious about the future, and catch a few more small beauties in the present. That is enough.