Q: What is meditation?

A: Meditation is an exercise in mindfulness. It can take on many, many forms.

Q: What is the difference between meditation and “sitting still with your eyes closed, without talking”?

A: It is impossible to know “from the outside” whether someone is meditating. And yet, there is a simple set of instructions on how to meditate. In order to meditate, you can simply:

Set an alarm for 20 minutes. Sit down in a quiet environment. Close your eyes. Don’t talk or open your eyes until the alarm rings.

(don’t fall asleep)

Follow steps 1–4, and you will have meditated. And yet, there is no way to know whether someone else is meditating.

These two facts form a contraction. And that is quite fine.

Q: How is this contradiction resolved?

A: It is not “resolved”.

Q: And still… ?

A: Only yourself is knowable. You cannot know that which is not yourself. I am using the “dual” meaning of You, rather than the “non-dual” meaning.

You cannot know someone else is meditating because you cannot know “they” even exist. When you are thinking in terms of “they” vs “me”, which is dual thinking, you cannot know anything.

Q: What is not meditation?

A: I can reply what meditation is not not.

“When meditating, you have not to think”, is false.

“When meditating, you must have your eyes closed”, is also false.

The same goes for standing still, for being silent, and for most other “evidence for non-meditation”.

You can meditate while running, dancing, having sex, talking, listening and laughing. You can meditate with or without an alarm clock.

Q: Can you meditate while sleeping?

A: Perhaps while dreaming. I do not know.

Q: If you stop before the alarm rang, have you actually meditated?

A: Only you can know whether you meditated, are meditating.

I am bending the truth a bit by writing “you can know you have meditated”, in the past tense. Only what is happening right now is knowable. But I can say that most probablly, I have meditated in the past.