Two Types of Meditation
How and Why They Evolved

As we reviewed in learning meditation the different types of meditation, mantra and mindfulness, respectively concern narrow focus/attachment and wide focus/detachment.

When you remove every technicality from the 2 meditation types, it is really only about one thing...

Interconnectedness.

But if there are only two different types of meditation, then why are there so many meditation techniques?

We learned in the oldest history of meditation that meditation means awareness. Based on the evidence, our Cro-Magnon ancestors developed conscious awareness some 50,000 years ago.

Over the last couple of millennia, and especially over the last few decades in Western societies, meditation has turned into a mainstream, conceptualized activity. Today there are millions of meditators and thousands of teachers.

Why?

Meditation obviously feels good and is relaxing, and our fast-everything, increasingly crowded and competitive societies are stressful. In 1960 there were 2 billion people on the planet. Today there are over 6 billion.

People need to relax from time to time in order to thrive (and survive).

Furthermore, every person has a different meditation experience. Some meditators choose to invent and develop meditation techniques.

Or they adopt original techniques and adapt them to their personal needs. And some of them teach what they practice.

So, the wide variety of meditation techniques is simply a result of subjective experiences, inventiveness and adaptation, and growing population sizes sharing a similar basic need for relaxation.

The two meditation types have thus evolved into many meditation techniques, each consisting of mantra meditation (also known as concentrative meditation) or mindfulness meditation, or in some way combining both mantra and mindfulness.

Underlying them all are still the two types of meditation, mantra/attachment and mindfulness/detachment and the wide, fluid spectrum of awareness that connects them both.

Ultimately, meditation's growing popularity is a result of stress, the need for relaxation and the interconnectedness between people and between a person's mind and body.

Foresighted, Mindful Survival

Our modern technologies, weapons, and tools for both survival and destruction, require us to be smart about our own human nature and the nature around us.

We certainly know how to concentrate.

But more importantly, we must apply smart mindfulness and occasionally detach from our immediate goals, relieve ourselves from stress and stupid fear and anger. We must use our smart, relaxed, and foresighted skills.

Natural selection has blindly and gradually brought us our mindful tool. This tool was and still is, as everything else in nature, being selected for in order to benefit survival.

But we must use mindfulness in order to secure our happiness and stress-resistant, interconnected survival. We need to take advantage of both types of meditation/awareness.

My intention is not to preach here. In the end, what it comes down to in meditation and human life is compassion.

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