As someone who's maintained a meditation practice since 2013, this is definitely meditation.

And by "maintain a practice", I mean it's more like something I return to with frequency and less a daily compulsion.

Focusing on the breathe or ambient sounds is "easy", and is precisely the reason meditation is seemingly difficult. The mind craves more than simplicity; for some this occurs after a few seconds, for others after a few minutes...it all depends on the day. Learning to observe when the mind wanders is one part of the practice. Labelling the quality of thought that caused the wandering (planning, worrying, visualizing, replaying, etc)and returning to the simpler act of focus on breathe or sounds is another part of the practice.

This article is very much the author discovering some variation of meditation; if they feel the need to "invent" something and share it in a blog post...then here's hoping it promotes more people to give it a shot and maybe it'll lead to at least one person developing a new practice for themselves.

staring at a wall is basically the zen practice of shikantaza [1], except you’re not staring, it’s more of an eyes half closed yet alert gaze. you don’t do anything, not even counting the breath. you just sit, that’s the entire practice. in my experience, the more you intellectualize it, the more difficult it becomes!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza

Reminds me of the “Wallfacers” in Cixin Liu’s “The Dark Forest.” I believe the term was derived from that meditative practice you refer to.

> Is this not a form of meditation?

It could be, but it depends on what you're cultivating. If you're spaced out, day dreaming, then you're practicing distraction. Meditation is practicing the opposite of distraction, to become aware of the mind's true state.

it almost is but meditation, is done with more intent.

In Zen Buddhism for example you are always striving to increase awareness, by constantly monitoring your internal monologue, pulling yourself back from day dreaming, expanding from focus on the breath to all near by sensation and phenomena.

True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.

Yes indeed! These are (or are related to) common meditation techniques. The proper way to understand the practice of meditation is "training your attention." There are many, many ways to do this, but the most direct form is to put your attention on some object and keep returning it to that object over and over again. This builds steadiness of attention (concentration) and has some nice side effects of clarifying the object of attention as well as keeping attention balanced relative to other objects (equanimity). Ideally, the object of attention is non-conceptual. Thoughts and emotions are the main objects that are constantly distorting and interrupting our attention, and ultimately the crux of the "training" is in finding harmonious ways to use/manage/embody them.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to understand how training attention in this manner can provoke dramatic improvements in attitude, happiness, and even conventional life goals. This is where a lot of the work in modern Buddhism is being done, and I personally believe we need to integrate these techniques into our everyday systems and ways of living. Otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss them since good, objective evidence of their efficacy is hard to come by.

Perhaps a useful framing for readers on here is in reprogramming your self. We often accept that we cannot change or even that we want to change. By training our attention, we can focus it on the way the mind itself functions, and this eventually gives us the power to rewrite or rework core parts of our selves. The body contains the source code to our perception of reality, and when we can truly let go we find that we are free to be the person we want, and it is in fact our destiny.

After reading your comment, I was reminded of my first and last visit to a zen meditation center where we had to meditate by staring at a wall sitting on some sort special cushion designed for this sort of meditation.

I think your parallel is spot on!

The Three Body Problem has the Wallfacer project, named after a form of Buddhist meditation.

Literally regular Zen practice, in fact where I used to go we always called it “sitting and staring at the wall”, to remove any woo associations or any idea that you’re doing something grand.

I remember sitting in an intro session and the teacher asked everyone for what they expected - one of the guys there was a dude bro who was obviously there because his girlfriend dragged him. He said all the fancy things about reaching higher consciousness, like he thought the whole thing was stupid but he was playing along. Then after sitting for 15 minutes he was more into it than his GF. He clearly had an experience and excitedly struggled to find the words to describe it. I honestly think the less you expect out of sitting, the more likely you are to get something, weirdly.

It sounds exactly like meditation, but a boiled down, modern technique that doesn't use the word.

A creation myth of Zen meditation and Shaolin Kung Fu claims that Bodhidharma meditated for 9 years facing the temple wall, and eventually caused the wall to crack.

I don’t practice meditation so I couldn’t tell you. I do find that when I do it, there are two regimes.

In the first regime the time goes somewhat quickly and it isn’t as difficult. I call this the zoning out regime. There usually hits a sudden point where zoning out is no longer quite as easy. This is probably the meditative regime where I have to be more mindful about keeping my mind blank.

I set a timer just to train my will, but I don’t prioritize spending a ton of time in that second regime. Just anecdotally, once I’m past the zoning out regime my focus is usually back.

Yep. You don’t have to have to have your eyes closed to meditate. You can keep them open to focus on the flame of a candle or something else… in this case, a wall!

I've never liked the way meditation makes me feel, but I really like doing "guided relaxation". To an extent that I think they have to be different somehow, even though a lot of people would probably say they're the same thing.

I feel like staring at walls is similar.

Look up "wall-gazing meditation".

Yep, I think it's basically meditation with the branding stripped off

It's maybe more along the lines of some of the mindfulness protocols, which are a form of meditation.

There's one where you are at rest and slowly shift the focus of your gaze from near to middle distance to far away, and back.

It's supposed to be a grounding exercise to bring your mind back to a state of rest and just observing.

I'd consider them to be pretty dramatically different; meditation can be associated with deliberate focus and a kind of religious devotion, while just staring at a wall can be the absence of focusing or any kind of defined practice

I was taught to aim for "mind blanking" when meditating, so does seem like it!

I predict this thread will now spiral into a dozen different definitions of meditation.

is meditation just not a form of staring at a wall? i've never been able to keep a staring at a wall habit, but my understanding that staring at a wall often features opening your eyes and focusing on breathing, body parts or some other irrelevant thing, it sounds like meditation would serve the same purpose.

Definitely.

Interesting twist- notice dark shapes in your color spectrum for a while, then switch to light. Trippy.

zazen is often practiced eyes open facing a wall

Yes. I swear every day I see a "new" fad targeted at fixing one's attention and every time they're doing so much mental gymnastics to not use the word "meditation."

One of the top comments on the video is "Bro accidentally discovered meditation"

this is known as trataka meditation in the yogic tradition. trataka falls under the umbrella of kriya (purification) techniques which is why it helps with focus and intention

That immediately came to mind (no pun intended but still welcomed).

> ... but my understanding is that meditation techniques often feature closing your eyes and focusing on breathing, body parts or some other irrelevant thing

It's more like the opposite. If you think about your breathing, you'll be "controlling" it (which funnily enough is not the case when you don't think about it). Meditation is the opposite: you have to be in a state where you can think about your breathing and yet you're not controlling it.

I can tell that, from doing it since a long time and from talking to people about it, even many people who practice meditation cannot reach that state (thinking about breathing without controlling it).

And you also really don't focus on body parts: you "disconnect" them all until you don't even feel them anymore.

And you also shouldn't focus on irrelevant things: you have to focus on absolutely nothing.

There are many different techniques to "pass on through to the other side": some visualize thoughts ("words" or the "internal monologue") as if it was a sea. The more thoughts, the more hectic the sea (and you want it all calm: no words, no internal monologue). Some imagine a lotus flower opening and when the last leaf opens, you can be in. Some imagine diving.

I meditate on and off since a long time. There are benefits, for example I definitely can lower the intensity of headaches (or at least how I perceive the pain). What I tell my friends is that Buddhist monks are actually on serious trips beating any psychedelic drug that does exist.