What Is Meditation? Definition, History, and Practice

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The Definition Problem

Meditation does not have a single, universally accepted definition. This is not a failure of scholarship. It is a reflection of the fact that "meditation" refers to a vast family of practices, developed across dozens of cultures over thousands of years, with different purposes, different methods, and different philosophical frameworks. Defining meditation is like defining "exercise": the word covers running, weightlifting, yoga, swimming, and dancing, all of which train the body but in fundamentally different ways and for different reasons.

The most frequently cited scholarly definition comes from Roger Walsh and Shauna Shapiro (2006): "A family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration."

This definition is useful because it identifies the common element across all meditation traditions: the training of attention and awareness. Whether you are practicing Zen zazen, Hindu mantra repetition, Christian centering prayer, or secular mindfulness, you are training your capacity to direct and sustain attention. What differs is the object of attention, the technique for directing it, and the purpose the tradition assigns to the practice.

Etymology: Where the Word Comes From

The English word "meditation" comes from the Latin meditatio, derived from meditari: "to think, contemplate, consider, reflect." The root is the Proto-Indo-European *med-, meaning "to take appropriate measures." This etymological origin reveals something important: in its Latin meaning, meditation is not passive. It is an active mental engagement, a deliberate turning of the mind toward an object of contemplation.

In Christian monastic tradition, the word carried a specific technical meaning. The 12th-century Carthusian monk Guigo II described four stages of spiritual reading: lectio (read), meditatio (ponder the text), oratio (pray in response), and contemplatio (rest in God's presence). In this framework, meditatio is the active, intellectual engagement with sacred text that prepares the soul for the passive, receptive state of contemplation.

How Different Traditions Define Meditation

Buddhist Definition: Training in Awareness

In the Buddhist tradition, the closest equivalents to "meditation" are bhavana ("mental development" or "cultivation") and dhyana/jhana (a state of meditative absorption). The Buddha taught meditation as one component of a comprehensive path to the cessation of suffering. The core practices are shamatha (calming meditation, developing concentration) and vipassana (insight meditation, developing wisdom). The purpose is not relaxation or productivity but liberation: seeing through the constructed nature of the self and ending the cycle of craving and aversion. For the definitional relationship between Buddhist sati and modern mindfulness, see our separate guide.

Hindu Definition: Union with the Divine

In the Hindu tradition, meditation (dhyana) is the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. The Sanskrit word yoga itself means "union": the union of individual consciousness with infinite consciousness. The final stage, samadhi, literally means "union with God." Hindu meditation is not primarily a psychological technique. It is a devotional and metaphysical practice whose purpose is the direct experience of the divine reality underlying all appearances. The Bhagavad Gita presents dhyana within the broader context of Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana Yoga.

Christian Definition: Communion with God

Christian meditation is "a structured attempt to become aware of and reflect upon the revelations of God," focused on specific thoughts (typically scripture) and their meaning in the context of divine love. It differs from Eastern meditation in its use of discursive thinking: the Christian meditator thinks about a text or image rather than moving beyond thought. Centering prayer and Hesychasm are the Christian practices closest to Eastern meditation, involving the repetition of a word or phrase (the sacred word, or the Jesus Prayer) to still the mind and open it to divine presence. See our Types of Meditation guide for details on Lectio Divina, Centering Prayer, and Hesychasm.

Secular Definition: Cognitive Exercise

The secular, clinical definition treats meditation as a cognitive exercise: a technique for training attention, reducing stress, and improving emotional regulation, without any spiritual or metaphysical framework. The NHS defines it as "a deliberate mental practice in which a person focuses attention, and develops awareness, to achieve a calm, clear, and present state of mind," adding: "Meditation is not mystical." This definition makes meditation accessible to people who do not hold spiritual beliefs but want the documented health benefits of the practice.

A Brief History

Meditation is among the oldest deliberate human practices. Archaeological evidence from the Indian subcontinent, including wall art dating to approximately 5,000-3,500 BCE, depicts figures seated in postures consistent with meditation, with half-closed eyes. Whether these images represent meditation as it is understood today is interpretive, but they suggest that some form of contemplative practice existed before written language.

The earliest written descriptions appear in the Hindu Vedas (c. 1500 BCE), which describe dhyana (meditation), mantra (sacred sound), and pranayama (breath control) as components of spiritual practice. The Upanishads (c. 800-200 BCE) elaborate these techniques and develop the philosophical framework of Atman (self) and Brahman (absolute reality) that gives Hindu meditation its metaphysical orientation.

Buddhist meditation was systematized by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, c. 5th century BCE), who learned meditation from yogic teachers, developed his own approach through personal practice, and spent decades teaching it to others. The Buddhist contribution was to separate meditation from the Vedic sacrificial system and present it as a practical, accessible technique for understanding the nature of mind and ending suffering.

Technique vs. State

One source of confusion in discussions about meditation is the failure to distinguish between meditation as a technique and meditation as a state.

Meditation as technique is something you do: a specific practice performed at a specific time, using a specific method. You sit down, close your eyes, focus on the breath, repeat a mantra, visualize a symbol, or contemplate a passage of scripture. The technique is deliberate, structured, and repeatable.

Meditation as state is something that arises: a condition of heightened awareness, inner stillness, or absorption that the technique is designed to produce. This state can also arise spontaneously, outside of formal practice: during a walk in nature, while listening to music, in moments of intense focus, or during creative work.

The relationship between the two is that of training and result. You practice the technique regularly. Over time, the state becomes more accessible, more stable, and more likely to arise outside of formal practice. Eventually, in the advanced stages described by every contemplative tradition, the state becomes more or less continuous: what Buddhists call "mindfulness in daily life," what Christians call "practicing the presence of God," and what the Hindu tradition calls sahaja samadhi (natural, effortless absorption).

What Meditation Is NOT

Not Relaxation

Relaxation may occur during meditation, but it is not the purpose. Some meditation sessions are profoundly uncomfortable: buried emotions surface, physical pain intensifies under sustained attention, and the mind rebels against the discipline of staying present. The mindfulness tradition is explicit about this: the practice sometimes involves turning toward difficulty rather than away from it. Meditation is relaxing in the long run, but in any given session, it may be anything but.

Not Emptying the Mind

The single most common misconception about meditation. No meditation tradition teaches that the goal is to stop thinking. The mind produces thoughts the way the heart pumps blood. The goal is not to stop the process but to change your relationship to it: to observe thoughts without being captured by them, to notice the space between thoughts, and to develop the capacity to direct attention where you choose rather than where habit takes it.

Not Zoning Out

Meditation increases awareness; it does not decrease it. Zoning out (dissociation, daydreaming, mental drifting) is the opposite of meditation. In meditation, you are more present to your experience, not less. The fact that meditation is sometimes taught in a way that produces drowsiness or mental dullness is a sign of poor instruction, not a feature of the practice.

Not Hypnosis

Hypnosis works through suggestibility: the practitioner enters a state in which they are more responsive to external suggestions. Meditation works through meta-awareness: the practitioner develops the capacity to observe their own mental processes from a position of conscious awareness. The two states are neurologically distinct and have different outcomes. Meditation develops autonomy; hypnosis temporarily suspends it.

The Neuroscience Definition

From a neuroscience perspective, meditation is a set of practices that regulate cognition, self-referential processing, and emotion through the systematic training of attention and meta-awareness. Research identifies three key neurocognitive components:

Focused attention: The capacity to sustain attention on a chosen object (breath, mantra, body sensation) and to redirect attention when it wanders.

Meta-awareness: The capacity to monitor one's own mental state, to notice when attention has wandered, and to distinguish between being lost in thought and being aware of thought. This "knowing that you are thinking" is what makes meditation fundamentally different from daydreaming.

De-reification: The reduction of the perceived solidity of mental phenomena. With practice, thoughts are experienced less as solid facts and more as transient mental events, reducing their power to drive reactive behavior.

Neuroimaging research has documented corresponding brain changes: increased cortical thickness in the prefrontal cortex (executive function), increased gray matter in the hippocampus (learning and memory), decreased amygdala reactivity (stress response), and altered default mode network activity (reduced mind-wandering). These changes are consistent across multiple meditation types, suggesting that the three neurocognitive components identified above are common to all effective practices.