Meditation is when one has entered into a meditation posture (sitting, lying, standing, or walking) with the "intent to meditate." Just the fact that one has decided to meditate makes that activity meditation; for all intents and purposes, one has started a meditative process, no matter what happens.
That meditative process however may not be the same for everyone or the same for one person all the time. The process is affected by the intention one has for meditation, as well as by the state of mind one is in. Often one defines meditation by the nature of the intention (the meditation practice) one chooses and not by the state of mind one is in at the beginning. But what if one were to define meditation by the states of mind that condition one's meditative process rather than the intentional activity one brings to meditation?
Meditation may then be "initiated" by the intention to meditate but not restricted by the intention to do a particular meditation practice. This is an important distinction. When most people meditate, they do a particular practice through which meditation then becomes defined. They become mediators who use a certain mantra, do Vipassana, count their breaths, etc. What happens when the intention to meditate does not include such practices? The intention to meditate then becomes not "doing a meditation practice" but rather a willingness to be open to one's current state of mind.
One's current state of mind is not a static thing. It is a dynamic process. The meditative process one encounters at the outset of a meditation sitting is usually a carry-over from a non-meditative "mind-stream" that is being brought into the meditative "mind-stream": a transition occurs that allows the non-meditative to become the meditative. It is this very transition which is denied when the intention to do a particular meditation practice is added to the basic intention to meditate. Its denial, or avoidance, is what makes it difficult to see the actual meditative process; instead, the mediator primarily sees how well or poorly he is doing the intended meditation practice.
MEDITATIVE PROCESS
Seeing the actual meditative process is seeing the dynamic nature of states of mind. It is known through becoming conscious of one's relationship with the content of one's meditative experience. I have delineated six distinct meditative processes which are based on the shifting relationship one has with the content of one's meditation sittings. They are as follows:
v Conflicted: experiencing some kind of inner struggle or turmoil.
v Connected: being settled or focused, including being connected with an object of concentration.
v Generative/experimental: generating a state of mind to replace an existing state of mind or conducting an inquiry, an experiment, or a prescribed contemplation.
v Receptive/open: being passive and receptive in regard to one's experiences or becoming open to all that arises.
v Explorative: exploring the nature of one's experiences, through recollection and/or in the moment, by seeing what is occurring alongside, underneath, and within the experiences one is having.
v Non-taking up: experiencing while not taking up the experience.
