I bet there are people who have watched TV 6 hours a day for 29 years (over 62,000 hours). I guess you can call them "olympic level" couch potatoes. Their brainwaves should also be studied and compared with these "olympic level" meditators, right?!
If you found out that you can feel really, really good by sitting and doing nothing... would you do it? Of course you would. :)
Now the stark reality however, is that to be able to sit and meditate properly requires to be already at home in the body. Any amount of trauma will make that particularly difficult. As soon as you sit, you have to work through restlessness, anxiety, and myriad of other unpleasant states of mind. And they all come up.. it's like a purge of the nervous system.
In fact I was just recently reading an article about the unexpected side effects of meditation. This is not talked about enough.
Meditation Is a Powerful Mental Tool—and For Some People It Goes Terribly Wrong
Yet most spiritual disciplines proffer strictures against chasing pleasurable meditative states. They can arise, but are generally not supposed to be sought, nor held on to. After arising, they fall away, and that is fine - all the same to a serious meditator.
However you might assess such disciplines (I'm not sure myself), it's pretty clear that pleasure and getting high is absolutely not their aim - indeed attachment to such would be considered a hindrance to 'progress'.
Those just seem to be more rarified forms of pleasure for experts. It's like forgoing the gatorade to savor crystal clear water after a run, or something.
"If you found out that you can feel really, really good by sitting and doing nothing... would you do it? Of course you would. :)"
Nope, I'd go for walk. Meditation is passive and lazy. Being outside in nature with the sounds of the birds and the UV light, being actually connected with the universe, being alive.
It truly is neither. "Passive" meditation would be daydreaming, which all meditation techniques aim to minimise. Hardly 'lazy' either - retreat drop-out rates are high precisely because it can be really, really hard to muster the will to maintain the required discpline for hours (and days) at at time.
> Nope, I'd go for walk
Most meditation traditions include walking practises.
Meditation is about training the mind to be more aware, more purposefully attentive, and more equanimous. As you can imagine, there are many benefits to achieving this.
It's not simply sitting and daydreaming, even though it can sometimes feel like that as a beginner, which is totally normal :)
For beginners, the important part is to just practice noticing each instance of daydreaming or getting lost thinking about something, without judgment. Each time one notices it is actually a victory to enjoy, not a bad thing.
If you would have any actual experience with meditation, you would quickly notice that it actually improves focus and mental ability, regulates mood, etc. In fact, it makes a person more effective, not less. If someone meditates properly, they will achieve more and more easily, if they meditate 1 hour and then work for 7 hours - than if they would just work for 8 hours.
This assumes of course that they have any use of their brain during their work - ie, if they are creatives or mental workers, etc. If they stand at a factory pressing the same 3 buttons all day - then probably no, meditation will not help much.
IT, possibly the highest stress position of that industry for years. I use practices from meditation throughout my work day to keep objective and professional.
How can they afford to spend their days sitting down doing essentially nothing ?
Could they do this high-level mediation in a busy office with people on phone meetings all around them ?