Meditation is a broad term encompassing many different practices and traditions (as you know). From my own experience, meditation is a means to understand (and more importantly *experience*) that what I consider a 'self' doesn't exist (from a first person perspective). It's an illusion created by my own mind via perpetual thought imagery, constant inner dialogue/self talk that is propagating and clinging to a fabricated image of who I am.
What keeps this going is the phenominon of thinking without realising you are thinking. You are simply being captured by thoughts that on the face of it (from the first person perspective) are coming out of nowhere. The analogy used is a dream. When you go to sleep you dream and usually you are not puzzled by the fact that a moment ago you were in your bed and the next you are in this dream situation. You completely lose the perspective that you are in a dream. Thoughts have this same quality. At the core of this issue is the sense of self.
Meditation is a means of becoming aware of this process (hence the practice of becoming aware of your thoughts). To do this successfully you need to develop a certain level of concentration (which is why there are practices that involve focus on the breath/some other meditation object singularly).
Sometimes people get caught up on the whole idea of meditation and try too hard (hence the gurus saying 'do nothing'). They revert back to the idea of a self and they try to improve themselves in some way. Really in meditation we are trying to become aware of something, a continual process playing out in your minds, a perpetual stream of thoughts that we are completely unaware of that is distorting our perceptions, creating an identity (in the first person sense) from which then arises all the emotional and psychological problems we tend to encounter in our daily lives that are as relevant today as when the Buddha was knocking around.
What keeps this going is the phenominon of thinking without realising you are thinking. You are simply being captured by thoughts that on the face of it (from the first person perspective) are coming out of nowhere. The analogy used is a dream. When you go to sleep you dream and usually you are not puzzled by the fact that a moment ago you were in your bed and the next you are in this dream situation. You completely lose the perspective that you are in a dream. Thoughts have this same quality. At the core of this issue is the sense of self.
Meditation is a means of becoming aware of this process (hence the practice of becoming aware of your thoughts). To do this successfully you need to develop a certain level of concentration (which is why there are practices that involve focus on the breath/some other meditation object singularly).
Sometimes people get caught up on the whole idea of meditation and try too hard (hence the gurus saying 'do nothing'). They revert back to the idea of a self and they try to improve themselves in some way. Really in meditation we are trying to become aware of something, a continual process playing out in your minds, a perpetual stream of thoughts that we are completely unaware of that is distorting our perceptions, creating an identity (in the first person sense) from which then arises all the emotional and psychological problems we tend to encounter in our daily lives that are as relevant today as when the Buddha was knocking around.