iVillage

We might wonder why this style of mind practice has never caught on in North America. In part, this is due to our whole take on meditation and what we think that is. Meditation in the West has come to mean something almost like relaxation therapy, a way to relax and get away from it all—to escape the worries of the world in the contemplation of some inner landscape. Somewhere, perhaps early in this century, the word meditation lost any semblance to its Eastern counterpart and became what most understand as meditation today: a way to relax and get rid of tension.

Of course this is nothing like the Tibetan concept of mind practice or mind preparation, which involves the intense use of the mind. It is unfortunate that this very active mind practice has also come under the general label of meditation here in the West.