That's, just, like, your opinion, maaan. - The Dude[1].
But I still disagree; meditation being to do with noticing where your thoughts arise, who watches the watcher, who is "I", it's fundamentally at odds with the hustle culture of productivity and economic return on investment and "it's critical that I meditate to keep up my image of being someone who meditates so I can maintain my suitably high status to impress my readers". It's the kind of thing Buddha stepped away from his wealthy upbringing to realise, the kind of thing Zen Monks go to monasteries to get away from, the kind of thing rich people take meditative sabatticals to observe and introspect.
Desire causes suffering; I forget what book I read it in but it was a normal person asking a guru about their office job, lots of phones ringing, lots of urgency, lots of stress, how can she meditate to be at peace in that kind of environment when she's so stressed she can't get in a peaceful mood to meditate at all? And the author's answer was not to stop all the phones ringing, to get into a peaceful mood first, but to notice that her desire to be at peace was at odds with her life, said desire was where her suffering was arising - if she revelled in the activity, in feeling wanted and useful and never bored, she could end the day tired but satisfied believing she'd helped as much as she could, instead of worn out and stressed believing she'd failed the workload. Meditation might be to notice that the phones ringing is stressing her and it needn't be a judgement about her not being good enough when she can't answer all of them, rather than meditation being about going to a quiet room to get some peace.
Similar to the story of the guy rowing a boat accross a river and bumps into another boat and calls out swearing at the other boater for not paying attention and being careless and then looks over his shoulder and sees the other boat is empty and drifting and there's nobody to be angry at, the answer is not to go find the boat owner to be angry at the right person, it's to wonder why you are angry at all.
I'm not claiming to be an authority, but a meditative state is more "laughing at yourself for wanting to be that important" than it is "improving writing productivity and readership by 15%". Like the fat man who is desperate to keep making vegetable soup recipes for YouTube so people accept he is an authority on dieting, the recipes aren't the diet, the finger isn't the moon, the point of meditation[2] is to notice your desperate desire to be a spiritual authority and your suffering when you feel you aren't good enough, rather than to turn you into a spiritual authority. Like the people who say they want to be musicians who are mixing up "being on stage and famous with a cheering crowd" with "playing instruments eight hours a day".
[1] (everything everyone says ever is their opinion! Every internet comment is someone's opinion, not a peer reviewed study - even then, peer reviewed study comments are the reviewer's opinion! Even measured experiments are someone's opinion that those are good measurements, that they were taken properly, recorded well, used in an appropriate model with appropriate assumptions! "That's just someone's opinion" - you should assume ALL internet comments, all articles, all books, have a honking great "IMO" on the front, or if you respect the author, make it "IMHO").
But I still disagree; meditation being to do with noticing where your thoughts arise, who watches the watcher, who is "I", it's fundamentally at odds with the hustle culture of productivity and economic return on investment and "it's critical that I meditate to keep up my image of being someone who meditates so I can maintain my suitably high status to impress my readers". It's the kind of thing Buddha stepped away from his wealthy upbringing to realise, the kind of thing Zen Monks go to monasteries to get away from, the kind of thing rich people take meditative sabatticals to observe and introspect.
Desire causes suffering; I forget what book I read it in but it was a normal person asking a guru about their office job, lots of phones ringing, lots of urgency, lots of stress, how can she meditate to be at peace in that kind of environment when she's so stressed she can't get in a peaceful mood to meditate at all? And the author's answer was not to stop all the phones ringing, to get into a peaceful mood first, but to notice that her desire to be at peace was at odds with her life, said desire was where her suffering was arising - if she revelled in the activity, in feeling wanted and useful and never bored, she could end the day tired but satisfied believing she'd helped as much as she could, instead of worn out and stressed believing she'd failed the workload. Meditation might be to notice that the phones ringing is stressing her and it needn't be a judgement about her not being good enough when she can't answer all of them, rather than meditation being about going to a quiet room to get some peace.
Similar to the story of the guy rowing a boat accross a river and bumps into another boat and calls out swearing at the other boater for not paying attention and being careless and then looks over his shoulder and sees the other boat is empty and drifting and there's nobody to be angry at, the answer is not to go find the boat owner to be angry at the right person, it's to wonder why you are angry at all.
I'm not claiming to be an authority, but a meditative state is more "laughing at yourself for wanting to be that important" than it is "improving writing productivity and readership by 15%". Like the fat man who is desperate to keep making vegetable soup recipes for YouTube so people accept he is an authority on dieting, the recipes aren't the diet, the finger isn't the moon, the point of meditation[2] is to notice your desperate desire to be a spiritual authority and your suffering when you feel you aren't good enough, rather than to turn you into a spiritual authority. Like the people who say they want to be musicians who are mixing up "being on stage and famous with a cheering crowd" with "playing instruments eight hours a day".
[1] (everything everyone says ever is their opinion! Every internet comment is someone's opinion, not a peer reviewed study - even then, peer reviewed study comments are the reviewer's opinion! Even measured experiments are someone's opinion that those are good measurements, that they were taken properly, recorded well, used in an appropriate model with appropriate assumptions! "That's just someone's opinion" - you should assume ALL internet comments, all articles, all books, have a honking great "IMO" on the front, or if you respect the author, make it "IMHO").
[2] if there is any such thing