Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught. Meditation can teach us a lot about the world and ourselves.
We learn about the world in too many ways to describe here—but broadly, much of our learning happens through casual observation and formal education. Both methods take plenty of attention and focus—and luckily, mindfulness meditation can help improve these skills. There are four qualities of skills that psychological research has demonstrated that meditation can improve.
All three of these attentional qualities can improve our capacity for learning and sustained attention. Being able to dive into a good book, focus on a difficult math problem for a long time, or listen to a podcast or watch a documentary without feeling compelled to split our attention—these are all important ways we learn. And, importantly, the skills we need to learn like this can be improved. In an era of constant advertising, endless phone notifications, and attention-sucking social media, taking the time to meditate for a little while each day can help us refocus on what matters to us.
However, it is not only important that we improve our ability to learn, but also our desire to learn, as well. In recent years, experts have studied fixed and growth mindsets, where a “growth mindset” has greater potential for lifelong learning and achievement.
Put simply, an individual with a fixed mindset assumes that their intelligence, creative ability, skills, and talents are inherent and unchangeable. Someone with a growth mindset, on the other hand, believes that these traits can be developed, and subsequently embraces challenges and develops a drive to learn and improve. Ultimately, people with growth mindsets are passionate about learning, rather than achieving approval and validation. Carol Dweck’s game-changing book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success features much of her original research and explanation for these terms, but there are plenty of other resources out there if you’re interested in learning more.
“ There is no wealth like knowledge, and no poverty like ignorance.”
- Buddha
Often, after learning occurs, we seek ways to practice or apply it. We all have some skills we’re especially proud of, or goals we work towards each week or each day. However, only some of us manage to enter a state called flow—where, without an external reward, we dive deeply into a challenging experience.
When we’re in a flow state, we are intensely focused on what we’re doing in the present moment and lose awareness of ourselves. Time gets distorted—it’s rumored that Michaelangelo would paint the Sistine Chapel for days at a time, forgetting to eat or sleep, because he was so immersed in his work. Often, just the experience of the activity feels incredibly rewarding, and the end product becomes a secondary achievement. And when we’re in a flow state, we’ll feel totally in control of our actions, like we can confidently handle anything thrown our way.
Flow can occur while we’re performing a variety of activities, so long as they’re sufficiently challenging. We can achieve flow through either work or play—chess champions, runners, artists, basketball players and surgeons all can experience moments of flow. Achieving flow is an incredibly intense attentional process. We need to be able to concentrate on a single task for a sustained period of time, ignoring distractions like self-criticism. But the rewards are significant: famed flow researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes that experiences of flow are important for optimal development and functioning.
So how can we cultivate more experiences of flow in our own lives? Because flow is so contingent upon sustained concentration, meditating to foster better attentional focus is a start. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) suggests shaping environments and activities to be more conducive to a flow state, as well as tweaking personal characteristics and skills to make flow more likely. Giving ourselves the space to pursue activities we enjoy and find challenging is vital.
"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom was one of the three extraordinary trainings described by the Bhavana Kramana, a Buddhist text written in ancient India about 1300 years ago. The other extraordinary trainings were ethics and concentration—this is a fundamental principle of Buddhist teachings. The Dalai Lama writes that “in order to accomplish the purposes of both others and ourselves, all obscurations should be eliminated.” Achieving wisdom, then, only occurs after ethics and concentration are also developed. This returns to some of the earlier ideas discussed on this page, such as developing the ability for sustained attentional focus and the achievement of flow states. The goal, following the ability of concentration and attention, is to achieve wisdom about the way the world works.
It’s difficult to define exactly what wisdom is. Many have tried—each philosophy, religion, and belief system will deliver a different answer. Here at Wisely Wellbeing, we’re not aiming to tell you what you ought to discover on your quest for wisdom. Instead, we aim to give you the space and prompting to help you along on your own journey. Like the Buddhists, we believe that you ought to take all our words with a grain of salt—test these ideas on your own to figure out if we deserve your trust. Ultimately, our goal is to help you develop the potential for wisdom. Making your learning easier, your attention span better, and your lifestyle healthier is how we aim to do this.
Works Cited:
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NY: Harper Collins.
Dalai Lama XIV. (2003). Stages of Meditation. Boulder, CO: Snow Lion.
Dweck, Carol S. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.
"Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality."
-Dalai Lama
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