Comment by nextaccountic
2 days ago
I want to comment that in Buddhism, the role of meditation isn't (just) to reduce anxiety or manage emotion. Indeed if this was the role, then other techniques of anxiety reduction or emotion management could replace meditation.
Instead, the ultimate role of meditation is to experience your inner reality. And it's really the experience that is important, just thinking about it doesn't have the same effect
So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in itself?
I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
You experience reality to understand the true nature of reality, to see things as they are. This is what leads to reduced suffering
You also need to calm your mind, reduce your anxiety etc but as a prerequisite
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%...
Meditation as a form of relaxing is practicing Samatha, and meditation to see things as they are is Vipassana. in reality both work in tandem, but Vipassana is the goal. (Vipassana is Buddha's innovation here - meditation in other religions is more like Samatha)
The main thing is that learning about the true nature of things at an intellectual level isn't enough in Buddhism. It's, like.. there are parts of your mind that are unaffected by what you learn intellectually, you need to actually experience things yourself to influence your unconscious mind