Part 7 | Sitting Meditation Isn’t About Slowing Down — It Frees You from Being Dragged Around by a Runaway Brain
When many people hear “sitting meditation,” the picture in their minds is much the same: a person sitting cross-legged with eyes closed, very quiet, very slow, as if pulling himself out of the world, as if standing on an entirely different track from reality, efficiency, competition, business and decision-making. So most people naturally put sitting meditation into another category: it is for people on a spiritual path, for after retirement, for those with too much stress, for those who live slowly and quietly and have time to talk about such things. But I increasingly feel that this understanding is not only too shallow but exactly backwards, because in the AI era, in an era of high-density work, in an era when every day we are chased by information, emotions, comparison, stress and rhythm, the real function of sitting meditation is not to take you out of the world but to bring you back to yourself: not to make you slower but to make you less chaotic; not to make you do less but to keep you, as you do things, from being dragged around by your own runaway brain. The difference is very great. Today many people are not insufficiently hard-working or insufficiently smart; they are inwardly too noisy, their minds too full, their reactions too quick, their emotions too urgent and their thoughts too many. Every little thing can trigger a new round of scripts, every message can pull away a stretch of attention, every comparison can detonate a layer of anxiety. Such a person is working on the surface, but much of the time he is being driven by his own brain — and sitting meditation, in the end, is slowly taking back that driver’s seat.
1. Most People’s Misunderstandings of Sitting Meditation: Too Mystical, Too Slow, Too Withdrawn
To make this piece clear, the first thing to do is to take the misunderstandings apart, because the biggest obstacle to sitting meditation is often not that it is hard to learn but that everyone has already put labels on it before beginning.
The first label is: too mystical.
Many people think sitting meditation must involve deep Buddhist doctrine, mysterious experiences and abstract realms, as if it isn’t suitable unless you have a special spiritual background. But it isn’t so: the core of sitting meditation is very concrete. It deals with your breath, your attention, your nervous system, your thoughts and your patterns of reaction. These things are not mystical at all; they are even closer to the reality of a person than many business concepts.
The second label is: too slow.
As if a person who sits down is pausing production, pausing progress, pausing competition. But the fact is exactly the opposite: what wastes the most time today is not necessarily someone who sits for twenty minutes but often those who spin all day in high noise, high reactivity and high distraction, because what is truly inefficient is not necessarily slowness but chaos — not stopping, but being unable to stop.
The third label is: too withdrawn.
As if sitting meditation were an escape, a comforting way of not facing reality. But real sitting meditation is not hiding from reality; it trains you to be better able to face it. It does not tell you not to work, not to make decisions, not to compete; it makes it so that when you do these things you are not pushed along by habit, emotion, anxiety and impulse. So if I were to redefine sitting meditation in one sentence first, I would say: sitting meditation is not leaving the scene; it is keeping you from losing yourself within the scene.
2. The Real Problem of Modern People Is Not Too Many Things but a Brain That Is Too Noisy
Many people think they are tired because there are too many things. Of course sometimes there really are many things, but if you look deeper, you will find that what truly wears a person down is not only the things themselves but the way the brain reacts to them. Faced with the same ten matters, some people can handle them steadily while others are pressed into a total imbalance of the system. Where is the difference? In the density of inner noise. What is noise? It is that when something comes, the brain doesn’t simply handle the matter but immediately begins to attach scripts: a message comes in, and it’s not just a message but anxiety; a delay happens, and it’s not just a delay but panic; a variable in a partnership appears, and it’s not just a variable but self-doubt; someone else’s achievement, and it’s not just an achievement but comparison and pressure; an uncertainty, and it’s not just the unknown but a rehearsal of disaster. Such a brain is very tired: it doesn’t only do things; while doing things it amplifies things, while doing things it imagines the worst case, while doing things it endlessly writes in extra emotions, fears and identity. After a long time what a person really consumes is not the working hours themselves but this additional, internally generated noise. This is also why many people feel very tired though they have been sitting still, why the brain can’t stop even after the work is done, why inside is still noisy though the outside world has already gone quiet. So the problem of modern people is not only too much information but that the brain has lost the rhythm of organizing information; not only too many tasks but that the nervous system has lost the ability to switch from high alert back to stability. And sitting meditation intervenes right from here.
3. Anxiety, Comparison, Rumination and the Desire for Control Are All Expressions of Inner Runaway
If you observe carefully the suffering of most modern people, it is in fact not caused by “things” themselves but by the chain reaction the brain sets off once things come in. Anxiety is one: it makes you live in the result before the thing has happened; it makes you not handle the present but bear the imagined future. Comparison too: someone else simply did well, and your brain instantly translates it into: am I not good enough? Am I falling behind? Will it be too late if I don’t move faster? Rumination is even clearer: a matter has clearly passed, but the brain replays it again and again; you are not thinking but continuously consuming; you are not summarizing but repeatedly letting emotions re-enter. The desire for control is the same: on the surface it looks like being responsible, but many times it is because inwardly you cannot bear uncertainty, so you want to grasp everything, manage everything, pre-empt everything — and in the end you are not managing the situation but being controlled in reverse by your own fear of uncertainty. Together these form a high-noise mental system, and people with high noise usually find it hard to be truly efficient, because their energy is spent not on the matter itself but on their own reactions. Such people tire easily, misjudge easily and, because of too much inner noise, can’t see what is truly important. So what sitting meditation really deals with is not a question of form but these patterns of reaction. It lets you begin to see that anxiety is not you, comparison is not you, rumination is not you and the desire for control is not you either — they are just habitual programs repeatedly activated in your brain. Once you begin to see this, a little gap appears between you and them, and that gap is the beginning of freedom.
4. Sitting Meditation Isn’t Thinking Nothing — It Is No Longer Blindly Believing Every Thought
This is the most crucial sentence. Many people think the goal of sitting meditation is to empty the head, as if having any thoughts at all means you haven’t practiced well. This is a very common and very misleading understanding, because the brain naturally has thoughts: it associates, evaluates, simulates, recalls and predicts — that is its function, not its fault. So sitting meditation does not ask you to become a person without thoughts; it lets you slowly learn one thing: thoughts can appear, but you don’t have to follow them immediately. The difference is huge. Usually most people’s state is: the thought comes and they immediately believe it; emotion rises and they immediately plunge in; a script opens and they are immediately dragged in — you are not observing it but acting inside it. Sitting meditation does not eliminate all this; it trains you to step back, back to a place where you can see: see how thoughts arise, how anxiety rises, how emotion takes the body along and tightens it, how a certain sentence, a certain image, a certain comparison quickly hijacks your attention. Once you begin to see, you no longer treat every thought as truth so easily. The deepest value in this is not only calm but judgment, because a person who habitually treats every thought as an order can hardly be truly free, whereas a person who can keep observing his inner activity rather than plunging in immediately begins to grow a new kind of stability. So I would say that sitting meditation is not training you to “not think” but training you to “not be led around by every thought.” This is especially important for people of the AI era, because outside stimuli will only increase, tools will only get faster and the war for attention will only get fiercer; if you can’t even guard your own thoughts, the outside world will soon cut you into pieces.
5. From the Nervous-System Perspective, Sitting Meditation Helps Rebalance the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic
If the above was at the level of the mind, here we return to the level of the body, because sitting meditation is not merely a psychological effect; it truly affects your nervous system. One of the biggest problems of modern people is that the sympathetic nervous system is often too strong for too long: the body stays in combat-ready mode, with a fast heartbeat, shallow breathing, a head that can’t stop and over-sensitivity to outside stimuli. The body is sitting but inside it feels like fighting a war. If this state is short-term, it is fine: when a person needs to cope with stress, handle crises or face competition, the sympathetic nervous system is needed to speed you up. The problem is that many people simply can’t switch back: the matter is over but the system is still tight; at night when they lie down the brain is still running; on weekends the body doesn’t know how to truly relax. Over time the power of repair falls, sleep goes out of balance, emotions thin out and patience drops, and the whole person increasingly resembles a string that is always pulled taut. The most practical function of sitting meditation, breathing and mindful observation is to help you slowly return from over-sympathetic activity to a more balanced state. How do they do it? Through deeper breathing, through attention coming back, through no longer being driven by thoughts, through letting the body know there is no real danger now and you need not always be on combat footing. Only then does the parasympathetic nervous system have a chance to take over again, and once it comes in, repair begins: sleep quality, emotional stability, digestion and absorption and inner balance gradually recover. So from this angle, sitting meditation is not abstract cultivation; in essence it is also training that lets the body slowly retreat from a “long-term combat mode” back to a “repairable mode.” For many business owners, senior executives, entrepreneurs and content workers today, this is not an optional extra; it is nearly a survival skill.
6. For High-Density Decision-Makers, Sitting Meditation Is the Ability to Clear Noise
The higher a person’s level, the less his real work is labor and the more it is judgment: judging direction, partnerships, risks, people, timing, what should and shouldn’t be done, what is worth investing in now and what should wait. And what judgment fears most is not insufficient information but too much inner noise. You are too anxious, so you can’t see accurately. You are too hurried, so you can’t see deeply. You want too much to prove yourself, so you can’t see clearly. You fear missing out too much, so you slip into over-reaction. You want too much control, so you bend answers that would otherwise surface naturally. So I increasingly feel that for high-density decision-makers, sitting meditation is not an emotional comfort; it is more like an internal ability to clear the field: first lower the unnecessary noise, first loosen the overly intense self-narrative, first let go a little of the over-alert hardness in the body — and only then can you see things as they are. This is especially evident in international settings: the bigger the game, the less suitable it is to be emotional; the higher the level of the negotiation, the less you can rely on nervous reflexes; the more you want to do big things, the less every ripple can carry you entirely away. So sometimes what truly decides victory is not who talks more but who is cleaner inside. That cleanness is not simply a matter of virtue; it is a quality of cognition — and sitting meditation is training exactly this quality.
7. Real Speed Is Not Panic but Efficiency Within Stability
If I were to sum up this piece in one sentence, I would land it here: real speed is not panic but efficiency within stability. Many people look fast but are actually just hurried: in a hurry to respond, in a hurry to perform, in a hurry to decide, in a hurry to grab everything. But this kind of fast is often accompanied by many errors, much wear and tear and much inner chaos. Truly advanced speed is not like this. Truly advanced speed is when you are steady inside, so your focus doesn’t jump around, your judgment isn’t easily carried off by emotion, and your rhythm doesn’t fall apart entirely when the outside world shakes a little. You work fast, but not because of panic; you are fast because you are clear, fast because you are not bogged down, fast because you are clean inside. And the foundation of this kind of speed is what sitting-meditation training slowly builds for you. It will not turn you into another person in a day, but it will change your inner structure bit by bit, so that you are less easily dragged away by thoughts, less easily hijacked by anxiety, less easily led around by comparison, less easily losing your own beat because the outside world is too fast.
So for Part 7, I want to leave one sentence: sitting meditation does not take you out of competition; it keeps you, within competition, from first losing to your own brain. The AI era will make many things faster, but those who go far will not be the quickest to react but those who, amid high speed, still keep a steady inner core. Only such people deserve, in the next era, not merely to survive but to live with control.