Can ordinary experience count as meditation

An art for example, piano playing or the martial arts or dancing, they might approach the art in a way that not only do they become extraordinarily focused while they're doing their art. But that there's a carryover into daily life and they notice month after month year after year as the result of having done that art in a certain way their base level of focus in daily life has changed so even though they're not.

Calling it meditation, it is defacto a meditation, so if I do that. I don't have to actually do regular meditation. I can just do my ballet or piano, yes, but there's a tricky point because the issue is not do you become extraordinarily focused while you're doing the endeavour that's not that uncommon? What is much less common is that there is a carryover?

And you notice in daily life in other activities that because of the way you're doing your art that every moment of your life is being informed by an elevated sense of focus. That's fairly unusual, but that is then and the art of you may have heard that expression. Zen and the art of archery, Zen and the art of flower arranging to zone 2.

Yes, or no yeah, it is yes in the sense that there is this locker room or sports term to be in the zone and that is the term that's used for entering a state of extraordinary concentration say during your performance of sport and of course, it's highly desirable baseball player Ted Williams used to say he knew he was in the zone when he could see the pitch.

Coming at him.

You could see the stitches on the ball and those pictures come it like 100 miles an hour right so sports People call that in the zone.

Once again, it's not entirely uncommon for somebody to quote enter the zone during their performance. What is uncommon is that they do it in such a way that there's a carryover into daily life there has to be the carryover. Remember I defined the common denominator of meditation is well not just concentration, but your base level of concentration when you're not trying to be concentrated? What are you like in daily life to count as meditation something has to?

Consistently elevate your base level of concentration.

So anything that does that is a meditation whether it's called meditation or not, but it's not just a matter of you get concentrated while you do it. It's a matter of you get concentrated while you do it in a way that it retrains your ordinary.

Perceptions so that's what that's why I'm very specific about elevate your base level because it's not uncommon that a person will become extraordinarily focused in some endeavour it is.

However, relatively uncommon that that carry over into daily life in a dramatic way that grows consistently with time without special instruction, usually that doesn't happen. They just have it spontaneously. But there's not the that's why you actually do these formal meditation techniques and practices because that more directly elevates that base level. Yes, the In other words, Let's imagine based on your.

Line of questioning that there could be some ordinary activity. You're doing as a meditation and then there could be some special exercises that you do that usually involves sitting still and focusing in some way and whatever and you do those now in either case. You could have an elevation of your base level of concentration and that elevation needs to grow dramatically with time.

If that's the case that either of those counters meditation, but usually People that get spontaneously focused.

In less somebody points out to them that it is necessary and possible to carry this over in daily life. They usually don't so it becomes a dead end and it's not really a meditation, even though they may become very much in the zone while they perform their sport are there art so in theory, you don't have to do systematic formal exercises that involve sitting in that kind of thing in theory, but probably probably if you.

Want to do it through an art you probably will still need some coaching into how to make your art carry over the state of zone do you coach People? How to I can do that? I can coach, a person to make their running or their singing? What have you can coach them so that they get the carryover but more typically?

People.

Will also do formal meditation practice sitting in silence, and so forth so The upshot is that the common denominator of every form of meditation around the world inside or outside of religion would be that they elevate base level of concentration.