Is meditation an altered state or a training method?
Short Answer
Meditation is both a training method that develops attentional control and metacognitive awareness, and a practice that produces altered states during sessions, with long-term practitioners experiencing lasting trait-level changes in baseline consciousness.
Why This Matters
Understanding meditation as dual-purpose matters because it clarifies confusion around whether meditation is the goal or the path. As a training method, meditation strengthens executive attention, emotional regulation, and self-awareness through neuroplastic changes in prefrontal regions and the default mode network. During practice sessions, meditation can induce temporary altered states (deep calm, expanded awareness, dissolution of self-boundaries) that resemble other altered states. Over years of practice, these temporary states can lead to permanent trait shifts, resulting in a fundamentally different baseline consciousness even when not actively meditating.
Where This Changes
The distinction blurs in advanced stages where the "training" and the "state" become inseparable—practitioners report continuous meditative awareness even during daily activities. Similarly, some traditions emphasize meditation purely as a tool for insight development rather than state cultivation, while others (like jhana practices) explicitly aim to induce progressively deeper altered states. Beginners may experience minimal state changes during early practice, making meditation feel more like skill-building than consciousness alteration.