Mindfulness vs Meditation

Many people use the words mindfulness and meditation interchangeably.

Although they are closely connected, they describe different aspects of practice.

Understanding how they relate to one another provides a helpful foundation for exploring meditation and discovering how awareness can become part of everyday life.

So, what is the difference?

It begins with ordinary experience

Imagine you're drinking a cup of tea.

For a few moments, you notice the warmth of the cup in your hands, the aroma of the tea, and the simple experience of taking a sip.

Then, without realising it, your mind drifts to tomorrow's meeting, the shopping you still need to do, or a conversation you had yesterday.

A little later, you notice that your attention has wandered and gently return to the experience of drinking your tea.

Nothing special has happened. Yet in that small moment, you've experienced something. You have recognised awareness. This simple shift from being lost in thought to recognising what is happening right now, lies at the heart of both mindfulness and meditation.

Meditation is where we practise

Meditation is the time we intentionally set aside to become more familiar with awareness.

Within Tergar's Joy of Living programme, meditation is not presented as an attempt to empty the mind or stop thoughts from arising. Instead, it is an opportunity to gently recognise whatever is already present in our experience.

We might notice the breath. We might notice sounds. We might notice bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, or simply awareness itself.

Each time we recognise that our attention has wandered and gently return, we are becoming a little more familiar with awareness. There is nothing to force and nothing to achieve. The practice is simply one of recognising and returning.

Mindfulness is awareness in everyday life

If meditation is where we practise becoming familiar with awareness, mindfulness is how that familiarity begins to accompany us throughout the day.

It might appear while listening carefully to another person. While walking to the letterbox or washing the dishes. While taking a conscious breath before replying to an email. While noticing the sound of rain outside.

These ordinary moments are not separate from meditation. They become opportunities to reconnect with awareness in the middle of everyday life.

They support one another

Rather than thinking of mindfulness and meditation as two different activities, it can be helpful to see them as supporting one another.

Formal meditation helps us become more familiar with awareness. As that familiarity grows, moments of mindfulness begin to arise more naturally during ordinary life. Those everyday moments, in turn, strengthen our meditation practice.

Over time, the boundary between "meditating" and "living" becomes a little less rigid. Awareness begins to feel more available wherever we are.

Meditation doesn't stop when the session ends

One of the distinctive features of Tergar's introductory programmes is the emphasis on bringing awareness into ordinary daily activities. The Anytime Anywhere Meditation programme was developed around this very idea.

Rather than seeing meditation as something that only happens while sitting quietly with your eyes closed, it encourages us to discover moments of awareness throughout the day.

Waiting in a queue. Preparing dinner. Listening to a child. Taking a few slow breaths before an important conversation.

Everyday life itself becomes part of the practice.

This allows meditation to become part of ordinary daily life rather than something separate from it.

A gradual change rather than instant results

Within Tergar, meditation is understood as a gradual process of becoming increasingly familiar with awareness. The practice is not about achieving a particular state of mind, but about recognising and returning to awareness again and again. Over time, this growing familiarity allows understanding to deepen naturally through direct experience.

Each moment of recognising awareness becomes part of that gradual process. Rather than striving for a particular result, the practice is simply to continue becoming familiar with awareness, allowing understanding to unfold naturally over time.

Rooted in centuries of contemplative experience

The approach taught within Tergar draws upon contemplative traditions that have been explored, practiced, and refined over many centuries. While these teachings originated within Tibetan Buddhism, the introductory Joy of Living and Anytime Anywhere Meditation programmes are presented in a practical, non-religious way that is accessible to people from all backgrounds.

Participants are not asked to adopt Buddhist beliefs or identify with any religion. Instead, the emphasis is on exploring direct experience through awareness, compassion, and wisdom in ways that can be applied in everyday life.

This combination of timeless contemplative understanding and practical application is one reason why Tergar's approach resonates with so many people around the world.

Final Thoughts

When people ask, "What's the difference between mindfulness and meditation?", they are often looking for two separate definitions. In practice, the relationship is much simpler.

Meditation is the time we intentionally spend becoming familiar with awareness.

Mindfulness is the natural expression of that growing familiarity as we move through everyday life.

Within Tergar's approach, neither is about achieving a perfect state of mind. Both invite us to return, again and again, to the experience of being present with whatever is happening in this moment.

That gentle process of recognising awareness, returning without judgement, and gradually bringing that awareness into everyday life is where the practice begins—and where it continues to grow.