rdcooper

I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments.

It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like:

"[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate."

I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits:

We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training!

And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc.

IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!").

And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness.

There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things.

What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.