[dschiptsov]

Oh, come on. Meditation is not the way to "exercise willpower muscle" (running is the way to do so).

Meditation is the way to learn that your flow of thoughts is not you, it is mere side-effect, a smoke from an engine, a screen-saver, or just idle-running.

Yes, the practice of meditation is beneficial for will-power and self-control, but it is not the goal.) Goal is realization that what you think you are, is just a running total of all previous conditioning, and the ''real you'' could be "seen" is in an instant between two thoughts.

Any good ''eastern'' teacher will tell you that.

[crux]

I'd think any good "eastern" teacher would be sure to emphasize both the cultivation of wholesome mental qualities and the realization of not-self in meditation, depending on the audience and the context.

[7rurl]

That's awfully dogmatic of you. Why can't people have different goals for meditating?

Speaking of running... same thing... people can run for different reasons. Certainly long distance running is great if your goal is to increase your willpower, but its also great if your goals is to increase your physical endurance or if your goals is simply to be able to run really far.

[Agathos]

Running? Really?

In my experience, my mind is quite calm when doing hard physical work such as running. So if I wanted to practice resisting distracting thoughts, I would have to begin with almost anything besides physical exercise.

[Florin_Andrei]

Meditation is to your mind what hacking is to a computer. You're trying to make it do things it would not otherwise do.

(hacking in the sense accepted here on HN, not in the mainstream sense)