[joelthelion]

>I think that there is a tendency amongst us westerners to believe that meditation is about attaining something

Of course there is. It's the only rational reason to do something: for present or future benefit. Otherwise you quit the realm of reason and enter the domain of religion.

[davidtanner]

That is what many Westerners, especially those here on HN, miss. Meditation is expressly a religious/spiritual tool.

It's a technology of the sacred in the same way that visionary plants and chemicals are. In fact visionary plants can be a very effective preview/shortcut of the end goals a meditator wishes to reach.The point of meditation is to quiet the mind so that one can know God*

*Where here "God" means an experiential state of nondual, atemporal awareness radically different from our normal states of waking and dreaming.