[ssteeper]

Very simply, meditation is an attempt at single-pointed concentration. It involves cultivating awareness of the mind's contents and the ability to let thoughts pass without fixation. "Zoning out in the shower" probably means something more like daydreaming, where any and all thoughts are permitted to exist without active control. Focusing intently on a difficult cognitive task ("flow state") is more akin to meditation than zoning out.

A lot of beginners are so bad at this that some amount of guiding back to the goal is helpful. Many can only go a few seconds without getting fixated on passing thoughts.

Practicing one's ability to focus on a single thing and reducing mind-wandering will improve one's capability for concentration.

[devilsdata]

You're talking about Samatha-vipassanā which is the cultivation of stable attention and mindfulness as two skills. Your skill can be measured by the nine stages of tranquility:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-vipassan%C4%81#:~:text...

But this is only one form of meditation. There are others, such as Maitrī/mettā meditation.

[eskaytwo]

I think they’re just focussing on the Samatha concentration aspect?

[mxmilkiib]

"immersion" as a better translation than "concentration", suggested by Sujato

(can't remember their exact chat about that EBT translation compared to Bodhi or Brahm in whichever of the miriad of Buddhist Society of Western Australia talk/retreat videos I heard it discussed)

e.g. in https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato

mindfulness of body sensation, feeling, thought and principle bringing enough equanimity to start ignoring it all really easy, though the moral aspect can't be separated because doing not wholesome actions will leave you thinking about them

[wubrr]

That is a pretty convincing and intuitive take, thank you.