Forget mindfulness. You just have to be a gorgeous lazy slacker.

The brain is a pleasure seeking machine. Once you teach it, through meditation, that abiding calmly in the present moment feels better than our habitual state of clinging l, over time, the brain will want more and more mindfulness.

Imagine a world where people were 10% happier and less reactive. Marriage, parenting, road rage, politics - all would be improved upon. Public health revolutions can happen rapidly. Most Americans didn't brush their teeth until after world war 2 after soldiers were demanded to maintain oral hygiene. Exercise didn't get popular until science proved its benefits. Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

Meditation has countless benefits - from better health to increased focus to a deeper sense of calm - but the biggie is the ability to respond instead of react to your impulses and urges. In meditation, instead of succumbing to deeply rooted habits of the mind like desire & aversion, you simply watch what comes up in your head non-judgementally.

There was something important being overlooked, they argued, in the mainstreaming of meditation - a central plank in the Buddhist platform: compassion.

The getting lost and recovering - that is the meditation.

Meditation is hard. You are constantly trying to focus on one thing, usually your breath, and your mind is going to go berserk.