The meaning of the words has become frustratingly loose in the West, but there's no point breaking my face on that wall. You have to separate the pragmatic asp

The meaning of the words has become frustratingly loose in the West, but there's no point breaking my face on that wall. You have to separate the pragmatic aspects of mindfulness meditation, which are more commonly stressed in the West, and the "less pragmatic" aspects (call that "spiritual" or "transformational" if you like) which are part of the actual practices/systems from which it originates. I'm focusing on the first as that seems to be your interest. The core pragmatic purpose of mindfulness meditation is to notice when your mind has become distracted. Returning your attention to your breath (or whatever) after your thoughts have drifted is the practice. That's it, but if you think "that's all?" then you haven't practiced this and have no idea juuuuuuuuuuust how distracted you are. As with "doing nothing", if you think that's easy or something "we do all the time", then you haven't really experienced or understood it. You're dealing with an intellectual preconception rather than the lived experience of recognizing your turbulence. It can go beyond that, into disidentification from thoughts and sensations, experiencing "awareness", and so forth, but that isn't the pragmatic aspect, which comes first.