Try this experiment. The next time you find yourself in front of a TV that's on, study how what you are being shown is training your mind. What is it training your mind to do?

Seated meditation practice within the most common tradition of shamatha is about training your mind to concentrate. You calm the mind. This produces states of ecstasy, peace, heightened mental clarity, etc. Good stuff we want more of.

Similarly, when you watch TV your mind is also be trained, but the results aren't quite so pretty. Notice how the images you see are constantly changing. Count how many seconds pass between each change of subject, distance, angle or other compositive element of the shot you are seeing. I have noticed that most shows average 3-6 seconds between visual changes that require my mind to scramble to reassemble an understanding of what I'm looking at. That, my friends, I call jumpy mind meditation.

Apart from the atrocious level of violence, cynicism, sexual obsession, and consumerism that is constantly being programmed into us by the content (programming) of what is being shown to us, the very act of watching itself is destructive to our inner peace. It is well known that just 40 minutes a day of concentration meditation can create increased immunity response, improved mood, heightened mental clarity, and other powerful effects that can be measured by even western medicine. So what do you think the effect is of hours a day of jumpy mind meditation? Really. What effect do you think that is having on our society? How long has ADD been such a widespread problem? How's your immune system doing?

I know I'm preaching a bit to the choir. This is a tribe of mostly non-TV viewers. But even those of us who've quite can still remember what life was like back when we were consumers of TV programming. I know my health, happiness, and energy levels have all improved since I stopped watching TV, not to mention that I've finally begun to make progress with my real meditation practice and become productive in realizing a lot of dreams I used to have (like writing and publishing my first book).

If there are people you love who still watch, especially if they are depressed, low energy and frequently falling prey to colds and allergies, see if you can get them to do this experiment. You don't have to preach to them at all. Just tell them about the benefits of concentration meditation and see if they can for themselves figure out what the effect of the opposite mental training might be.

Side point: Actually, technically speaking it is important to make a distinction between meditation practice and meditation itself. Meditation practice is what you do to hopefully have the peace and inner joy of meditation arise within your experience. Since watching TV doesn't actually bring about that state of mind, it can't really be a meditation practice.

Now some of you are going to think, "Wait a minute. Watching TV does zone me out. It's like I go into a trance and that's really peaceful." But the trance state is not meditation. Even among experienced meditation students there can often be a lot of confusion between zoning out and waking up. Actual meditation is not just peaceful, it is also vibrant, mentally alert, and sometimes even open hearted in its warmth of compassion and very present within the experiences of the physical body (depending on the type of meditation practice you're doing). The TV trance is not embodied, not alert, not joyful, etc. In essence, it's not meditation.