Out of several ways we can approach the subject of meditation, one may start by saying meditation is the flowering of 'understanding'.

Understanding is not within the borders of time. Time never brings understanding. Time can bring about accumulation of information, but understanding doesn't depend on time.

Understanding is not a gradual process to be gathered little by little, in increments.

Understanding is now or never; it is a destructive flash, not a tame affair; it is this shattering that one is afraid of and so one avoids it, knowingly or unknowingly.

The fear of not being able to cope kicks in. Actually the fear is always there, because it is foundational to the psyche. Hence the insistence on"activity" as a coping strategy, to cover up or dismiss this fear (or any kind of fear), i.e. fear per se, from awareness (eyes-vision). Which clearly is Ineffectual.

Dang there was a serious typo in last sentence which is now corrected.

Meditation, as is generally prescribed in Eastern religious-philosophical traditions, is basically stillness of mind mostly but also of the body. I definitely don't meditate in any sense of that word but it is on my wish list; plus whenever I become aware that there is such a thing as meditation, like just now, I try to.

In the west, meditation is simply pondering deeply on a particular topic of interest à la René Descartes (vide Meditations).

IME, meditation is irreflective attention to any internal process of inattention in order to reduce inattention to nothing-but-attention (or attention-without-object), with the goal being – through multiple iterations every day – to eliminate habits of inattention completely (or as much as possible).