LDing sounds like a short cut to reaching the level of awareness you strive for with something like Zen meditation. Is it? Am I getting all the benafits from practicing LDing that I would from Zen meditation?
Benefits…
Kavaa, how is meditation ANYTHING like LDing? It seems that the ability to fly and other things dosen’t happen in meditation, or at least not with the same feeling.
I wouldn’t say lucid dreaming is meditation rather than dreaming. But I guess a parallell could be that meditation raises your level of awareness, so you may be in a hightened state of awareness when you meditate, although that will probably be when you’re awake. And When you’re lucid dreaming you are in a higher state of awareness than in normal dreaming.
If you meditate in a normal dream, you may become lucid.
I’ve read somewhere something along the lines of A minute of meditation in a dream is worth 100 hours of meditation awake.
If you want to get the benefits of Zen meditation, you should stick to it.
The two seem closely related.
Tibetan monks utilise both meditation and lucid dreaming on their path to ultimate enlightenment 
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yes they did but for differnt purposes.
A dream is counted as an altered state of consciousness.
Meditatoin is also counted as an altered state of consciousness.
other then that, through my own experiences no i do not beleive they are any more related. Although inside a lucid dream you are able to access parts of your mind that you can through med as well.
Do try and med inside a dream it does have interesting results
Is waking up generally one of those results?
no, when i did it i found the opposite, it increase clarity control and the length of the dream, mind you in saying that there have been times when i have tried ti and just ended up in the black void.
I’m not sure about this but I think WILD is a kind of meditation… and it results in you entering a sleeping state whilst staying aware.
So I would say meditation is a technique and sleeping is a state… when you meditate your state becomes relaxed… maybe even going into a sleep state if you go to far 
So my opinion would be Lucid Dreaming is a state attainable through meditation (But not just meditation)
Like Dragon said, WILD is more like meditation.
meditation is about finding your peace inside you. Cut yourself of off every influence from the outside. In lucid dreams people tend to do stuff…
In a way, I would say, lucid dreams are somewhat like meditation, especially when WILD is used, infact I have had an LD in the lotus position while trying to meditate- for me, and LD is half way between medetation and a real dream because to have and LD there has to be somepoint where you temperarily “let loose” your conciousness, but you come back in order to be aware of your dream. The reason I went to find out about lucid dreams is because when I listned to one of those meditation tapes that was trying to get me to go to my happy place, I actually just stepped out into my vision. Basically even if they aren’t the same, the paths to Lucid dreams and meditaion are very similar.