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Buddhist meditation
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Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that develop mindfulness, concentration, tranquility and insight. Core meditation techniques are preserved in ancient Buddhist texts and have proliferated and diversified through the millennia of teacher-student transmissions.
Non-Buddhists use these techniques for the pursuit of physical and mental health as well as for non-Buddhist spiritual aims. Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward Enlightenment and Nirvana.
The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhavana and jhana (Pali; Skt.: dhyana).
The accounts of meditative states in the Buddhist texts are largely free of dogma, so much so that the Buddhist scheme has been adopted by Western psychologists attempting to describe the phenomenon of meditation in general.
Given the large number and diversity of traditional Buddhist meditation practices, this article primarily identifies authoritative contextual frameworks – both contemporary and canonical – for the variety of practices.
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Encyclopedia
Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that develop mindfulness, concentration, tranquility and insight. Core meditation techniques are preserved in ancient Buddhist texts and have proliferated and diversified through the millennia of teacher-student transmissions.
Non-Buddhists use these techniques for the pursuit of physical and mental health as well as for non-Buddhist spiritual aims. Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward Enlightenment and Nirvana.
The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhavana and jhana (Pali; Skt.: dhyana).
The accounts of meditative states in the Buddhist texts are largely free of dogma, so much so that the Buddhist scheme has been adopted by Western psychologists attempting to describe the phenomenon of meditation in general.
Given the large number and diversity of traditional Buddhist meditation practices, this article primarily identifies authoritative contextual frameworks – both contemporary and canonical – for the variety of practices. For those seeking school-specific meditation instruction, it may be more appropriate to simply view the articles listed in the "See also" section below.
Types of Buddhist meditation
While there are some similar meditative practices — such as breath meditation and various recollections (anussati) — that are used across Buddhist schools, there is also significant diversity. For example, in the Theravada tradition alone, there are over fifty methods for developing mindfulness and forty for developing concentration, while the Tibetan tradition has thousands of visualization meditations.
Most classical and contemporary Buddhist meditation guides are school specific. Only a few teachers attempt to synthesize, crystallize and categorize practices from multiple Buddhist traditions.
From the Pali Canon
Meditation on the
Buddhist Path
Most Buddhist traditions recognize that the path to Enlightenment entails three types of training: virtue (sila); meditation (samadhi); and, wisdom (pañña). Thus, meditative prowess alone is not sufficient; it is but one part of the path. In other words, in Buddhism, in tandem with mental cultivation, ethical development and wise understanding are also necessary for the attainment of the highest goal.
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In terms of the vast Pali canon, meditation can be contextualized as part of the Noble Eightfold Path, explicitly in regard to :
- Right Mindfulness (samma sati) – exemplified by the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness (see Satipatthana Sutta).
- Right Concentration (samma samadhi) – culminating in jhanic absorptions through the meditative development of samatha.
And implicitly in regard to :
- Right View (samma ditthi) – embodying wisdom traditionally attained through the meditative development of vipassana founded on samatha.
Classic texts in the Pali literature enumerating meditative subjects include the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) and the Visuddhimagga's Part II, "Concentration" (Samadhi).
The Buddha's four foundations for mindfulness
In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha identifies four foundations for mindfulness: the body, feelings, mind states and mental objects. He further enumerates the following objects as bases for the meditative development of mindfulness:
- Breathing (see Anapanasati Sutta)
- Postures
- Clear Comprehending
- Reflections on Repulsiveness of the Body
- Reflections on Material Elements
- Cemetery Contemplations
- Feelings (vedana)
- Mind (citta)
- Mental Contents (dhamma)
- The Hindrances
- The Aggregates
- The Sense-Bases
- The Factors of Enlightenment
- The Four Noble Truths
Meditation on these subjects develops insight.
Swift messengers of Nibbana: Serenity and insight
The Buddha is said to have identified two paramount mental qualities that arise from wholesome meditative practice:
- "serenity" or "tranquillity" (Pali: samatha) which steadies, composes, unifies and concentrates the mind;
- "insight" (Pali: vipassana) which enables one to see, explore and discern "formations" (conditioned phenomena based on the five aggregates).
Through the meditative development of serenity, one is able to suppress obscuring hindrances; and, with the suppression of the hindrances, it is through the meditative development of insight that one gains liberating wisdom. Moreover, the Buddha is said to have extolled serenity and insight as conduits for attaining Nibbana (Pali; Skt.: Nirvana), the unconditioned state. For example, in the "Kimsuka Tree Sutta" (SN 35.245), the Buddha provides an elaborate metaphor in which serenity and insight are "the swift pair of messengers" who deliver the message of Nibbana via the Noble Eightfold Path.
In the "Four Ways to Arahantship Sutta" (AN 4.170), Ven. Ananda reports that people attain arahantship using serenity and insight in one of three ways:
- they develop serenity and then insight (Pali: samatha-pubbangamam vipassanam)
- they develop insight and then serenity (Pali: vipassana-pubbangamam samatham)
- they develop serenity and insight in tandem (Pali: samatha-vipassanam yuganaddham), for instance, obtaining the first jhana and then seeing in the associated aggregates the three marks of existence, before proceeding to the second jhana.
In the Pali canon, the Buddha never mentions independent samatha and vipassana meditation practices; instead, samatha and vipassana are two qualities of mind to be developed through meditation.
Nonetheless, some meditation practices (such as contemplation of a kasina object) favor the development of samatha, others are conducive to the development of vipassana (such as contemplation of the aggregates), while others (such as mindfulness of breathing) are classically used for developing both mental qualities.
From the Pali Commentaries
Buddhaghosa's forty meditation subjects are described in the Visuddhimagga. Buddhaghosa advises that, for the purpose of developing concentration and "consciousness," a person should "apprehend from among the forty meditation subjects one that suits his own temperament" with the advice of a "good friend" (kalyana mitta) who is knowledgeable in the different meditation subjects (Ch. III, § 28). Buddhaghosa subsequently elaborates on the forty meditation subjects as follows (Ch. III, §104; Chs. IV - XI):
- ten kasinas: earth, water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, light, and "limited-space".
- ten kinds of foulness: "the bloated, the livid, the festering, the cut-up, the gnawed, the scattered, the hacked and scattered, the bleeding, the worm-infested, and a skeleton".
- ten recollections: the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, virtue, generosity, the virtues of deities, death (see Upajjhatthana Sutta), the body, the breath (see anapanasati), and peace (see Nibbana).
- four divine abodes: metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha.
- four immaterial states: boundless space, boundless perception, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.
- one perception (of "repulsiveness in nutriment")
- one "defining" (that is, the four elements)
When one overlays Buddhaghosa's 40 meditative subjects for the development of concentration with the Buddha's foundations of mindfulness, three practices are found to be in common: breath meditation, foulness meditation (which is similar to the Sattipatthana Sutta's cemetery contemplations and related to reflections of bodily repulsiveness), and contemplation of the four elements. Of these, according to Pali commentaries, only breath meditation can lead one to the equanimous fourth jhanic absorption. Foulness meditation can lead to the attainment of the first jhana, and contemplation of the four elements culminates in pre-jhana access concentration.
Kuei-feng's "Five Types of Zen"
In the early ninth century, Kuei-feng (Chinese; also, Guifeng, Tsung-mi, Zongmi; Jap., Kei-ho) grouped Zen practices into five categories. While this typology is best known to Zen practitioners, it is applicable to all Buddhist meditation practices and is thus used here. According to this typology, the outward appearance of all meditation practitioners is the same, but their substance and purpose differ. Thus, for instance, most who practice mindfulness of breath would have a similar posture, meditative subject and level of concentration. But while some use the practice for mental quietude others use it to transcend all suffering. More specifically, Kuei-feng's five categories of meditative practices are:
- "Ordinary" (Chinese, bonpu; Jap., bonpu or bompu) – meditation pursued for mental and physical well-being without any spiritual goal.
- "Outside way" (gedo) – meditation pursued for non-Buddhist purposes, such as in tandem with Hindu yoga or Christian contemplation or for the pursuit of supernatural powers.
- "Small vehicle" (shojo) – the pursuit of self-liberation, nirvana.
- "Great vehicle" (daijo) – the pursuit of self-realization to experience the unity of all things and working for the benefit for all beings (see kensho).
- "Supreme vehicle" (saijojo) – the realization of buddha-nature as immanent in all beings (see shikantaza).
While the relative merits of the last three categories is open for discussion among various branches of Buddhism, it is useful to see that the same Buddhist meditation practices have been used for many centuries by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, for different ends.
Contemporary Western examples of bonpu meditation include the psychotherapeutic use of Buddhist mindfulness techniques in Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) (see also Buddhism and psychology).
Western Buddhist Order's "Five Basic Methods"
Western Buddhist Order meditation teacher Kamalashila identifies "Five Basic Methods" as "a traditional set of meditations, each one an antidote to one of the five principal obstructions to Enlightenment."
Kamalashila's Five Basic Methods are:
Mindfulness of Breathing
Metta Bhavana (including all four Brahma-viharas)
Contemplation of Impermanence, including:
Six Element Practice (earth, water, fire, air, space, "consciousness")
Contemplation of Conditionality
In addition, he discusses three other meditations as "among the most important" not identified above:
- Visualization, including:
- visualizations of Bodhisattvas (see, for instance, Tara)
- kasina meditations
- recollection of the Buddha
- visualization of the Six-Element Stupa
An important (although not universally accepted) theme throughout Kamalashila's guide is that the various methods of meditation can be divided into samatha meditation (tranquillity meditation) and vipassana meditation (insight meditation). In such a schema, Kamalashila identifies anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing) and metta bhavana (development of loving kindness) as samatha meditations. The vipassana meditations include contemplation on impermanence, the six element practice, and contemplation on conditionality. Some meditations (such as Tibetan visualizations) have elements of both samatha and vipassana. Samatha meditations usually precede and prepare for vipassana meditations.
The following table summarizes Kamalashila's Five Basic Methods (with metta bhavana expanded to include all four brahma-viharas).
Limitations of Kamalashila's systemization of Buddhist meditation include:
- Breath meditation is widely considered a method conducive to developing vipassana as well as samatha.
- Only passing references to auditory meditations, such as mantras which are particularly important to Pure Land and Nichiren practitioners (see also Buddhist chant).
- The omission of visualizations from the Five Basic Methods, given for instance the salience of kasina objects in the Pali literature and centrality of visualizations to Vajrayana traditions.
Nonetheless, it should be noted that Kamalashila's explicit aim is not to create an exhaustive systemization of pan-Buddhist meditation practices but to create a useful meditation guide.
See also
Theravada Buddhist meditation practices:
Zen Buddhist meditation practices:
Vajrayana Buddhist meditation practices:
Related Buddhist practices:
Proper floor-sitting postures & supports while meditating:
Traditional Buddhist texts on meditation:
Traditional preliminary practices to Buddhist meditation:
Bibliography
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- Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trans.) (2000). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. Boston: Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-331-1.
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