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. Buddhist meditation techniques are increasingly being employed by psychologists and psychiatrists to help alleviate a variety of health conditions such as anxiety and depression. As such,
mindfulness and other Buddhist meditation techniques are being advocated in the West by innovative psychologists and Buddhist meditation expert teachers such as
S.N. Goenka,
Jon Kabat-Zinn,
Jack Kornfield,
Joseph Goldstein,
Tara Brach,
Alan Clements, and
Sharon Salzberg, who have been widely attributed with playing a significant role in integrating the healing aspects of Buddhist meditation practices with the concept of psychological awareness and healing.
Buddhists pursue meditation as part of
the path toward
Enlightenment and
Nirvana.
The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are
bhāvanā and
jhāna (
Pāli;
Skt.:
dhyāna).
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 (sīla); meditation (samadhi); and, wisdom (paññā). 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
thumb| Lord Buddha meditating
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:
#Postures
#Cemetery Contemplations
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. Almost all of these are described in the early texts. 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".
- four immaterial states: boundless space, boundless perception, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.
- one perception (of "repulsiveness in nutriment")
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.
Zongmi's "Five Types of Zen"
In the early ninth century,
Zongmi (Chinese; Guifeng Zongmi or Kuei-feng Tsung-mi; 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, Zongmi'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" (gedō) – 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" (shōjō) – the pursuit of self-liberation, nirvana.
- "Great vehicle" (daijō) – the pursuit of self-realization to experience the unity of all things and working for the benefit for all beings (see kensho).
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).
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:
