Articles by alphabetic order
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 Ā Ī Ñ Ś Ū Ö Ō
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0


INTRODUCTION What is meditation?

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search




If there is one image which has done the most to encourage the practice of Buddhist meditation in the modern world it is that of the Buddha himself, sitting in the meditation or samadhi posture, with legs in the lotus position and palms held upwards on the lap, the right hand held gently over the left. Easterners treat a Buddha figure with great respect: little street shrines can be seen in odd corners all over South East Asia, surrounded with flowers and incense. Although the figure of the Buddha is also often seen on market stalls, as backdrop to romantic films or giving atmosphere for travel brochures, its authority

transcends and transforms its setting. The bodily form has become a distillation of the teaching. The shoulders are evenly balanced (sama), the back straight, the lower half of the body offers tranquil support to the upper, the ‘lion’chest is confident and rounded without being puffed up. It is essentially a human figure, for within the Theravada Buddhist tradition the Buddha is not regarded as a god, but as a man, who has developed to the full the human possibilities for compassion, strength and wisdom and can teach these qualities to others. The word Buddha is derived from the Pali word for ‘awake’ (bujjhati); it is this quality of peaceful alertness which characterizes the seated figure, whose posture, bearing and expression bring together within the bodily form the qualities we have come to associate with the activity of bhavana, or meditation.


But what is the activity of meditation and why practise it? To explain this it is helpful to consider briefly the key events in the life of the Buddha that prompted his development of a system of meditation that forms an essential element of the eightfold path of right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. For six years after the renunciation of the pleasures of his palace he followed various teachers and practised two of the higher meditations, the seventh and the eighth jhanas, subsequently incorporated into his own system. He concluded, however, that they did not lead in themselves to peace and freedom. Joining a group of renunciates who were following the severe austerities favoured by many at the time, he attempted to find truth through self-mortification but just became ill and emaciated.


Realizing that he would never find enlightenment in this way, he ate some food and spontaneously remembered an experience that had occurred to him as a child. In the Mahasaccaka-Sutta, the Buddha describes the incident that had occurred, according to the commentaries, when he was 7 years old. For the first time in his life, Gotama had been left on his own. His father, the king, was ceremonially initiating the ploughing festival by taking up the plough himself. Gotama’s attention, however, falls not on the movement of the plough but, according to the commentaries, upon the object of the breath as it enters and leaves his body: And then, Aggivessana, this thought came to me: ‘I remember that when my father the Fakyan was busy, while I was sitting in the cool shade of the rose-apple tree, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskilful states, I entered upon and abided in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with the joy and happiness born of seclusion. Might that be the path to awakening?’Then, following on that memory came the consciousness: ‘This is the path to awakening’.


‘Why am I afraid of a happiness that has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unskilful states?’ And then, Aggivessana, this thought came to me: ‘I am not afraid of this happiness, for this happiness has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unskilful states’. (M I 246–7)1


The Buddha’s account is short but, occurring after a particularly harrowing account of the self-mortifications, is precise in its evocation of meditative experience. The incident carries a curious sense of contradiction: a state of profound peace is heightened by the proximity of an earthy, noisy and physical event, the ceremonial ploughing; the scene is companionable but also solitary, festive yet secluded and quiet. As Bronkhorst says, ‘One cannot fail to be struck by the relaxed and friendly atmosphere that emanates from this passage.’2At the heart of the meditative teaching, later formulated within the principles of the middle way, lies an almost commonsensical assumption: that it is the mind that is at ease and at peace with itself that comes more easily to understanding than the one that is strained, and that in the grim or harsh pursuit of truth both the obvious and the subtle are lost together. Indeed the way a small or mundane event is observed with a leisured attentiveness that allows a space for things to be seen afresh reminds one of other modern myths of great discovery: Archimedes desperately trying to understand something and then allowing his attention to rest when taking a bath, Newton idly following the trajectory of an apple, or even the way a child picks up and plays with a new toy. The five factors of jhana, initial or applied thought (vitakka), sustained thought or examining (vicara), joy (piti), happiness (sukha) and one-pointedness (ekaggata) are ones we know from daily life. They are, according to Abhidhamma theory, present in many moments of our usual experience – but here they are unified in a refreshing state of great peace, interest and exploration.3 All of these features underlie his teaching of the practice of samatha meditation.


The state does not produce enlightenment or specific soteriological insight. It is however transformatory: from that time Gotama’s view of the world and his attitude to the nature of the attention and work needed to gain wisdom is changed at the root. On the basis of it he takes a step, courageous at a time when harsh austerities were considered essential for the pursuit of understanding, to follow a path that is not characterized by fear or rejection of the world of the senses. He still needs to find a way to liberation, however, and a further element, of insight, is provided by subsequent events in his search. After eating milk-rice given by Sujata, he sits under the bodhi tree, and using the experience of the first jhana as a basis, proceeds to practise the other seven jhanasincluding the seventh and eighth which he had cultivated earlier. This confers the flexibility of mind and steadiness needed to attain insight into the corruptions that bind him and other beings to continued rebirth.


After the enlightenment the Buddha is reluctant to teach others, thinking that what he has discovered is too profound and subtle for others to understand. Lord Brahma, the ruler of the heaven realms points out to him that there are some ‘with little dust in their eyes’who can benefit from this teaching. For the next forty-five years the Buddha goes on to teach: not just meditation but the system that he develops which is embodied in the middle way, the path that does not go to the extremes of sensual pleasure nor self-mortification. It is significant that it is Brahma who shows the Buddha how to use his divine eye and see the suffering of beings. According to Buddhism, Brahma is lord of the heaven realms only accessible after death to those who have attained jhana, the meditation taught by the Buddha. It is through his good offices that the Buddha is able to see how his wisdom may help others. A metaphoric implication is inevitably suggested by the incident. Contact with the realm of Brahma, where beings are reborn for aeons on the basis of meditative practice, not only helps the individual to gain liberating insight, but also ensures that the mind looks on at the condition of other beings in a way that can help them. The Brahma realms were certainly regarded as realms which form the basis for rebirth, but they also suggest the available reserves of health and calmness in the mind that are needed to be able to see the suffering of others and to teach them. As modern meditation teachers point out, psychiatric hospitals are full of many who have had profound insights: no samatha, with its associated contentment and joy, has helped them to be able to accept them or to be able to perceive suffering around and within themselves with peace.4


The word meditation is a Western term for which there is no obvious counterpart in Pali. The noun bhavana, production or cultivation, derived in Pali from the causative of the verb to be, ‘to cause to become’ or ‘to bring into being’, is the nearest approximation (PED 503).5 Its association with creativity suggests that the human mind can produce all the reserves it needs through self-development. As such, accompanied by the practice of giving (dana) and virtue (sila), it is considered fundamental to the Buddhist path. Working together, these are regarded as active qualities that help the mind to see clearly by loosening distraction, resentment and annoyance. Buddhist texts frequently cover most of the eightfold path in one sutta or piece of text: discussion on behaviour, meditation and insight are commonly mixed in the same discussion. This is surely not accidental, though it poses tricky problems for anyone trying to isolate material on meditation alone. It indicates that while the pursuit of bhavana, in meditation, works to purify the emotions and the area of feeling it cannot develop well without attention to behaviour in the world and ‘views’: the things we insist on as being right or deadening theories of mind which prevent happiness or contentment. The Buddha taught that such activities of mind, wrongly applied, prevent insight into what is actually happening in the world around: things as they really are (yathabhutaÅ). Wisdom in Buddhism is described as producing right view, release and, in the end, freedom from suffering. Some kind of emotional purification, however, provided and supported by bhavana, is needed for salvific wisdom to arise: it is necessary to see all beings and their problems, including oneself and one’s own nature, without hatred, boredom or contempt. To put it another way, according to the philosophy known as Abhidhamma, the higher teaching, if there is not one of the brahmaviharas (31–5) of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy or equanimity present in the mind when any object is perceived, human or otherwise, then there is no wisdom either.6

Can modern science identify any benefits in meditation? There are measurable health benefits associated with Buddhist techniques. Research from the University of Wisconsin has shown that meditation affects favourably the parts of the brain associated with happiness: and it has long been proven, not only by scientists, that happiness tends to be good for people, helping to ensure health and longevity.7 Our bodies and minds are discernibly connected in many ways, and being able to return to a point of equilibrium allows neurone receptors to replenish themselves and other aspects of the physical brain to keep active and alert. In terms of the eightfold path, meditation is usually placed in the last triad, of right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The search for the alertness and stillness suggested by these has a focus and challenge that could be compared to the wish to climb a great mountain, understand a problem of astrophysics or write a poem. What is so striking about Buddhist meditation, however, is that mindfulness (sati) and clear comprehension (sampajañña), the foundations of work on the mind, can also be pursued in mundane activities too: not only in seclusion but while doing the shopping, mending the computer and dealing with the usual bustle and annoyances of the day. The way the Buddha taught meditation was not intended to encourage people to ignore the world or closet themselves away, as is sometimes thought, but, with the mindfulness that is constantly enjoined, to be aware of it and participate in it more.



Source