Buddhist Meditation:
a brief guide
If you would like audio files to guide your meditation you might like to try these:Kamalashila – Getting Started in Meditation – guided meditation audio files
Introduction
Buddhist meditation includes any method of meditation that has
Enlightenment as its ultimate aim. Buddhist meditation practices are designed
to provide us with a grounding in certain basic human qualities, to help us to become
a happy, healthy human being - a necessary foundation for any deeper spiritual
practice. From these we can deepen into ‘insight’ meditations.
This article summarises two central Buddhist practices: the Mindfulness
of Breathing, and the Metta Bhavana, both of which are taught at Triratna
Buddhist Community centres worldwide. These lead us naturally into deeper, more
reflective, states of mind that may help us develop insight into the true
nature of reality. Both go back to the time of the Buddha and have been
practised ever since by millions of people of all types across the world. In essence,
meditation teaches us to take full responsibility for our own states of mind,
and offers us a means of transforming negative and reactive patterns in our
minds into positive and creative ones. Such change can have a deeply
transformative effect, and lead to new understandings of life.
The secret of success for any meditation is good preparation and regular
practice. Preparation includes both setting up our meditation posture, finding
a suitable place for meditation, and - if we are to go at all deeply into meditation
- leading an ethically simple and uncompromised life. To practise regularly we
need confidence in the practice and in our own ability to change. As we go on,
this confidence becomes more and more deeply rooted in our own personal
experience.
The Mindfulness of Breathing:
developing calm and concentration
This practice helps us to develop a calm and concentrated mind. We learn
to pull together the many scattered fragments of our emotional and mental
energy into a single unified whole, with the natural consequence that our minds
become more energised, focused, andwholehearted, and therefore, that our
experience of life becomes clearer and more vivid, our choices more conscious
and more meaningful. Some traditions say the Buddha was doing this practice as
he became Enlightened.
This practice makes a very good companion to the Metta Bhavana. Both
were taught and strongly recommended by the Buddha. We suggest that anyone
developing a serious meditation practice alternates them equally.
Summary of the four stages of the practice:
• Begin by setting up your meditation posture and sitting quietly for a
minute or two, to relax and settle yourself. Check your body for tension, and
become aware of its general level of energy. Check the overall tone of your energy,
emotions, and mental activity, acknowledging these as your starting point for
this particular session of meditation.
1 Feel the sensation of the breathing as it flows naturally in and out
of the body. Just after each breath leaves the body, mark it with a (mental)
count of 'one', then 'two', etc. Count ten breaths, then start again at one.
2 After doing this for a short while (say 4-5 minutes) start counting
each breath just before it enters the body, counting in the same way as before.
3 After a few minutes of stage 2, stop counting altogether, and simply
follow with your mind the whole flow of your breathing.
4 Finally, direct your attention to the point where you most clearly
feel the air entering and leaving the body. Focus your attention on the subtle
sensations made by the air stimulating that point.
• To end the practice, relax your effort and sit quietly doing nothing
for a minute or two, absorbing the effects of the practice, and gradually
allowing your attention to expand out again into your surroundings. It is
important to end slowly and sensitively. Take time to reflect on how it went.
Throughout the practice, keep an overall perspective on how it is going,
and look for ways to move into deeper states of concentration. These include
adjusting your posture to balance energy that is too sluggish or too excited,
consciously developing interest in your experience, and looking for enjoyment
in the practice.
Metta Bhavana:
the development of loving-kindness
Metta is almost impossible to translate adequately, but refers to
strong, even passionate, feelings of love, friendliness, and compassion towards
all life - feelings felt equally towards all, and completely free from
emotional selfinterest or grasping. It is sometimes referred to as 'universal loving-kindness'.
It is a fundamental attitude of positivity and love that will express itself spontaneously and appropriately in action: as compassion towards the suffering, joy at others' good fortune, help where help is needed, generosity towards the needy, and so on.
It is a fundamental attitude of positivity and love that will express itself spontaneously and appropriately in action: as compassion towards the suffering, joy at others' good fortune, help where help is needed, generosity towards the needy, and so on.
Summary of the five stages of the practice:
· Begin as for the Mindfulness of Breathing, checking your overall
energy, emotions, and mental activity, acknowledging these as your starting
point.
1 As you become more fully aware of yourself, develop a response of
friendliness, interest, and kindness towards yourself, wishing yourself
"happiness and the causes of happiness, freedom from suffering and the
causes of suffering, growth and development". One approach is to repeat a
suitable sentence to yourself over and over, listening for the resonances in
your heart. Another way is to remember a time when you felt this way, and feed
that memory with awareness, thereby bringing it into life in the present.
Another is to imaginatively give yourself a gift - a flower, jewel, or flame,
symbolising self-metta.
2 Move the focus of your awareness onto a good friend and work
creatively to contact, develop, and deepen metta towards them, using similar
methods to stage 1. Avoid choosing someone for whom you feel sexual or parental
feelings.
3 Bring to mind a 'neutral' person, someone for whom you have no clear
like or dislike. Look for ways to contact metta for them and then develop and
deepen it. This may mean 'bringing them to life' in your mind, reflecting on what
you have most deeply in common, or simply taking an imaginative interest in
them.
4 Turn your attention to a 'difficult' person. Experience how you actually
feel towards them, and try to cultivate a fresh and more mettaful response,
perhaps looking for a deeper understanding of them.
5 Lastly, bring to mind all four people and develop metta equally
towards all of them. Broaden out to include those around you, in the local
area, the country, the world - other forms of life - all life. Develop strong,
impartial, universal metta towards all life.·
To end, as in the Mindfulness of Breathing, relax your effort, and
gradually expand your awareness outwards slowly and sensitively.
Working in Meditation: going deeper
Once you have learnt the basic practice, there are many ways to take
your experience deeper. The art of meditation is always to find a creative way
to take your practice one step deeper.
Posture
The three keys to a good meditation posture are to be comfortable,
relaxed, and alert. Experiment to find what suits you. Your knees should rest
firmly on the ground to give you stability, your hands supported in front of
you, your buttocks at the correct height, your head balanced, and your muscles relaxed.
the hindrances
Broadly speaking, we may suffer from too little energy available for our
meditation or from too much unfocussed and distracted energy. Working with
posture is the first thing to try: sitting up straighter or opening our eyes if
our energy is low, bringing our attention down into our stomach or relaxing our
muscles if it is too high and scattered.
Beyond this we may use the traditional list of the Five Hindrances:
- Sloth and Torpor
- Doubt and Indecision
(both states of too little energy: we need to stimulate mind and body)
+ Sense-Desire
+ Restlessness and Worry
+ Ill-Will
(all excess/unfocussed energy;- we need to reduce distraction, calm the
mind)
Work with these by naming them, thus acquiring a perspective on them;
cultivating the opposite; considering the consequences of living forever in
them; or - if all else fails -allowing them to pass in their own time by
adopting a 'sky-like mind'.
daily practice
A daily meditation practice is essential for real progress in meditation.
Finding a place and time that suit you, meditating with others, keeping a
meditation journal, reading and learning more about meditation - all these may
help you to develop a regular practice. Keep your practice clear, bright, and
creative. Enjoy! ♥
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