Meditation Instructions

Background

Meditation is built around two core principles which, over the centuries, have proliferated and diversified through teacher-student transmission into a bewildering array of practices. Nevertheless, these diverse practices have two foundational techniques:

1. Concentration
2. Mindfulness

In essence, concentration means focusing attention on a single object. Mindfulness involves remembering, observing, and clearly knowing thoughts, feelings, bodily states, and other aspects of experience. To accommodate different temperaments and circumstances, meditation teachers have developed many techniques intended to cultivate mindfulness, concentration, tranquillity, insight, and, in some traditions, supramundane powers.

One common modern slogan says that meditation is simply about living in the present moment. This is incomplete. In Buddhist practice, mindfulness is not bare immersion in the present. It also involves remembering what one is doing, recognising what has arisen, and understanding thoughts and feelings in relation to the teachings and to one another.

Meditation objects

There are many objects that can be used to develop meditative skill, including coloured discs called kasinas, contemplations of foulness, loving-kindness, perceptions, and immaterial states. Different techniques suit different situations and temperaments. Many are best undertaken under the guidance of an experienced teacher.

For example, contemplation of foulness has traditionally been used as an antidote to sensual greed, while loving-kindness meditation may help someone caught in anger and hatred. Some techniques principally develop concentration or mindfulness; others develop both.

Mindfulness of breathing, or ānāpānasati, is an excellent example of a practice that develops both concentration and mindfulness. It has an important place in Theravada, Tiantai, Tibetan, and Zen traditions, as well as in modern mindfulness programmes.

Mindfulness of breathing

Mindfulness of breathing refers to several ways of attending to inhalation and exhalation. The following exercises become progressively subtler. Beginners will usually start with the first and move on when ready, although this is not a rigid sequence.

Exercise one: counting after the out-breath

Use counting to remain focused on the breath. After breathing out, count one. Breathe in and out, then count two. Continue up to ten, then begin again at one.

Your mind will wander. Thoughts, noises, and bodily sensations will catch it. When you notice this, recognise the distraction without scolding yourself, then gently return your attention to the breath.

Exercise two: counting before the in-breath

Shift the position of the count. Count immediately before breathing in, anticipating the breath that is coming. Continue from one to ten, then begin again at one.

Exercise three: following the breath

Drop the counting and simply observe the breath as it comes in and goes out.

Exercise four: attending at the nose

Allow the focus of concentration to narrow. Attend to the subtle sensations around the nostrils or upper lip where the breath is most clearly felt as it enters and leaves the body.

When thoughts arise

The aim of meditation is not to stop thoughts. Thinking is one of the most confused subjects in meditation. In advanced states of concentration, discursive thought may become very quiet or cease for a time, but this cannot be forced by willpower and should not be treated as the immediate goal.

Until concentration is well developed, thoughts will arise, and this is as it should be. A successful session is one in which you remain with the meditation object for at least some of the time. Every second you stay focused is worthwhile, regardless of what else the mind is doing. It may sing a song, insist that you have better things to do, plan a conversation, worry about a numb leg, or create dinner.

If you remain with the meditation object despite distraction, you are developing skill and resilience. If concentration is completely lost, simply return. Even noticing that you have wandered is progress, because awareness has returned.

The focus is the thing. One second is good; two seconds are better. With practice, five seconds may become five minutes. At this stage, the aim is not to stop thinking or enter a transcendental state, but to remain with the meditation object for as long as you reasonably can.

With this non-judgemental attitude, concentration will strengthen and the scattered mind may gradually become quieter. The bottom line is that thinking is not itself the problem. Your task is to develop concentration. The rest comes in due course.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a process of observing, remembering, and recollecting. In SN 48.10, the Buddha describes the faculty of sati as the ability to remember what was done and said long ago, together with sustained contemplation of body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities.

Mindfulness may also involve bringing future certainties to mind. AN 6.19, for example, recommends the cultivation of mindfulness of death. This is possible because sati is closely connected with remembering and keeping something in mind, rather than merely experiencing the present instant.

In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, mindfulness enables the practitioner to remember the relevant categories of the teaching and to recognise a feeling in relation to a wider range of skilful and unskilful states (Gethin, 1992; Sharf, 2014, p. 942).

Koan and hwadu

There is debate within Zen about whether koan practice is a more effective meditation object than the breath, and some teachers regard it as the fastest route to awakening. One advantage is that it can be practised during ordinary activity, not only in seated meditation.

In some Zen traditions, students work through a curriculum of koans. In Korean Zen, practice commonly centres on a single hwadu, such as “Who am I?” or “What is this?”, sustained until great doubt becomes concentrated and divergent thinking falls away. Other teachers emphasise keeping a “don’t-know mind”, or say that the living question must arise from one’s own life.

Koans are not ordinary riddles. They cannot be resolved by discursive reasoning alone. Their purpose is to exhaust habitual conceptual responses and open a different way of seeing.

Unusual and difficult experiences

Unusual experiences can occur during or after meditation. These may include altered bodily sensations, vivid imagery, feelings of leaving the body, or experiences interpreted as encounters with ghosts or spiritual beings. Whatever interpretation one gives them, they are not in themselves the goal of Buddhist meditation. Do not chase them or build an identity around them. Discuss persistent or troubling experiences with an experienced Buddhist teacher.

Going further

Advanced meditation grows from these foundations. The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment presents concentration and mindfulness separately and in combination as paths of practice. The simple methods outlined here are therefore not disposable preliminaries. As practice deepens, more will be discovered, but concentration and mindfulness remain fundamental.