Meditation in Buddhism

Overview

Recall questions on the types of Buddhist meditation and their place in the Eightfold Path, samatha, vipassana and the jhanas, mindfulness of breathing, chanting, giving and study, lay and monastic practice, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu and Goldstein.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What are the main types of Buddhist meditation?

   Model answer

   Broadly, calm practices that concentrate the mind, such as mindfulness of breathing and the loving-kindness practices; insight practices that examine experience as it arises; and the visualisation, mantra and devotional practices developed in Mahayana and especially in the Tibetan traditions. Zen adds seated practice with and without a koan; Pure Land centres on recitation.

2. 2

   Where does meditation sit within the Noble Eightfold Path?

   Model answer

   In the samadhi division, as right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. It depends on the ethical limbs, because a mind carrying guilt and agitation will not settle, and it serves the wisdom limbs, because a steady mind is what can see clearly. That is why Buddhists resist treating meditation as a self-contained technique.

3. 3

   How does meditation affect moral development?

   Model answer

   Buddhists argue it works on the roots rather than the behaviour: mindfulness catches an impulse of anger or greed before it becomes speech or action, loving-kindness practice deliberately trains the disposition, and insight weakens the self-concern that generates unskilful motives. Ethics makes meditation possible and meditation in turn deepens ethics.

4. 4

   What is samatha, and how is it practised?

   Model answer

   Calm abiding: sustained attention on a single object, most often the breath, until distraction subsides and the mind becomes unified. Practitioners work with an upright posture, a chosen object, and the patient return of attention each time it wanders, and the traditional manuals catalogue a range of objects suitable for different temperaments.

5. 5

   What is vipassana, and how does it differ from samatha?

   Model answer

   Insight practice: rather than resting attention on one object, it observes whatever arises in body, feeling, mind and mental content, watching things appear and pass. Samatha produces stability; vipassana uses stability to see the three marks. Theravada teaching generally treats both as needed, though schools differ over how much calm must precede insight.

6. 6

   What are the dhyanas (jhanas)?

   Model answer

   Progressive states of deep absorption reached through concentration, in which distraction, then applied thought, then joy, then pleasure drop away, leaving increasingly refined equanimity. Buddhists prize them as powerful supports for insight but warn that they are not themselves liberation, since they are conditioned states one can fall out of.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.