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Meditation techniques

This article pro­vides the ba­sics of three dif­fer­ent med­i­ta­tion tech­niques. It en­a­bles be­gin­ners to start with their med­i­ta­tion prac­tice.

[...] in the text in­di­cate that more de­tails are given in the free pdf-ver­sion. Please find the down­load link at the bot­tom of this page.

This article pro­vides the ba­sics of three dif­fer­ent med­i­ta­tion tech­niques. It en­ables be­gin­ners to start with their med­i­ta­tion prac­tice.

[...] in the text in­di­cate that more de­tails are given in the free pdf-ver­sion. Please find the down­load link at the bot­tom of this page.

1. Introduction
Buddhism distinguishes ba­si­cal­ly be­tween con­cen­tra­tion and in­sight med­i­ta­tion. Another very use­ful form of men­tal de­vel­op­ment is lov­ing kind­ness med­i­ta­tion. These three tech­niques are very ben­e­fi­cial in every day life and help to live a more peace­ful and con­tent life.

It is recom­mend­ed to take part in a med­i­ta­tion course, best in form of a seven or ten day retreat, to learn a tech­nique prop­er­ly and to get in con­tact with an ex­pe­ri­enced med­i­ta­tion teach­er who is able to an­swer ques­tions, to solve prob­lems and to dispel doubt.

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1.1 Attitude
It is very important to take your time for your med­i­ta­tion ses­sion. Do not hur­ry, think­ing of what to do after the ses­sion is over be­fore you have ac­tu­al­ly start­ed. Relax body and mind. For­get about your work, your fam­i­ly, your com­mit­ments and re­spon­si­bil­ities, your child­hood... Do not look ahead, do not wor­ry about the fu­ture, not even about the near fu­ture. In this way you carry no bur­den, you become open to the pres­ent moment. Thus you get rid of stress­es and ex­pe­ri­ence more relaxed, calm and peace­ful states of mind.

Then it is best to not expect any­thing. Just sit back and see what hap­pens. Do not become the “doer” of the prac­tice, do not get ob­ses­sive about it, and do not force any­thing. Take your time and be pa­tient. Any­thing really val­u­able takes time to develop. Do not cling to any pleas­ur­able ex­pe­ri­ence and do not re­ject any dis­turb­ing ones. Do not fight with what you ex­pe­ri­ence, just ob­serve it.

The right attitude towards the prac­tice is to ob­serve, to get to know all your states of mind. Your de­sires, your hopes and fears, your am­bi­tions, your anger, your bore­dom, your doubts, your self-right­eous­ness... Try to under­stand and ex­pe­ri­ence how and why they arise, see all of them cease. And once you real­ly know and under­stand them, you can let go of them. Let­ting go means to al­low things to go, not to get rid of them, not to sup­press, deny, re­ject or run away from them. You can al­low them to go be­cause you start to under­stand their nature, you know that they have arisen, and you will see them fad­ing away of their own ac­cord. Noth­ing stays in the mind for­ev­er, not the things we like, not the things we dis­like.

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1.2 Posture
When we think of medi­ta­tion in the west, we may think of some­body sit­ting in the lotus pos­ture. The lotus or di­a­mond pos­ture may be the final goal for some med­i­ta­tors, but most of us have to choose some other cross-legged or non cross-­legged sit­ting pos­ture due to stiff­ness and in­flex­ibil­ity in our hips and groins. [...]
Very important with any sit­ting or stand­ing med­i­ta­tion pos­ture is to keep the spine straight in order to allow an easy and un­re­strict­ed flow of air in and out of the lungs. Much of the rest is of sec­ond­ary in­ter­est, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple with bodi­ly prob­lems. A few sit­ting med­i­ta­tion pos­ture examples are given below.

Cross-legged sitting postures

  • Taylor's squat
  • Burmese style (lower legs one in front, not on top of each other)
  • ¼ Lotus (one foot is resting on the op­po­site lower leg)
  • ½ Lotus (one foot is resting on the op­po­site thigh)
  • Full Lotus (both feet are resting on op­po­site thighs)

Other sit­ting pos­tures

  • Japanese sitting (on or between the heels)
  • Kneeling bench (me­di­ta­tion chair)
  • Mermaid posture (both legs to one side of the body)
  • Chair (without leaning against the back­rest)

Burmese style
Burmese style
Half Lotus Kneeling bench
Half LotusKneeling bench
Pay attention to:
  • Legs and feet
  • Buttocks (use cushion, sit at the front edge, tilt the cush­ions for­ward to­wards the feet)
  • Knees (below the hips and on the mat if pos­si­ble)
  • Back (straight, vertebrae like a staple of coins)
  • Shoulders (relaxed and slightly rolled back)
  • Arms and hands (hands rest on the knees or in the lap about two inch­es under­neath the navel, palms fac­ing up, wrists touch­ing the thighs. Arms not too close to the body. Allow some space be­tween elbows and body, this is more re­laxed and cooler as well. There are no mu­dras in The­ra­va­da Bud­dhism). Ex­per­i­ment a little.

  • Neck (straight and relaxed)
  • Head (may slightly drop forward)
    • Mouth closed, lips are gently touch­ing each other, tongue slight­ly pressed against the up­per palate and the tip against the back side of the front teeth
    • Eyes (closed or slightly open, when open gaz­ing along the nose at the floor)
  • Breathing (abdomen and chest, long, deep and forced at the begin­ning but not too long at a time)
  • Clothes (comfortable, not tight, no thick ma­te­ri­al, no re­stric­tion of blood flow or pres­sure on nerves, loosen belt)

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2. Me­di­ta­tion techniques
2.1 Concentration me­di­ta­tion
Buddhism acknowledges 40 dif­ferent med­ita­tion ob­jects like col­ored disks or dif­fer­ent parts of the body which in­cludes the breath.

The aim of concentration med­i­ta­tion is to keep the at­ten­tion on this med­i­ta­tion ob­ject only (or as much as pos­sible).
I’m familiar with the fre­quent­ly used breath­ing pro­cess as med­ita­tion ob­ject and de­scribe the basic tech­nique here.

The breath is just one pos­sible med­ita­tion ob­ject. It has sev­er­al ad­van­tages, the main one may be its avail­abili­ty; we can use it any time any­where with­out the need for extra prep­a­ra­tions.

 

Meditator-concentration We want to be aware of the sen­sa­tions the breath causes along its way in our body. At first we let the breath­ing go com­fort­ably and nat­u­ral­ly with­out in­flu­enc­ing it. When we in­hale the air en­ters the nose. We can be aware of this at some point at the in­ner skin of the nose, the nos­trils or the up­per lip. If you have dif­fi­cul­ties to find the point of touch, you may breathe force­ful­ly for a couple of breaths. Then the air travels along the upper palate and the throat into our lungs (which is dif­fi­cult to be aware of) and we will notice that our chest widens and the belly rises. Then there is a gap be­tween in- and ex­ha­la­tion and when we start ex­hal­ing, we are aware of the ab­do­men sink­ing back, the chest de­flat­ing and then we will notice the sen­sa­tion the air­flow causes at our nose. Again there is a gap between ex- and in­ha­la­tion and then the next in­ha­la­tion will begin and so on and so on. If you are not fa­mil­iar with ab­dom­inal breath­ing or your belly will not move at all, be aware of the move­ment of your chest in­stead. This tech­nique is called ‘fol­low­ing’ the breath.

Of course it is pos­sible to stay at the nose or at the ab­do­men (chest) all the time dur­ing each in- and ex­ha­la­tion, ac­tu­al­ly stay­ing at the nose all the time is a rec­om­mend­ed tech­nique for more ex­pe­ri­enced medi­ta­tors, but by in­i­tial­ly ‘fol­low­ing’ the breath, it is easier to stay with the breath­ing with­out the mind drift­ing away fre­quent­ly.

That’s it for the start – this is the basic tech­nique, noth­ing more to do. We con­cen­trate on our breath­ing, want to be mind­ful of it con­tin­u­ally, breath after breath; the breath is our med­i­ta­tion object.

We start with being mind­ful of one breath, one in-breath and then one out-breath, and then of the next in-breath and so on. In due course your con­cen­tra­tion will grow and we may be able to in­crease the time we can focus on the breath. If the mind wan­ders away, we gent­ly, without judg­ing or con­demn­ing our­selves, with­out regar­ding us as hope­less med­i­ta­tors, will bring it back to the breath, again and again. Our aim is to notice quicker and quicker when we’ve lost our med­i­ta­tion ob­ject and then gent­ly bring the mind back to the breath as soon as we notice that we’ve gone astray. [...]

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2.2 Insight or vipassana med­i­ta­tion
It is generally accepted that a certain amount of con­cen­tra­tion is help­ful before start­ing with in­sight med­i­ta­tion.

During con­cen­tra­tion med­i­ta­tion we’ve tried to focus on one ob­ject only, on our breath­ing, have tried to ex­clude eve­ry­thing else that we’ve become aware of, have treated every­thing else as dis­trac­tions. In vi­pas­sana or in­sight med­i­ta­tion we now open up to every­thing that at­tracts our at­ten­tion, that is hap­pen­ing in and to our body and mind. We don’t try to exclude other expe­ri­ences any­more.

The idea is to open up to every­thing and see the three char­ac­ter­is­tics of life:
  • Impermanence
  • Unsatisfactoriness
  • Voidness of self
in eve­ry­thing (except Nibbana). Our main focus should be on see­ing, better ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, imper­ma­nence eve­ry­where, be­cause that is the easiest to see of these three char­ac­ter­is­tics and real­iz­ing the other two char­ac­ter­is­tics will fol­low natu­ral­ly out of real­iz­ing imper­ma­nence.

 

Meditator-insight Why are we look­ing for im­per­ma­nence, and where ex­act­ly should we look for it? We are look­ing for im­per­ma­nence to al­low the mind to let go of all the things it is chas­ing after because this con­stant­ly chas­ing after things, cling­ing to them, is what causes our prob­lems. In­tel­lec­tu­ally this con­cept of im­per­ma­nence isn’t dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, we know it al­ready, but the mind is un­able to take the nec­es­sary steps out of mis­er­y un­less it real­ly has ex­pe­ri­enced im­per­ma­nence.

What we are looking for is to ex­pe­ri­ence im­per­ma­nence and we don’t have to go far to do so. We will look for im­per­ma­nence in our body, feel­ings, per­cep­tions, in our think­ing and con­scious­ness. [...]

So in vipassana me­di­ta­tion we stay with every­thing that attracts our at­ten­tion for as long as this ex­pe­ri­ence lasts (e.g. the noise of a pass­ing car on the street) or un­til another ex­pe­ri­ence be­comes strong­er (draws our at­ten­tion to­wards it) than the pre­vi­ous one.
We don’t re­gard other ex­pe­ri­ences than the breath as dis­trac­tions; we don’t go back to the breath as in con­cen­tra­tion med­i­ta­tion. [...]

Wherever we pay attention to, we will see and ex­pe­ri­ence im­per­ma­nence and by do­ing this we will rec­og­nize the in­her­ent un­sat­is­fac­tory na­ture of every­thing we know. How can some­thing be gen­u­ine ful­fil­ling if it does not last, if we ex­pe­ri­ence it only tem­po­rary be­fore leav­ing us with a sense of lack or loss? Final­ly the mind will realize: Wher­ever I pay at­ten­tion to, noth­ing lasts, every­thing fades away. So why run after things, why put so much effort into chas­ing after pleas­ur­able ex­pe­ri­ences or run away from dis­agree­able ones? They are im­per­ma­nent any­way. Noth­ing is real­ly worth chas­ing after, it makes no sense to cling to things or events be­cause they will not last, they will fade away. The pleas­ure I get from them al­ready car­ries its dis­in­te­gra­tion - our at­tach­ments begin to fade away, our prob­lems will di­min­ish ac­cord­ingly.

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2.3  Loving kindness me­di­ta­tion
Meditator-lk The purpose of doing lov­ing kind­ness med­i­ta­tion is to de­vel­op friend­li­ness and wish­es of well­being to­wards all sen­tient be­ings, in­clud­ing your­self. It is the method of choice to les­sen an­i­mos­ity and anger; the sense of self, selfish­ness will de­crease. It pro­motes tol­er­ance, pa­tience, grat­i­tude and a for­giving heart. Usu­al­ly it is prac­tised to­gether with de­vel­op­ing com­pas­sion and sym­pa­thet­ic joy. Lov­ing kind­ness me­di­ta­tion has noth­ing to do with that sen­ti­men­tal “I love you all and every­body is just won­der­ful”, but it sees very clearly the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects of one­self and others. It brings about pos­i­tive at­ti­tu­di­nal changes as it sys­tem­at­ical­ly de­vel­ops the quali­ty of lov­ing accep­tance.

Loving kind­ness med­i­ta­tion is done by focus­ing on a per­son or a group of per­sons, re­flect­ing on their qual­i­ties and send­ing good will, sympathy and friend­li­ness to them. In the Bud­dhist scrip­tures there is an order of per­sons given one may fol­low when prac­tis­ing this kind of med­i­ta­tion: [...]

The favorite person to start with is you your­self be­cause only when you are at peace with your­self will you be able to de­vel­op friend­li­ness and lov­ing kind­ness to­wards oth­ers. Then sys­tem­at­ical­ly send­ing lov­ing kind­ness from one type of per­son to the other in the above given order will have the effect of break­ing down bar­ri­ers be­tween your­self and the other four types of people.

There are count­less var­i­a­tions of do­ing lov­ing kind­ness med­i­ta­tion, no fixed forms or phrases, and of course, there are the tra­di­tion­al ways of prac­tis­ing it as well. So what will be intro­duced here is just one way of do­ing it. For those with keen inter­est in this kind of med­i­ta­tion I recom­mend the already men­tioned book by Sharon Salz­berg: Lov­ing Kind­ness. The rev­o­lu­tion­ary art of hap­pi­ness. Shambala, Boston & London 1997.

 

We start with finding a com­fort­able medi­ta­tive pos­ture. We’ll close our eyes and focus our at­ten­tion on the breath for some time to become calm and con­cen­trated. [60sec.]

In the beginning of this prac­tice some people might have dif­fi­cul­ties in de­vel­op­ing the feel­ing of lov­ing kind­ness, to ex­pe­ri­ence the actual emo­tion of lov­ing kind­ness. As a pre­lim­i­nary ex­er­cise try to imag­ine a young pet, a little dog or cat as it is play­ing in its clum­sy ways or try to imag­ine a baby or little child as it is smil­ing at you. No­body would do any harm to these lit­tle be­ings, there is only care and well-wish­ing. The emo­tion that nor­mal­ly now arises in your mind is the feel­ing of lov­ing kind­ness we are look­ing for.

Now imagine the kindly shining sun that ra­di­ates its en­er­gy, both rays of light and warmth towards all things, living or non­living, to all human be­ings of all races and re­li­gi­ons in all parts of the world with­out pref­er­ence or pre­judice. [30 to 60sec.]

Now imagine yourself as this love­ly shin­ing sun with all lov­ing kind­ness as its en­er­gy and start ra­di­at­ing the lov­ing kind­ness as the sun does with its rays of light and warmth. [30 to 60sec.]

To yourself (not easy for some)
Now bring up an image of your­self that you can recall best.
Try to see yourself smiling at you. [30 to 60 sec.]

Now slowly repeat these words in your mind:
  • May I be happy and well.
  • May I be far away from troubles and dangers.
  • May I live happily in peace.
Before you repeat the lov­ing kind­ness phrases (May I be ...) you can reflect on your life in order for lov­ing kind­ness to arise more easily: [...]

Some common phrases used in lov­ing kind­ness med­i­ta­tion: Choose which­ever you find ap­pro­pri­ate, invent your own phras­es. Three or four phras­es are enough, no need to use all of them any time.
  • May ... be happy and well.  ( ... = I or you or, he, she, they, we)
  • May ... be safe and warm.
  • May ... be far away from trou­bles and dan­gers.
  • May ... not be parted from the good for­tune ... have at­tained.
  • May ... live (exist) happily in peace.
  • May ... have mental happiness.
  • May ... have bodily well-being.
  • May ... be able to let go of anger, fear, wor­ry and ig­no­rance.
  • May ... be open to life.
  • May ... be free from all suf­fer­ing.
To a respected person
Now bring up an image of one of your teach­ers or of a per­son you’ve learned from or of some­body who is or was be­nev­o­lent to you. [30 to 60 sec.]
  • May you ...
To our parents (can be difficult for some)
  • May you ...
To somebody who is dear to us
  • May you ...
To people who gave us some dif­fi­cul­ties (best not to start with your great­est enemy)

Reflections:
  • This person is struggling for life as I do. (Use his/­her name in­stead of "per­son").
  • This person makes mistakes as I do.
  • He/she has to deal with his/­her anger, fear un­cer­tain­ties, wrong views as I have to.
  • By following his/her way of life as I’m fol­low­ing my way of life, he/­she has given me another per­spec­tive of life to learn.
  • He/she has shown me some of my weak points so that I can im­prove my­self.
I will forgive him/her as other people have for­given me and ra­di­ate my lov­ing kind­ness to him/­her.
  • May you ...
To all beings
Bring your attention back to your­self. Feel your heart filled with lov­ing kind­ness, com­passion and sym­pa­thet­ic joy. [30 to 60 sec.]
Now extend your lov­ing kind­ness to all human be­ings of all races and re­li­gi­ons with­out prejudice.

Extend your lov­ing kind­ness further to all animals, plants,... Then slowly repeat these words in your mind:
  • May you ...

Other possible receivers of our lov­ing kind­ness may be peo­ple with dif­fi­cul­ties and/­or suf­fer­ing like victims of nat­u­ral ca­tas­tro­phes or wars, peo­ple in jail or with diseases...

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