Meditation (Zen)

Buddhism is a path of practice and spiritual development, providing a person with insight into the true nature of life. Buddhist practices, meditation, serve as the means of changing oneself, in order to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness, and wisdom. Meditation is at the heart of the Buddhist way of life. It basically helps one in to attain a higher level of consciousness. First learn to identify the negative mental state known as 'delusion', and then develop peaceful and positive mental state or 'virtuous mind'.

Meditation or Zen is a method to develop the mind which emphasis on concentration, focus, clarity, calmness, and insight. It deals particularly with the training of the mind, which is the most important composite of the entire human entity. Because mind is the forerunner and prime source of all actions, physical, verbal, or mental, it needs to be properly cultivated and developed.

The other meaning of Meditation is mindfulness and wisdom in what we do, speak, and think; it means greater awareness and higher ability in self-control. It is not, therefore, an irrelevant other-worldly practice meant only for monks and ascetics, but is one of the most valuable practical skills there are for enhancing fulfillment in everyday life.

Meditation (Zen) practice is about to recognize the corrupt mind for what it is. It’s about seeing what’s going on in each moment without grasping it, without blocking it. It’s seeing the folly and misery of the corrupt mind, seeing that trying to take control only creates pain. This seeing is itself an expression of a pure mind.

We’re always dealing with now, with what is actually taking place. Thus, in Zen practice, our focus is on what’s going on in our mind now. Misery of any kind-whether it’s fear, anger, loneliness, sadness, or grief-has grasping in it. To the extent that we learn to recognize this, we can let it go, let it wash through.

This is the practice of meditation. As we sit in meditation, thoughts keep coming up. Sometimes they can be disturbing. Sometimes they’re wonderful. But they keep coming. And sometimes we grab on to them.

To overcome delusions we are generally familiar with the virtuous mind. Later, we have to maintain the virtuous minds we have developed and use our wisdom to solve the problems of daily life. As our mind becomes more positive, our actions become more constructive and our experience of life becomes more satisfying and beneficial to oneself and others.

Anyone can learn basic meditation techniques and experience great benefits. However, the progress beyond basic meditation requires faith in the Three Jewels -Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It is usually seen that this develops naturally as people experience the benefits of their meditation practice.

The Buddha had taught many different types of meditation, each designed to overcome a particular problem or to develop a particular psychological state. But the two most common and useful types of meditation are Mindfulness of Breathing (anapana sati) and Loving Kindness Meditation (metta bhavana).

1. The Mindfulness of breath Meditation:

Instead of "body is sweeping”, or after a preliminary period of this practice, mindfulness can be developed through attention on the breath.

First, follow the sensation of our ordinary breath as it flows in through the nostrils and fills the chest and abdomen. Then try maintaining our attention at one point, either at the diaphragm or -a more refined location -at the nostrils. Breath has a tranquilizing quality, steady and relaxing if we don't force it; this is helped by an upright posture. Our mind may wander, but keep patiently returning to the breath.

It is not necessary to develop concentration to the point of excluding everything else except the breath. Rather than to create a trance, the purpose here is to allow us to notice the workings of the mind, and to bring a measure of peaceful clarity into it. The entire process -gathering our attention, noticing the breath, noticing that the mind has wandered, and re-establishing our attention develops mindfulness, patience and insightful understanding. So we don't be put off by apparent "failure" -simply begin again. Continuing in this way allows the mind eventually to calm down.

If we get very restless or agitated, just relax. Practice being at peace with ourselves, listening to -without necessarily believing in -the voices of the mind.

If we feel drowsy, then put more care and attention into our body and posture. Refining our attention or pursuing tranquility at such times will only make matters worse!

2. Loving-kindness meditation:

Loving-kindness meditation can be brought in to support the practice of 'bare attention' to help keep the mind open and sweet. It provides the essential balance to support our insight meditation practice.

It is a fact of life that many people are troubled by difficult emotional states in the pressured societies we live in, but do little in terms of developing skills to deal with them. Yet even when the mind goes sour it is within most people's capacity to arouse positive feelings to sweeten it. Loving-kindness is a meditation practice taught by the Buddha to develop the mental habit of selfless or altruistic love. In the Dhammapada can be found the saying: "Hatred cannot solve by Hatred but by Love” to dissipate with thoughts based on loving-kindness.

Loving-kindness is a meditation practice, which brings about positive attitudinal changes as it systematically develops the quality of 'loving-acceptance'. It acts, as it were, as a form of self-psychotherapy, a way of healing the troubled mind to free it from its pain and confusion. Of all Buddhist meditations, lovingkindness has the immediate benefit of sweetening and changing old habituated negative patterns of mind.

In our daily lives we are engaged in manifold activities. When we are less busy we may try to get whatever deep concentration we can reach. At other times when we meet with people or animals, we can mentally have thoughts of metta. These thoughts of metta, even though they may be only thoughts for a start, play a very important part. We know people disagree even at the most insignificant things. Many strained relations and enmities can be dissolved if we can just forgive and overlook the past and start anew. Very often it may be just “tension in the air” which we cannot pinpoint. Metta can create the mental atmosphere conducive to goodwill as well as spark off whatever good speech and actions that follows.

So besides mental action, we also have to express it in words or others forms of communications to others. Speaking gentlely, with kindness, truthfulness and for the benefit of others are elements of right speech.

Actions of metta are actions such as lending help materially or spiritually, giving medical and nursing attention to the elderly or kindness for animals, courtesy, hospitality, etc.

Therefore metta in daily life is more active and expressive in nature. In families and offices where there is frequent metta shown, it becomes a house or dwelling that is truly happy.

The practice of loving kindness (metta) involves the continual intention to open our hearts-both to ourselves and to others-in all situations. As a practice, it provides the warmth, caring, kindness, compassion, and joy that balance with the development of mindfulness and wisdom-balance that is particularly important for those connecting spiritual and social transformation.

To put it into its context, Loving-kindness is the first of a series of meditations that produce four qualities of love: Friendliness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Appreciative Joy (mudita) and Equanimity (upekkha). The quality of 'friendliness' is expressed as warmth that reaches out and embraces others. When loving-kindness practice matures it naturally overflows into compassion, as one empathises with other people's difficulties; on the other hand one needs to be wary of pity, as its near enemy, as it merely mimics the quality of concern without empathy. The positive expression of empathy is an appreciation of other people's good qualities or good fortune, or appreciative joy, rather than feelings of jealousy towards them. This series of meditations comes to maturity as 'on-looking equanimity'. This 'engaged equanimity' must be cultivated within the context of this series of meditations, or there is a risk of it manifesting as its near enemy, indifference or aloofness. So, ultimately you remain kindly disposed and caring toward everybody with an equal spread of loving feelings and acceptance in all situations and relationships.

Cultivating goodwill (metta) gives another dimension to the practice of Insight. Meditation naturally teaches patience and tolerance or at least it shows the importance of these qualities. So one may well wish to develop a friendlier and caring attitude towards oneself and other people. In meditation, one can cultivate goodwill very realistically.

Focus attention on the breath, which we will now be using as the means of spreading kindness and goodwill. Begin with yourself, with our body. Visualize the breath as a light, or see our awareness as being a warm ray and gradually sweep it over our body. Lightly focus our attention on the centre of the chest, around the heart region. As we breath in, direct patient kindness towards ourselves, perhaps with the thought, "May I be well", or "Peace". As you breathe out, let the mood of that thought, or the awareness of light, spread outwards from the heart, through the body, through the mind and beyond us. "May others be well".

If we are experiencing negative states of mind, breathe in the qualities of tolerance and forgiveness. Visualizing the breath as having a healing colour may be helpful. On the out-breath, let go of any stress, worry or negativity, and extend the sense of release through the body, the mind, and beyond, as before.

This practice can form all or part of a period of meditation -we have to judge for ourselves what is appropriate. The calming effect of meditating with a kind attitude is good for beginning a sitting but there will no doubt be times to use this approach for long periods, to go deeply into the heart.

Always begin with what we are aware of, even if it seems trivial or confused. Let our mind rest calmly on that-whether it's boredom, an aching knee, or the frustration of not feeling particularly kindly. Allow these to be; practice being at peace with them. Recognize and gently put aside any tendencies towards laziness, doubt or guilt.

Peacefulness can develop into a very nourishing kindness towards ourselves, if we first of all accept the presence of what we dislike. Keep the attention steady, and open the heart to whatever you experience. This does not imply the approval of negative states, but allows them a space wherein they can come and go.

Generating goodwill toward the world beyond ourselves follows much the same pattern. A simple way to spread kindness is to work in stages. Start with ourselves, joining the sense of loving acceptance to the movement of the breath. "May I be well." Then, reflect on people we love and respect, and wish them well, one by one. Move on to friendly acquaintances, then to those towards whom we feel indifferent. "May they be well." Finally, bring to mind those people we fear or dislike, and continue to send out wishes of goodwill.

This meditation can expand, in a movement of compassion, to include all people in the world, in their many circumstances. And remember, we don't have to feel that we love everyone in order to wish them well!

Kindness and compassion originate from the same source of good will, and they broaden the mind beyond the purely personal perspective. If we're not always trying to make things go the way we want them to: if we're more accepting and receptive to ourselves and others as they are, compassion arises by itself. Compassion is the natural sensitivity of the heart.

After that, some integration, or meditation in action. Once our mindfulness has been awakened by our meditation, our mind is calm and our perception a little more coherent. Then, whatever we do, we are present, right there. As in the famous Zen master's saying: "When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep". Whatever we do, we are fully present in the act. Even washing dishes, if it is done onepointedly, can be very energizing, freeing, cleansing. We are more peaceful, so we are more "we". We assume the "Universal We”

One of the fundamental points of the spiritual journey is to persevere along the path. Though one's meditation may be good one day and not so good the next, like changes in scenery, essentially it is not the experiences, good or bad which count so much, but rather that when we persevere, the real practice rubs off on us and comes through both good and bad. Good and bad are simply apparitions, just as there may be good or bad weather, yet the sky is always unchanging. If we persevere and have that sky like attitude of spaciousness, without being perturbed by emotions and experiences, we will develop stability and the real profoundness of meditation will take effect. We will find that gradually and almost unnoticed, our attitude begins to change. We do not hold on to things as solidly as before, or grasp at them so strongly, and though crisis will still happen, we can handle them a bit better with more humor and ease. We will even be able to laugh at difficulties a little, since there is more space between us and them, and we are freer of ourselves. Things become less solid, slightly ridiculous, and we become more lighthearted.

Purpose of Meditation is not to create a system of beliefs, but rather to give guidance on how to see clearly into the nature of the mind. In this way one gains first-hand understanding of the way things are, without reliance on opinions or theories -a direct experience, which has its own vitality. It also gives rise to the sense of deep calm that comes from knowing something for oneself beyond any doubt.

The term Meditation refers to practices for the mind that develop calm through sustained attention and insight through reflection. A fundamental technique for sustaining attention is focusing awareness on the body; traditionally, this is practiced while sitting or walking.

Focusing the mind on the body can be readily accomplished while sitting. We need to find a time and a place which affords us calm and freedom from disturbance. A quite room with not much in it to distract the mind is ideal. Timing is also important. It is not especially productive to meditate when we have something else to do or when we're pressed for time. It's better to set aside a period -say in the early morning or in the evening after work-when we can really give our full attention to the practice.

Begin with fifteen minutes or so. Practice sincerely with the limitations of time and available energy, and avoid becoming mechanical about the routine. Meditation practice, supported by genuine willingness to investigate and make peace with oneself, will develop naturally in terms of duration and skill.