Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [122]
There are actually two kinds of Buddhist meditation:
1. Concentration Meditation
A yogic practice that existed before the Buddha’s birth, concentration meditation can help the practitioner reach the highest mystic states. Although the Buddha attained states of inconceivable bliss, he did not believe this type of meditation alone would guarantee enlightenment. Right Concentration is based on relaxation and centering exercises, in which we learn to collect ourselves, focus our energy and attention, and quiet the heart-mind. It has also been shown to be extremely helpful for stress reduction, tension management, and other health-related problems.
2. Insight Meditation
Developed and taught by the Buddha, this type of meditation is often called Vipassana. It is how the practitioner develops deeper wisdom and insight into the nature of reality. Insight meditation cultivates mindfulness and awareness, bringing about spiritual realization while uprooting negative karmic conditioning and kleshas—thus bringing purity and peace of heart along with freedom of mind. Insight meditation is the path to enlightenment, and has been called the heart of Buddhist meditation.
The ideal, of course, is to unify the sharply honed edge of concentration with insight meditation in a larger, more panoramic way. In the non-dual teachings of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, it is often called the higher Vipassana or higher vision of panoramic awareness. This combination of concentration and penetrating insight is the method the Buddha was practicing when he realized ultimate truth and attained perfect liberation beneath the bodhi tree at dawn in the wilderness of northern India.
These two types of meditation show up in the different practicing schools and traditions. For example, there are two kinds of Zen sitting practice, “just sitting” and koan (conundrum-inquiry) practice. Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice includes resting the mind as well as investigating or analyzing. The common principle of understanding the distinction between concentration and insight underlies all the various schools’ practices and styles of meditation.
Meditation requires so little. All you have to do is stop doing whatever else you are doing, and just be there. You must be present to win. Just show up! Once you are accustomed to meditating, you can do it while standing, walking, lying, or even arranging flowers. The Buddha once said that there are four positions for meditation: standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. In other words, all the time.
In the beginning, meditation is a matter of focusing and calming the mind. Later it develops much more into panoramic awareness. For these many centuries, meditators have been taught to use breathing as a tool. I was taught, and I now teach others, to begin by breathing in through the nose, concentrating on the feeling sensation of air coming in through the nostrils; then breathing out through the nostrils—again while concentrating on the feeling sensation of air going out of the nostrils. Simply observe breathing, and focus on nothing else. Whatever happens—people moving, mosquitos buzzing, radios blaring, focus on nothing else. If you have a physical sensation—a cramped foot, an itch on your shoulder—just try to let it go and focus on the breathing. If you have a thought, a memory, a yearning, use your breath to give your mind a gentle tug back, and continue to focus on your breathing.
It sounds so simple, but as we try to do this, we begin to notice how unruly our minds are and how difficult it is to focus on only one thing. Adults understand that children have short attention spans. Meditation masters understand that ordinary adults have similar difficulties with concentration. However, with effort, mindfulness, and concentration, meditation will work