Discussing meditation techniques is one of the latest topics I want to cover. Its too easy to carried away with the hussle and bussle of everyday life.. stop the rat race cart for a second and take a break of even take a long lasting interest in mediation.
Here is a really good article on meditation…specifically the Samatha kind:
1. What is Concentration (Samatha) Meditation?
Meditation by concentrating the mind is known as Samatha (Serenity) or Concentraion Meditation which removes the Five Hindrances and prepares the mind for Insight or Vipassana Meditation. The Five Hindrances are attachment to sensual desire, ill-will, inactivity or sleepiness, anxiety or restlessness, and doubt.
2. What is the purpose of Concentration Meditation?
Concentration Meditation combines developing inner peace and concentration together. For most new meditators in today’s hectic world, the immediate objective is to cope with stress and develop personal serenity. Concentration provides this immediately. But, the Buddhist objective is higher. It is raising consciousness to more refined planes through purifying the mind.
3. What should we expect to achieve from it?
Direct benefits that can be anticipated include improved mental and physical health and enhanced concentration. The meditator develops distancing from the passions, cravings and delusional attachments which spin us around in circles. This results in a more peacefully happy life and indirectly fosters harmony in the family, the society, and the world.
Beyond these external consequences, Concentration Meditation develops the mental tools for effective, objective observation of nature for use in Vipassana Insight Meditation to develop Right Wisdom. In Vipassana, the meditator becomes able to penetrate the Four Noble Truths to see clearly and compare objectively the compound, impermanent, unsatisfactory suffering, and hollow emptiness of this world with the non-compound, eternal, peacefully happy, and ultimately meaningful essence of Nibbana or Nirvana.
4. What should we contemplate?
Most broadly, Concentration Meditation is mental training. Lord Buddha listed nine effective subjects for Concentration Meditation. The first four are the key Foundations of Mindfulness – the body, feelings, mind and mental objects. We shall review each of these in detail. The next three are contemplation of old age, sickness, and death. Eighth is meditation that we are all ultimately destined to be separated from what we love, even from our own self. Finally, the ninth theme is that we are all inevitably subject to reap the karmic consequences of our own actions. This is a natural law of cause and effect. There is no way out. Only conscientious good behavior can save us.
5. What should we do?
Concentration covers three of the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path: (1) Right Effort, (2) Right Mindfulness, and (3) Right Concentration.
1. Right Effort (Samma-vayama)
The first factor, Right Effort, is defined as four exertions:
- The first effort is to prevent the arising of new bad habits, that is, bad actions, speech or thought. Examples of bad actions are intentionally killing living beings, stealing or cheating, sexual misconduct, wrong livelihood, addiction to intoxicants, gambling, and excessive hedonism. Examples of bad speech are lying, backbiting, coarse language and gossiping. Examples of bad thoughts include evil intentions, greed, lust, hot temperedness, hatred, and deluded thinking or holding erroneous beliefs.
- The second effort is the exertion to abandon bad habits, such as these, which have already arisen.
- The third effort is to develop new good habits, that is good actions, speech, and thoughts. Good actions are the opposites of bad actions. For example, treating other beings with sympathy and mercy, generous benevolence, loyalty to one’s spouse, right occupation, clear-headed concentration, and alert awareness of what is good and bad.
- The fourth effort is to maintain good habits which have already arisen, such as those just mentioned.
2. Right Mindfulness (Samma-sati)
The second factor of the Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness, is defined as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: successive inner perception (anupassana) and contemplation of body, feelings, mentality, and dhamma. The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness (the Mahasatipatthana Sutta in the Digha Nikaya) is Lord Buddha’s main sermon on meditation.
It lists six methods for mindfulness of the body: Mindfulness of breathing, posture, and actions; Contemplation of body parts as repulsive and as just elements – water, earth, fire or wind; and, nine meditations on corpses, considering that this body too, will become like that. The meditator continues contemplating the body-in-the-body both internally and externally along with the arising and vanishing of phenomena in the body. He remains detached, being aware that there is body, without any clinging.
Similarly, the meditator perceives and contemplates the feelings-in-the-feelings as pleasant, painful or neutral, without any clinging.
Then, the meditator perceives and contemplates the mind-in-the-mind as lustful, hateful, deluded, distracted, developed, unsurpassed, concentrated, liberated, or the opposites of these states, without any clinging.
Finally, the meditator perceives and contemplates the dhamma-in-the-dhamma, specifically: (1) the Five Hindrances; (2) the Five Aggregates; (3) the Six Sense Organs and their sense-objects; (4) the Seven Factors of Enlightenment; and (5) the Four Noble Truths. Lord Buddha concludes, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are the one way street to the purification of beings for overcoming sorrow and distress and gaining the right path for the realization of Nirvana.
3. Right Concentration (Samma-samadhi)
Finally, Right Concentration or Samma-samadhi is defined as developing the Four Rupa-jhanas or States of Absorption, going deeper and deeper inside to purify the mind from the Five Hindrances, which obscure clear-sightedness, to transform the normal human senses into powerful instruments of observation, enabling the necessary and sufficient, reliable and valid collection of the relevant data required for direct, lucid comprehension of the true nature of reality. Prince Siddhattha intuitively meditated to the First Jhana when he was only seven years old. Later, when he recognized the futility of seeking enlightenment through self-torture, this memory led him onto the correct path.
To read more on Samantha Mediation you can go here:
But I have recently that one of the best methods on meditation is by using this course which takes you through the 10 steps to follow to achieve piece and serentiy – its an interest course found in mediation for beginners. Take a look now and get relaxing and out of the rat race.
