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The first thing we need to learn when we take up meditation is how to settle the mind, so we go from a state that may be scattered and agitated to one that is more settled and calm. You can find ways to do that in the Getting Started section.
Having settled the mind, a range of possibilities opens up for us in a meditation practice, and we need to choose how to engage, depending what we need need right now. His will become clearer as we become more experienced and develop a greater sense of what we are trying to do in our meditation practice in general.
What follows is a simple guide to some of the main approaches to meditation. There’s a good deal of overlap, and the various qualities support one another, but they aren’t exactly the same. Different forms of exercise all develop the body’s fitness, but they might engage different muscles or focus more on fitness or flexibility. The different kinds of meditation all develop the mind, but they use different ‘mental muscles’.
Settling the mind starts a process of becoming less distracted and more fully present, with our attention resting on an ‘object of meditation’ such as the breath. One way to engage with meditation is to continue this process by becoming increasingly absorbed. This can develop into states of very deep and joyful absorption called dhyana, and Buddhism has a very clear map of these states.
The Mindfulness of Breathing as we teach it in Triratna is particularly geared to becoming absorbed in this way. It's a classic example of samatha ('calming') meditation.
In mindfulness meditation, rather than becoming increasingly absorbed we broaden our awareness to take in the whole scope of our experience, including our bodies, thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness meditation can include walking meditation, a practice like the body scan in which our attention keeps moving through the body, or sitting with our eyes open.
In practice, there’s a good deal of overlap between absorption and mindfulness, and the Mindfulness of Breathing can support either. To become more absorbed, we need to be aware of what’s affecting us, and to be aware we need a degree of absorption.
Practices that develop loving kindness and associated qualities are an important dimension of Buddhist meditation. This also requires a degree of absorption and mindful awareness, but loving kindness, we might say, uses a different set of mental muscles.
For most people who have got going with meditation in a Buddhists setting, a balanced practice will probably include elements of absorption, mindfulness and loving kindness.
The Buddhist path leads from ethics to meditation and then wisdom, and the term for the breakthrough that leads to wisdom is ‘insight’ or vipassana. Traditionally, vipassana practices follow a thorough grounding in samatha – forms of meditation that foster calm and develop the mind.
Again, vipassana practices aren’t sharply divided from the others mentioned here. For example, in a meditation on the breath, having settled the mind, one practice involves noticing that the breath is impermanent and constantly changing. Seeing that fully is what Buddhism calls insight.