“The purpose of meditation is to achieve uninterrupted mindfulness. Mindfulness, and only mindfulness, produces Enlightenment.”
—Gunaratana in Mindfulness in Plain English
People meditate for many reasons. Some do it to lower their blood pressure; others like to see special effects with their eyes closed. Many people do it simply because it makes them feel good.
There is nothing wrong with these motives, but on this article, we are only interested in meditation methods that can help lead to enlightment.
We think all such methods have something in common: all of them are exercises in remaining aware of where your attention is pointing. In other words, they teach you to avoid getting lost in thought. When the exercise becomes automatic, permanent, and effortless, enlightenment may follow.
Note the word permanent: you are supposed to meditate all day while engaged in normal activities. If you want to get enlightened, meditation is not just something you do for half an hour while sitting on a cushion. This can’t be stressed enough: these techniques lead to enlightenment only if they become permanent states of mind. They must become habits.
People sometimes say that practicing a deliberate technique is not meditation. According to them, only an effortlessly alert and quiet state is meditation. Such assertions are confusing. Actually, both things are meditation, because the word meditation has two meanings.
The important point to understand is that meditation in the first sense (deliberate effort) is intended to lead to meditation in the second sense (an effortless state of quiet awareness). It is a two-stage process. (And it is designed to lead to a third stage, the dissolution of the ego.)
Although many types of meditation have been advocated by various schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, this page emphasizes insight methods associated with Theravada Buddhism, and the method of self-enquiry as taught by Ramana Maharshi.
The best book about the first is probably Mindfulness in Plain English, which is on our website here; the best book about the second is probably Be As You Are, which can be purchased here.
Beginning meditators may find it useful to divide meditation methods into two categories, those that stress concentration (holding onto a single thought) and those that stress mindfulness (remaining aware of what the mind is perceiving without getting lost in thought). This conceptual division is associated with Theravada Buddhism and is explained brilliantly in the book The Meditative Mind. The reason we recommend mindfulness techniques is that they automatically develop both concentration and mindfulness. This is not true for concentration techniques: they do not necessarily develop mindfulness.
When the English word “Meditation” is used in the context of Hinduism or Buddhism, as we use it here, it is a translation of the Sanskrit word “Dhyana” or its cognates in other Asian languages: “Jhan” in Pali (the language of the Buddha), “Chan” in Chinese, and “Zen” in Japanese.
This page was published on www.realization.org
