Types of Meditation

Zen

October 24, 2024

Meditation can take many forms (including the popular practice of mindfulness meditation), addressing a range of human needs from stabilizing our minds to fostering connection with others, to creating the conditions for deep spiritual insights. Meditation can be said to be a Buddhist specialty and, indeed, nearly all Buddhist meditation practices are based in one or both of two primary functions: calming the mind and perceiving the nature of whatever arises in it, or even at the mind itself. (We might more simply think of these functions as “resting” and “looking.”)

While meditation can be simple to do — often boiling down to sit quietly and notice what you notice — there are in fact many ways to do it, and just as many reasons why one should: it can give us fresh perspective, cultivate positive traits like good will, patience, and friendliness, help us touch in with our feelings and others’, and more. Here, Lion’s Roar shares with you all you’ll need to know to grasp meditation’s forms and how to do them.

What is Meditation?

Put simply, meditation can be defined as focusing the mind on a particular object. Most often, this is the breath, but a phrase, sound, chant, mantra, or idea (as in meditating with koans), an image in the eye or mind’s eye, or an activity might instead be employed.

Benefits of Meditation Practice

While studies are ongoing, it’s safe to say that for the greater part, those who try meditation often find they benefit in a number of ways, and those who stick with it, more so.

Reasons to pursue a meditation practice include (but are certainly not limited to):

Giving ourselves a purposeful moment to pause in our busy days;
Sharpening our attention;
Stress relief, including reducing the resting heart rate, and increasing resilience to stress overall;
Working with depression, anxiety, and anger;
Tuning in to the present moment and cultivating awareness in general;
Fostering positive emotions for ourselves and others, and reducing negative ones. (Studies have suggested, for example, that practicing mindfulness can reduce psychological bias.)

“The type of meditation matters,” postdoctoral researcher Bethany Kok and professor Tania Singer have asserted. “Each practice appears to create a distinct mental environment, the long-term consequences of which are only beginning to be explored.”

Types of Meditation Techniques

As stated, most of the many meditation techniques that come to us from Buddhism and are practiced today have one of two major thrusts behind them. There is meditation for resting and stabilizing our busy minds (known as shamatha meditation) and there is meditation for seeing into the stabilized mind and its nature, and the nature of reality itself, more clearly. The latter is known as vipassana, or Insight meditation. Generally, the stability developed in shamatha leads us into insights that follow in vipassana. But the two are sometimes grouped together as “shamatha-vipashyana,” as they can be practiced in tandem, informing and complementing one another.

Let’s look at these and other variations of meditation and why and how to do them.

Shamatha / Breath Meditation

Shamatha (pronounced SHA-muh-tah; from the Pali language, meaning peace, calmness, or tranquility) is the core “resting” meditation or “basic breath meditation” at the root of nearly all meditation championed by Buddhism, including the popular practice of mindfulness meditation. The point of shamatha practice is to learn to establish peace even amid the common occurrence of unsettling emotions and thoughts; we do this by concentrating our attention on the breath, and simply returning to this task when the mind wanders. Through resting meditation, we learn to make friends with such mental disturbances, as opposed to trying to suppress or get rid of them, and we stabilize the mind, deepening its capacity for continued meditative efforts.

Mindfulness Meditation

As indicated above, the popular practice of mindfulness meditation is essentially shamatha or basic breath meditation. The historical Buddha taught a basic meditation technique called satipatthana (sah-tee-puh-TAH-nah; Pali, meaning “the establishment of mindfulness”), in which one rests one’s attention on the breath, noticing when thoughts arise, and then returning one’s attention to the breath as often as necessary. This is more or less mindfulness meditation as it is known today, though mindfulness can be applied to all sorts of activities aside from formal meditation: cooking, parenting, creating art, drinking a cup of tea, and more. A wide variety of variations and enhancements to this basic practice exist within Buddhism’s various schools and lineages, and indeed, when speaking about meditation, satipatthana and mindfulness are sometimes used interchangeably.

Insight Meditation, or Vipassana

Through basic mindfulness/concentration/shamatha meditation, we can bring the mind to a state of calm tranquility. Then, in Insight Meditation, or Vipassana (vih-PAH-suh-nuh), that calm mind is focused on seeing the true nature of physical and mental phenomena, leading to insight or wisdom. Put simply, vipassana is seeing things as they really are.

Vipassana (in Sanskrit, vipashyana) is most associated with Theravada Buddhism, which is the dominant school of Buddhism in most of Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand).

Zazen, or Zen Meditation

Zazen is Japanese for “seated meditation,” the central practice of Zen Buddhism. Zazen might also be translated as “sitting Zen.” It is a simple yet profound meditation practice combining posture, breathing, and mental awareness, and emphasizing the process of sitting and observing rather than striving for specific outcomes.

Walking Meditation

The historical Buddha taught that we should be able to meditate whether sitting, standing, walking, or laying down and indeed, meditation teacher Leslie Booker writes, “Walking meditation is often described as meditation in motion.” It is useful as a form of meditation in itself, and can also be employed to give variety (and a stretch of the legs) to those doing periods of seated meditation. Give it a try with Booker’s guidance, here.

Meditations for Fostering Compassion & Connection

While perhaps all meditation techniques deriving from Buddhism could be said to contribute to our capacity for compassion and connection, some are especially meant to do so, and in a concentrated way. These include Metta, or loving-kindness meditation; Tonglen, or “sending and taking” meditation, and other forms of meditation that foster compassion for oneself or others.

Metta (Loving-Kindness) Meditation

Metta is a traditional Buddhist meditation used to engender a stronger sense of friendliness or “loving-kindness” toward ourselves and others. As meditation teacher Jack Kornfield writes, “one of the beautiful principles of compassion and loving-kindness practices is that we start where it works, where it’s easiest. We open our heart in the most natural way, then direct our loving-kindness little by little to the areas where it’s more difficult.” Metta accomplishes this by having us begin by internally wishing happiness, peace, and safety to someone for whom we feel very positively about, and then opening the pool of possible recipients of these wishes to those we might feel more indifferent about, those we have difficulty with, and indeed, ourselves.

Tonglen Meditation

Tonglen, or “sending and taking” meditation, is a classic Buddhist practice wherein, with each in-breath, we “take in” others’ pain. With each out-breath, we “send” them relief. It can be done both as a formal meditation practice or on the spot in a moment of need. As Pema Chödrön writes, this practice “awakens our compassion and introduces us to a far bigger view of reality,” allowing us to “use what seems like poison as medicine.”

Meditations for Compassion, Interconnection, and Gratitude for Others

Meditation offers us an opportunity to reflect on all the ways we are the beneficiaries of others’ good work, presence, and kindness, and to wish similar positive benefits upon them. Likewise, we can use our meditation time to deepen our understanding of our interconnectedness, not just with other humans but with all beings.

Self-compassion Meditation

Sometimes it’s hard to feel compassion for ourselves. A simple meditation can help you to cultivate the compassion for yourself that you need and deserve.

Hugging Meditation

“When we hug,” wrote Thich Nhat Hanh, “our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.” Which is why he invented his two-step hugging meditation.

Meditations for Working with Stress, Difficult Circumstances, and Emotions

We can easily misuse our meditation time by spending it obsessing about what seems wrong — with our meditation, our bodies, our lives, and the world. Alternatively, we can use our meditation to shine a light on that with which we’re uncomfortable and appreciate it in this new light.

Body Scan Meditation for Stress Relief

It is not uncommon in Buddhist meditation to do what’s called a body scan — allowing our mindful attention to light on all parts of our body, to help us develop awareness of our bodily sensations and relieve tensions found therein.

Meditations for Anxiety

Meditation can help us find calm, care for ourselves, and ease our anxiety in any situation.

RAIN Meditation

RAIN is an acronym that stands for Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Non-Identification — and a form of meditation in which each of these are elements. “Like the nourishment of outer rain,” writes meditation teacher Jack Kornfield, “the inner principles of RAIN can transform our difficulties.”

Related: How RAIN Can Nourish You

Buddhist Meditations for Spiritual Realization

As noted, meditation is a Buddhist specialty, and there are meditations available and appropriate for meditators of all levels of experience and interest. Indeed, some meditations have a decidedly stronger “Buddhist flavor,” with details and goals that, while still quite practical, have more pronounced elements of and connection to the spiritual aspiration and concerns of traditional Buddhism. Here is a sampling of some of these.

A Meditation to Awaken Bodhichitta

The aspiration to attain buddhahood (enlightenment) in order to benefit others is known as bodhichitta (Sanskrit, pronounced boh-dee-CHEE-tuh) and is a key motivation for Mahayana Buddhists. Here, Thubten Chodron teaches us a meditation practice to awaken bodhichitta, see that we’ve always been connected to others, and that we can open our hearts with love, compassion, and altruism.

Recognizing Clarity meditation

“Clarity is the capacity to recognize and distinguish the unlimited variety of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and appearances that continually emerge in the mind,” teaches Buddhist teacher Tsokyni Rinpoche. “It is also called luminosity.” While this idea is hardly exclusive to Buddhism, Buddhist meditation can help us begin to realize it. Here Tsokyni Rinpoche shares a meditation from the Dzogchen tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, to encourage clarity of mind.

Mahamudra Meditation

One of Buddhism’s most renowned and powerful methods for working with the mind is Mahamudra. It aims, teaches Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, “to communicate clear knowledge of the true nature of the mind. As a meditation practice, it is designed to bring about that experience swiftly and unmistakably.” Through it, we relax into the emptiness, clarity, and awareness of ever-present buddha wisdom. Learn how to do Mahamudra.

Cultivating Compassion via Chenrezig Visualization

When you view yourself as the bodhisattva Chenrezig (a.k.a. Avalokiteshvara), teaches Lama Döndrup Drölma, you experience your true nature. Read her step-by-step instructions for Chenrezig practice.

Green Tara Meditation

A fully enlightened female buddha, Tara is the most beloved of all the female enlightened beings in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon. Meditating on her, says Lama Palden Drolma, can awaken us to our own buddhanature, the luminous nature of mind.

Meditations on Buddhanature

Four Buddhist teachers — Margarita Loinaz, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Lama Palden Drolma, and the late Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche share concise instructions for meditations that help us to recognize the luminous nature of mind.

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