ON THE COVER: Painting of the famed Vipassana master Ajahn Chah meditating, by Sakula-Mary Reinard
“Go to the root of a tree or an empty place and sit down, crossing your legs and setting your back straight.” This is the instruction the Buddha gives his followers in preparation for meditation, and this is the position, depicted in countless statues and paintings, that most iconically defines the Buddha and Buddhism.
What are these people doing as they sit there meditating? What is meditation, anyway, and why is it considered a good thing to do?
The practice of meditation began very early in India, many centuries before the Buddha. He was taught concentration practices (also known as samadhi, jhana, and samatha, or calming meditation) by other teachers, and this is what you are beginning to do today when you are told to “return to the breath” when your mind has wandered off its assigned object of attention.
The Buddha continued to practice and teach these forms of mental training, but (literally: seeing into). While this practice also involves increasing one’s focus, Vipassana primarily cultivates a mental quality known as mindfulness, the ability to investigate the flow of changing experience in the mind and body with increasing clarity and non-attachment. The goal of concentration practice is to unify, calm, and steady the mind; the aim of insight practice is to accurately see the nature of what is happening inside us and around us, and thereby to gain the sort of wisdom that will bring an end to suffering.
