Meditation is the heart of Buddhist way of life. It basically helps a person to attain a higher level of consciousness and to keep away negative mental state or `delusion`. Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that develop mindfulness, concentration, tranquility and insight.
Early Forms of Buddhist Meditation : Buddhist meditation focuses a lot on `Samatha`, a pre-Buddhist Yogic form, which Buddha practiced extensively. Samatha is calm abiding or peacefulness. It is the development of tranquility that is a prerequisite to any further development.
Lord Buddha also incorporated some other forms to Samatha. `Vipashyana` is a clear seeing or special insight, which involves intuitive cognition of suffering and impermanence.
 Only after Samatha and Vipashyana is attained, one can move towards more complicated form of meditation like `Samadhi` or one-pointed meditation. It involves intense focusing or consciousness. Samadhi brings about four `Dhyanas` or absorptions. Buddha refers to Samadhi and the Dhyanas in the eight step of eight-folded part. Dhyana is referred as Jhana in Pali, Ch`an in Chinese, Son in Korean and `Zen` in Japanese, which according to those cultures becomes synonymous with meditation.
Types of Buddhist Meditation : There are significant diversity in Budhhist meditation in different Buddhist schools. For example, in the `Theravada` tradition alone, there are over fifty methods for developing mindfulness and forty for developing concentration, while the Tibetan culture has thousands of visualization meditations.
The Buddhist Meditation types, be it classical or be it contemporary are always school specific. Only a few teachers attempt to synthesize and categorize practices from multiple Buddhist traditions. The most popular types of Buddhist Meditation follows the classification of Western Buddhist order Meditation teacher Kamalashila. Kamalashila represents `Five basic methods` as a `Traditional set of meditations, each one an antidote to one of the five principal obstructions to Enlightenment`. These are-
1. Mindfulness of Breathing (Anapanasati)
2. Metta Bhavana (including all four Brahma-Viharas)
3. Contemplation of Impermanence
4. Six Element Practice (earth, water, fire, air, space, consciousness)
5. Contemplation of Conditionality
The Contemplation of impermanence include-
" Contemplation of a decomposing corpse
" Reflection on death
" Reflection on the Tibetan Book of the Dead`s `Root Verses
" Contemplation of mental states and external objects
In addition, Kamalashila added three other meditations as most important viz Visualization, Shikantaza or just sitting and Walking Meditation. The Visualization includes visualization of Bodhisattvas, `Kasina` meditations, recollection of the Buddha, visualization of six-element Stupa.
The whole theme of Kamalashila`s guide and various methods of meditation either fall under Samatha or Vipashyana. In such a scheme Kamalashila identifies Anapanasati and Metta Bhavana as samatha meditations. The Vipashyana meditations include contemplation on impermanence, six-element practice and contemplation of conditionality. Some other meditation type like Tibetan Visualization have elements of both Samatha and Vipashyana.
Kamalashila`s method of classification also have some limitations, such as-
" Breath meditation can be considered to carry the features of Samatha as well as Vipashyana.
" Auditory meditation or Mantras are omitted.
" The omission of visualization from the five basic methods.
However, Kamalashila`s classification gives a useful Buddhist meditation guide.
A more advanced form of meditation is `Shikantaza` or emptiness of mind. In practicing shikantaza, one follows nothing at all. There is no concentration, only quiet mindfulness. In this method, one holds the mind as if it is ready for things to happen, but doesn`t allow the mind to become attach with anything. Things like smell, sound, aches, thoughts, images just drift in and out like clouds sailing in light breeze.
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