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Daily Buddhism, Meditation

Meditation Part 7: Conceptual Meditation

Meditation Part 7: Conceptual Meditation

This is the “big one” that really confuses people. When you hear things like “loving kindness” meditation, or “meditation on impermanence,” or even meditation on a koan or physical object, this is the broad category involved. The mind focuses on itself and examines itself as you work through the problem or object or subject of meditation. As you contemplate the subject, you examine your thoughts and feelings as you concentrate on all aspects of the subject.

At different times you may choose to meditate on different subjects; there’s nothing wrong with that, and it is in fact encouraged. One of the goals of meditating on a concept like this is to cut through the layers of untruth we hold about the object. With most ideas, we are taught to ‚Äúthink inside the box‚Äù or become conditioned to thinking about something in some regular way. Meditation on a concept encourages thinking differently about the subject at hand.

One famous example of this is the “meditation on the corpse.” When doing this meditation, you first envision a body being buried in the ground. You picture the dirt being shoveled in and the body being covered up. Then you picture the body in dark silence. Then you picture decay setting in, and the bugs and the worms. You picture a bare skeleton, and then picture it eventually rotting away. Finally you picture nothing being left. You meditate on this until you are calm and at peace. You realize that this will eventually be your fate as well and you accept it. There is no longer revulsion or fear, just acceptance that your life and body will change like everything else. Life is precious and worth living here and now, as you really understand how life will end. This is how you meditate on the corpse; something like meditation for loving-kindness would obviously be quite different, but the process is the same; you envision all aspects of the subject, breaking it down by stages if necessary.

There are many kinds of conceptual meditation subjects, and we’ll be covering forty of them next week.

Daily Buddhism, Meditation

The Forty Meditation Themes, Part 1

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The Forty Meditation Themes, Part 1

Last week, we talked about conceptual, or contemplative, meditation. There are forty meditation themes that have become ‚Äúclassic,‚Äù and we’ll cover those today and tomorrow. There are ten ‚Äúrecollections,‚Äù ten ‚Äúfoul objects,‚Äù ten ‚Äúkasinas‚Äù, four ‚Äúdivine abidings‚Äù, four ‚Äúformless absorptions,‚Äù one ‚Äúresolution into elements,‚Äù and one ‚Äúperception of the filthiness of food.‚Äù Don’t worry about memorizing all that. You’ll get the picture soon enough.

These meditations are to be done thoughtfully and slowly, and you would go about them much like the ‚Äúmeditation on a corpse‚Äù that we looked at last Friday. You’ll soon see that there are many different versions of meditating on corpses. Keep in mind while reading the list that buddhists aren’t especially morbid, but death is probably the biggest fear that most of us have, and death, especially in the Buddha’s time period was often an ugly business. Contemplation on some of the foulest ideas can lead to fearlessness and peace.

Ten Recollections:
1. Recollection of the virtues of the Buddha.
2. Recollection of the virtues of the Dhamma.
3. Recollection of the virtues of the Sangha.
4. Recollection of one’s own moral virtue.
5. Recollection of one’s generosity.
6. Recollection of the qualities that lead to rebirth as a heavenly being.
7. Mindfulness immersed in the body.
8. Mindfulness of death.
9. Mindfulness of breathing.
10. Recollection of the virtues of Nirvana — ultimate pleasure; unexcelled ease, free from birth, aging, illness and death.

Ten Foul Objects:
1. A rotten, bloated corpse, its body all swollen and its features distended out of shape.
2. A livid corpse, with patchy discoloration — greenish, reddish, yellowish — from the decomposition of the blood.
3. A festering corpse, oozing lymph and pus from its various orifices.
4. A corpse falling apart, the pieces scattered about, radiating their stench.
5. A corpse that various animals, such as dogs, are gnawing, or that vultures are picking at, or that crows are fighting over, pulling it apart in different directions.
6. Corpses scattered about, i.e., unclaimed bodies that have been thrown together in a pile — face up, face down, old bones and new scattered all over the place.
7. The corpse of a person violently murdered, slashed and stabbed with various weapons, covered with wounds — short, long, shallow, deep — some parts hacked so that they’re almost detached.
8. Corpse covered with blood, like the hands of a butcher, all red and raw-smelling.
9. A corpse infested with worms: long worms, short worms, black, green, and yellow worms, squeezed into the ears, eyes, and mouth; squirming and squiggling about, filling the various parts of the body like a net full of fish that has fallen open.

10. A skeleton, some of the joints already separated, others not yet, the bones — whitish, yellowish, discolored — scattered near and far all over the place.

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