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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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Daily Buddhism, Meditation

The Forty Meditation Themes, Part 2

The Forty Meditation Themes, Part 2

The recollections and foul objects from yesterday were pretty straightforward in their subjects. The other half of the themes are more open-ended and ambiguous. Many of the styles of meditation you hear people discussing fall into the last group. Loving-kindness and compassion meditations, for example, fall under the Four divine Abidings.

Ten Kasinas:
1. Staring at earth.
2. Staring at water.
3. Staring at fire.
4. Staring at wind.
5. Staring at white.
6. Staring at yellow.
7. Staring at red.
8. Staring at blue (or green).
9. Staring at the space in a hole or an opening.
10. Staring at bright light.

Four Divine Abidings:
1. Benevolence, friendliness, good will, love in the true sense.
2. Compassion, sympathy, pity, aspiring to find a way to be truly helpful.
3. Appreciation for the goodness of other people and for our own when we are able to help them.
4. Equanimity. When our efforts to be of help fail, we should become neutral — neither pleased nor upset by whatever it focuses on — so that it can disregard acts of thinking and evaluating, leaving only oneness and equanimity with regard to all objects and preoccupations.

Four Formless Absorptions:
1. Being absorbed in a sense of boundless emptiness and space.
2. Being absorbed in boundless consciousness, with no form or figure acting as focal point of one’s concentration.
3. Focusing exclusively on a fainter or more subtle sense of cognizance that has no limit and in which nothing appears or disappears, to the point where one almost understands it to be Nirvana.
4. Being absorbed in a feeling that occurs in the mind, that isn’t awareness exactly, but neither is it non-awareness; i.e., there is awareness, but with no thinking, no focusing of awareness on what it knows.

One resolution into elements: For example, contemplating each part of the body simply in terms of physical properties or elements.

One perception of the filthiness of food: i.e., viewing food as something repugnant and unclean — with regard to where it comes from, how it’s prepared, how it’s mixed together when it’s chewed, and where it stays in the stomach and intestines.