Buddhist Meditation - Ingraining The Four Noble Truths

Without meditation the Buddhist faith would scarcely exist. The basic tenets of both schools of Buddhist faith, Hiragana and Mayayana Buddhism, do not diverge on the importance of meditation to human experience. Meditation is crucial to the practice of all of the different Buddhist schools.

Buddhist meditation is based on a principle known as The "Four Noble Truths" These Four Noble Truths that govern Buddhist meditation practice are: 1/All life is suffering, 2/Suffering is caused by desire, 3/To eliminate suffering, eliminate desire, 4/ To eliminate desire, follow the eightfold path. The eightfold path is defined as the correct means of view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. Meditation is an indispensable tool of the eightfold path as it helps to dissolve illusions and separation emotion and ego from truth.

To remove meditation from the Buddhist's path to enlightenment would be to deny water to desert traveler. The Dhammapada, a central Buddhist text, opens with "All we are is the result of what we have thought," and this is a key element to the Buddhist meditation techniques of Samatha bhavana and Vipassana bhavana.

Samatha bhavana is the development of mental tranquility through concentration and generally begins with a close observation of the human breathing process without interference. The body is then subject to psychic phenomena, which are said to be disturbing and uncomfortable, defined by the Buddhist texts as a physical realization of the First Noble Truth. Persistence in this state is said to lead to a subsequent period of tranquility and euphoria as feelings associated with suffering begin to dissolve.

Unlike many other meditation techniques, the student is encouraged to use an object of concentration during the meditative process. Gautama Buddha, the founder of the faith, would assign objects to disciples to use as focal points during their meditative journeys. This process becomes important in more advanced stages of Buddhist meditation, where the focal point objects are used as counterbalances to help address and dissolve fears and desires.

Vipassana bhavana, or "insight meditation" is a more directly contemplative step whose purpose is to attain the realization of the three conditions of being: impermanence, suffering and non-self. The "six-element" technique is used here, this being an awareness and contemplation of the six human senses of vision, hearing, olfaction, taste, touch and thought. The overall goal here is dissolution of the ego and liberation from desire.

Unlike other pervasive forms of meditation in practice, Buddhist methods do not encourage visionary attainment through mantras (Hinduism), or a more conscious form of prayer (Christianity), choosing instead a more direct engagement with the condition of suffering in order to seek out substantive truths.

Meditation is a central guiding force at Buddhist schools around the world. A North American example is Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a liberal arts institution founded on a Buddhist perspective in 1974. The university specializes in "contemplative education", a method utilizing direct Buddhist meditative experience. Among the school's master's degree programs is a course in psychotherapy which incorporates Buddhist meditative instruction.