Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  Sometimes the ambivalence regarding the technicality of meditation is given direct expression in paradoxical statements, such as the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart’s notion of a “pathless path,”17 or the Zen Buddhist notion of a “gateless gate.”18 At other times, a strong skepticism toward meditative techniques is juxtaposed with exhortations to meditate, as when the “Platform Sūtra” presents the seventh-to eighth-century Chinese Zen master Huìnéng as claiming that he “has no techniques” (wú jì-liǎng), but in the same work exhorting his disciples to continue practicing “straight sitting” (duān-zuò, i.e., meditation) after he has passed away. In the Christian context, the paradox is clearly explicated in “The Epistle of Prayer”: “It is not possible for a man to attain perfection in this work unless these two means, or two other like them, come first. And yet perfection of this work is its suddenness, without means.”19 In modern times, Jiddu Krishnamurti has been famous for his opposition to meditation techniques (“the truth is a pathless land”), but others have interpreted his approach as a form of systematic meditative awareness training.20 A modern collection of essays on the Zen practice of shi-kan ta-za (lit. “just sit”) vacillates between insisting that the practice has no particular method and describing clearly technical elements such as attention to the lower abdomen, specific breathing practices, and a strong focus on correct bodily posture.21 The Taiwan-based Buddhist master Sheng Yen describes one of his meditation techniques as “the method of no method.”22

  One reason for this skepticism or ambivalence is the strong goal-orientation inherent in the notion of a technique. Techniques are practiced to achieve certain effects, but the active pursuit of effects may, paradoxically, make it more difficult to achieve them. The pursuit of a goal may divert the mind away from the actual practice, and it may involve a mental focus so strong that it fails to perceive realities of a more fleeting and ephemeral nature. A technical orientation may also encourage passivity, as if the transformative effects of meditation will come automatically, almost machine-like or magically, rather than involve a strong sense of agency and personal participation. It may also stand in the way of the personal devotion required in some meditative traditions, as in the Sikh practices described by Kristina Myrvold in this volume. In the Christian tradition, a reliance on techniques is sometimes seen as standing in the way of God’s grace, as in the following quotation concerning meditative prayer from Jacques Philippe’s Time for God: “St. Jane Frances de Chantal used to say, ‘The best method of prayer is not to have one, because prayer is not obtained by artifice’—by technique, we would say today—‘but by grace.’ There is no ‘method’ of praying, in the sense of a set of instructions or procedures that we merely have to apply in order to pray well” (9). In general, the technical orientation of meditation may be contrasted with the content-orientation of prayer. Both meditation and prayer may aim at achieving certain effects, but while prayer typically does so directly by means of its content, meditation typically does so indirectly, in a nonlinear way, by means of technical elements that build on universal mechanisms. For instance, prayer may aim at obtaining the forgiveness of sins by asking for it, or may try to achieve intimate contact with God through the expression of devotion, while meditation may seek to obtain its transformative effects at least partly by means of cross-cultural elements that go beyond such content, for example, by directing one’s attention to the breath, by repeating certain sound combinations, by gazing at or visualizing geometrical figures, and so on. Such mechanisms typically lie beyond the individual’s direct control, and the main effects of meditation result from the methodical practice of a technique rather than any purposeful striving. While the outcome of prayer may also lie beyond the individual’s control, it is typically conceived of as being dependent on God’s grace rather than any mechanisms inherent in the human mind or body.

  In many traditions, even technical elements are given content-oriented interpretations, as when the breath is understood as an expression of the transience of existence in certain Buddhist contexts, or as a link to cosmic energy in Daoist and Yogic contexts, or the breath of life in Christian contexts. Only with an outsider’s comparative perspective is it possible to observe the universal versal mechanisms involved in such elements, irrespective of the cultural context in which they are used.

  Scientific definitions of meditation tend to focus on its technical aspects, since this makes it more easily available for standardized measurement. One much-quoted definition emphasizes that meditation makes “use of a specific technique (clearly defined).”23 Some definitions use terms such as “[psychoactive] exercise,”24 “[mental] training,”25 and “[self-regulation/emotional and attentional regulatory] practice”26 instead of or in addition to “technique.” The technical orientation of meditation is sometimes contrasted with the content orientation of other practices by pointing out that meditation emphasizes “process rather than content,”27 while nonmeditative practices such as self-hypnosis, visualization, and psychotherapy “aim primarily at changing mental contents … such as thoughts, images, and emotions.”28 In our definition, however, meaningful content is not excluded from the notion of meditation as long as there are also technical elements.

  Individual agency is an important part of the practice orientation involved in defining meditation as a technique. Meditation is done by the practitioner, not to him or her. Our definition does not include so-called spontaneous or natural meditations occurring as inadvertent responses to a scenery or a situation, like the Buddha’s famous childhood experience of meditative bliss: “I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then—quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental qualities—I entered & remained in the first jhana [= Skt. dhyāna; usually translated as “meditation”]: rapture & pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation.”29 However, most traditions acknowledge that meditative practice always takes place in a context, and that elements of the context may be as important in triggering transformative change as the meditation technique itself, as Sarah Shaw argues for the Buddhist case in this volume. Meditation may be practiced individually or communally, and even communal meditation may involve a high degree of individual agency, nicely illustrated by the fact that monks who have been practicing meditation together for years still do not necessarily know the nature of one another’s practice.30 The degree of reliance on a teacher or master will also vary from no reliance beyond the initial instruction to so-called guided meditations, in which all stages of the practice rely on continuous instructions from a teacher or a tape recording, as in some of the Sikh practices discussed by Myrvold in this volume. The role of the master in the kōan practices discussed by Morten Schlütter is an in-between case, where in addition to the initial technical instructions the meditator is repeatedly given new kōans to ponder.

  Attention

  According to the suggested definition, meditation is based on the use of attention. In one sense, this is stating the obvious fact that all forms of meditation involve directing the attention toward a specific meditation object. The object may be a static item, such as a geometrical figure in yantra meditation, or a dynamic element, such as the ever-changing reality sought to be included in shi-kan ta-za and similar Zen practices. In either case, the technique consists in directing the attention toward this object.

  In addition to the focus of attention, meditation also involves the cultivation of the mode of attention. While many meditative traditions have elaborate discussions of what constitutes an effective meditation object, there are also traditions claiming that any external or internal object can have this function, and that the crucial difference lies in the mode of attention, the mental attitude, in how the attention is directed toward this object. In many cases, this implies the training of a one-pointed and fully absorbed, yet effortless, frame of mind. In other cases, the training involved is aimed at achi
eving an open and accepting mental attitude that includes spontaneous impulses and even distractive thoughts. Quite often a meditative attitude is seen as stimulating an element of distance or detachment from the objects of the world, in order to transcend worldly attachment and let the mind dwell in a dimension that goes beyond all things. At other times, or maybe even simultaneously, meditation is believed to foster a way of being that brings about a closer intimacy with the things of the world. In all cases, the mode of attention is of central importance, and any attempt at meditating in a mechanistic way, on autopilot, will fall outside our definition. Meditation is a form of awareness training.31

  Quite a few scientific definitions agree that meditation techniques involve the training of attention (or awareness).32 As mentioned, some of them even go to the lengths of excluding visualization techniques from the field of meditation on the grounds that they aim at changing the contents of attention rather than training the attention itself. By the same logic, they also exclude methods of “controlled breathing and body postures (yoga), or body movement and supposed energy manipulation (Tai Chi [Tài-jí] and Chi gong [Qì-gōng]).”33 In fact, this line of thinking would also leave out most forms of recitative meditation, which also involves the conscious alteration of mental content. The result would be a very narrow notion of meditation that would, for instance, exclude the visualization techniques described by Madhu Khanna, Geoffrey Samuel, and Sarah Shaw in this volume, as well as most forms of traditional Christian meditation. The fact is that the training of attention by no means excludes attempts at changing or modifying the contents of the mind. Many visualization exercises do both, and so do many body practices and recitative techniques. We shall return to a discussion of the uses of attention in the next chapter, which partly bases its classification of meditation techniques on the “focus of attention” and the “mode of attention.”

  Inner Transformation

  According to the suggested definition, meditation is practiced with the aim of achieving “inner transformation.” Traditionally, the changes involved are understood in religious or at least spiritual terms, though nothing in our definition excludes psychological, philosophical, or otherwise existential interpretations.

  In the written sources of different schools and traditions, descriptions of transformative change are typically varied and vague. In the scientific literature, there also exist only a few scattered comparative studies of long-term trajectories of meditative processes, and these are limited in scope.34 One scientific definition of meditation mentions “[mental] development,” but has little to say about the nature of such development beyond simple statements about cultivating positive emotions and reducing negative emotions.35

  I tentatively suggest the following definition: “Inner transformation consists in long-term fundamental changes affecting many aspects of the person, such as perceptual, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or behavioral patterns, eventually bringing about the anchoring of the person in more fundamental aspects of existence.” This definition allows for a wide variety of interpretations. In the monotheistic religions originating in the Middle East, such transformation usually involves getting closer to God, and the same may be true of the Sikh practice of nām simran described by Myrvold in this volume. In several Hindu schools, including the Yogic disciplines discussed by Edwin F. Bryant and the yantra and cakra practices analyzed by Khanna, the point is to realize the ultimate Self (puruṣa or ātman), which is also often equated with God (Īśvara or Brahman, or Śiva in union with Śakti). In the various Buddhist approaches, the aim is rather to become enlightened to the fundamental emptiness of the self or of all existence, though some have pointed to the similarities between the ultimate Self that Buddhism is supposed to deny and the “Buddha nature” (Ch. fó-xìng) prevalent in the meditative traditions of Tibet, as discussed by Samuel in this volume, and of East Asia, as discussed by Schlütter. In Daoism, described by Harold D. Roth, and Neo-Confucianism, described by Masaya Mabuchi, the aim is an increased proximity to the Way (Dào), which in Neo-Confucianism often has strong moralistic undertones. Modern schools of meditation often avoid the religious connotations of the traditional terminologies, though some of them imply a deeper spiritual realm to which the meditator gradually opens his or her mind. As shown by Holen’s contribution, others are more strictly scientific in their interpretation of the processes involved. In all cases, however, the point is for the person to be more permanently grounded in aspects of existence that are, in the relevant cultural context, considered to be more fundamental than his or her starting point.

  This view of inner transformation does not entail a commitment to the perennialist idea that all schools of meditation (or religion, mysticism, and so on) are at bottom attempts to reach toward the same ultimate reality, as most famously argued in the contemporary context by Robert K. C. Forman.36 In some cases, the structural and linguistic parallels that obtain across different meditative traditions may reflect actual similarities of substance, whether that substance is linked to the notion of an ineffable experience of a nonphenomenal reality, as usually argued within the perennialist discourse, or to effable and phenomenal experiences, as Matthew T. Kapstein suggests for the widespread visions of light.37 In other cases, formal and descriptive parallels between different traditions may be deceptive and may gloss over underlying differences, as has sometimes been argued regarding parallels between accounts of meditative and drug-induced mystical experiences. Even with such underlying differences, however, the various schools of meditation are bound together by the structure of their discourses.

  David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa make a typological distinction between “models of gradual self-transformation, often built upon the active cultivation over years of ascesis or meditative practice, and those of sudden or even violent change in the composition of the self—for example, in religious conversion.”38 Thus formulated, the transformations induced by meditative practice seem to be securely located in the first category. However, although meditation is often looked upon as a lifetime pursuit, meditative transformation is sometimes seen as a sudden and, perhaps paradoxically, unpremeditated event. This is most famously true of the dominant schools of Zen Buddhism, as described by Schlütter in this volume. More surprisingly, perhaps, it is equally true of some Christian forms of contemplation, as in the quotation from “The Epistle of Prayer” cited above, indicating that the transformations involved are “sudden and without any means.”39

  The matter becomes even more complex when Shulman and Stroumsa suggest that in gradual self-transformation the self is “the active agent of its own evolution,” while in sudden change the self is “a passive recipient of the process.” This sounds logical enough. As argued above, however, the connection between the activities involved in meditative practice and the effects obtained is not linear, whether the effects come gradually or suddenly. In her chapter on southern Buddhism in this volume, Shaw points out how “meditation objects, chosen and engaged with intent, overlap with surprise objects, or external events, occurring at crucial and timely moments.” Gradualness and individual agency are combined with suddenness and passive recipiency, or rather, in Shaw’s words, “a willing openness to the fortuitous and the fortunate.” Technical meditation is combined with the nontechnical features of everyday events.

  Sudden religious conversion may also be argued to involve the anchoring of a person in more fundamental aspects of existence, at least if considered from within the worldview of the religion involved. Yet, Shulman and Stroumsa may be right in suggesting that such conversion is not typical of meditative processes. More often, at least in premodern contexts, meditation takes place within a specific tradition to which the adept already belongs, and the practice pursues long-term goals defined by this tradition. In addition to the technique itself, meditation depends on social settings as well as cultures of learning, transmission, and interpretation. Quite often, it is also practiced communally, and several schools of meditation believe that
the effects of communal practice exceed those of individual practice. Many meditative traditions strongly emphasize the master-disciple relation, and place great authority in the hands of the abba of early Christianity, the shaikh of Sufism, the Indian guru or Chinese shī-fu. All of this prompts the question of the nature of the “person” or “self” that is being transformed. Is this self primarily a subjective arena of individual agency springing from within, as in the nineteenth-century Western idealist view? Or is it rather a tabula rasa that obtains its main features through impressions and influences from the environment, in a form of interior or interiorized sociality?40

  One possible interpretation of the strong integration of meditation within its sociocultural context is that the changes taking place are due to an outside-in movement, in which socially defined expectations are interiorized and determine the shape of the transformation involved. In some cases, these expectations are inherent in the practice itself, as in the case of meditations on a specific religious content; in other cases, the expectations may be part of the context surrounding the practice. Either way, this outside-in movement resembles one of the possible working mechanisms of the placebo effect in psychology, psychiatry, and somatic medicine, in which motivation and expectations have been argued to be important factors behind the outcome of the treatment.41 It also has elements in common with autosuggestion and autohypnosis, which will be further discussed in the next chapter. Finally, it is consistent with social and cultural constructivist views on human cognition, which have long been dominant in cultural and religious studies.