Meditation

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MEDITATION

MEDITATION . The terms meditation and contemplation are applied to a variety of manifestations throughout the historical and cultural geography of world religions. Meditation and contemplation are used in English to translate a number of specialized terms in several different languages. Attention will be paid here to the etymologies of these terms in English, so that the reader may determine the suitability of their application to foreign terms. Some general categories through which meditative and contemplative systems can be described will be introduced.

Confusion sometimes arises when the words meditation and contemplation are used interchangeably. However, a working distinction between the two terms can be suggested. Meditation is considered preparatory and contributory to the achievement of contemplation. Meditation involves concentration, the narrowing of the focus of consciousness to a single theme, symbol, catechism, or doctrine, yet it remains cognitive and intellectual. Meditation is usually rumination on a particular religious subject, while contemplation is a direct intuitive seeing, using spiritual faculties beyond discursive thought and ratiocination. In the felicitous phrase of Richard of Saint-Victor, a Christian theologian of the twelfth century, "Meditation investigates, contemplation wonders."

The English word meditate comes from the Latin meditari. Meditari connotes deep, continued reflection, a concentrated dwelling in thought. Contemplation is derived from the Latin cum ("with") and templum ("a consecrated place"). Frequently, contemplation is itself a spiritual state and serves as the end of an ascetic quest. Particularly in the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this state is sometimes considered tantamount to the beatific vision bestowed upon the individual through the grace of God. This distinction between meditation and contemplation will serve for an examination of the following materials, but the reader should bear in mind the difficulty of translating these concepts from one language and culture to another.

As for the morphology of the theories and practices indicated by the terms meditation and contemplation, it may be useful to mention some categories of spiritual discipline. Meditation leading to contemplation can be apophatic. Involved here is an emptying procedure, in which the individual systematically removes from consciousness any content that is not the object of the quest. In Christian mysticism, this type of path is referred to as the via negativa; it is also an important technique in Buddhism.

Other forms of meditation and contemplation may be termed cataphatic. In this type of practice, a specific image, idea, role, or deity is held in the mind's eye. The object of the individual is to assimilate, or to participate in some way with, the chosen object. Apophatic forms of meditation tend to be more speculative, cognitive, and intellectual, at least in their early stages. They tend to be centered in the mind. Cataphatic forms of meditation and contemplation, on the other hand, tend to be more emotional and devotional. They tend to be centered in the heart. In what follows, meditation and contemplation represent a continuum, with different systems and traditions illustrating shifting perspectives within a descriptive framework that opposes the apophatic and speculative to the cataphatic and affective.

Western Traditions

The practice of prayer has always held a central place in the Western traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although prayer may devolve into meditation and even into contemplation, these are more directly the concerns of the mystical and, in many instances, the monastic dimensions of these traditions.

Judaism

Meditation and contemplation in the Jewish tradition acknowledge the centrality and authority of the Hebrew scriptures. Reading and interpreting the Torah require concentration and discursive meditation. This meditation led to the development of commentary, such as the Mishnah and the Talmud, and schools came into being that fostered an experiential approach. Heavily influenced by gnosticism and Hellenism, this movement is referred to as heikhalot mysticism. Ascetical practices culminated in a contemplative ascent of the soul through seven heavens to reach its final home in a state of beatitude. The final state is viewed as one in which the mystic stands before the throne of God and sees and hears directly. There is no experience of mystical union, and God remains "wholly other." This tradition remained essentially cataphatic and nonaffective, although the symbolism of the ascent and the attainment of ecstatic consciousness is characteristic of Jewish contemplation.

A more immanentist approach to the contemplation of God developed within the Hasidic tradition. One can trace here the influence of Philo Judaeus, a Jewish philosopher of the first century ce who later was to have an important influence on Christianity. In Hasidic contemplation, the transcendent majesty of God is preserved by making the object of contemplation the shekhinah, or the spirit of the living God. God can be contemplated directly only at the end of the world, or the Day of Yahveh. The Jewish contemplative almost always retains a sense of the distance between himself and God. The quest ends not with mystical union but with a sense of adhesion (or being joined) to God, which is short of an actual union.

The qabbalistic school from the thirteenth century onward produced some major developments in the Jewish meditative and contemplative tradition. A major exponent of this school was the Spaniard Avraham ben Shemuʾel Abulafia. He developed a meditative technique designed to release the individual from bondage to the sensible forms and images that one must deal with in everyday life and that delimit the soul. Meditation is an avenue through which the soul can come to apprehend more than the forms of nature. Abulafia looks for a means to deautomatize the human faculties from the normal preoccupation with daily events. He seizes upon a system of meditation based on the Hebrew alphabet. The letters of the alphabet are sufficiently abstract so as not to preoccupy the mind with any specific meaning, but concrete enough to supply an object of intense focus and concentration. The letters of the alphabet are regarded by the meditator as constituents of the holy name of God. The meditator is instructed to combine and recombine the letters of the alphabet without any attempt to form words, thereby constructing a kind of nonrepresentational mystical logic. Such exercise produces interior freedom and detachment from natural objects and prepares the adept for the final achievement: the pure contemplation of the divine name.

Christianity

Meditation and contemplation, particularly within monastic circles, reached a high degree of differentiation and sophistication in the Christian tradition. The practices of the early church took form in an atmosphere influenced by Hermetic literature and the philosophy of Neoplatonism. Syncretic in nature, the Hermetic books present the theme of a mystical ascent to the knowledge of God. This important image (found also in Jewish mysticism) becomes central to the mysticism of Christianity. The idea of an ascent from the many to the One is taken over from the thought of the Neoplatonist Plotinus. Plotinus describes four movements in the ascent to divine knowledge: (1) purgation in the practice of virtue; (2) the development of thought beyond sense perception; (3) the transcendence of thought in the achievement of union; and (4) the final absorption in the One. In the Christian circles of third-century Alexandria, these non-Christian ideas came to be absorbed into the tradition and to exert an important influence. Two important figures of this development were Clement and Origen.

For Clement, meditation led to the apprehension of the intelligible realities and then, through gnosis as a gift of Christ, to hidden spiritual realities. Reflective reading of, and meditation on, the scriptures in order to discern this hidden meaning was important. Within this metaphorical framework, Origen introduces the symbol of a contemplative marriage between the soul and the Logos (Christ).

Anchoritism, or withdrawal into the desert, was a form of spirituality in the early church that gave full rein to ascetic and meditative practices. Disengagement from the concerns of ordinary life provided a favorable atmosphere for the awakening of the spirit to the word of God. The austere life of the desert could produce a deep, inner quiet and was conducive to a life of continual meditation on the scriptures in an attempt to hear the word of God and to ascend the ladder of perfection through grace.

Within this context, as early as the third century, a life of constant prayer developed as an ideal for the anchorite. The beginnings of the prayer of the heart, or the Jesus Prayer, are found here. The Jesus Prayer is an apothegm translated as "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." The first reference to this prayer comes from the seventh century. The practice of the Jesus Prayer became important in Eastern Orthodox spirituality and in the development of the movement known as hesychasm. Meditation came to be seen, in a movement away from Neoplatonism, as more properly centered in the heart rather than in the mind. Control of breathing and the fixation of the gaze were important ancillaries to the constant repetition of the apothegm. This tradition has survived down to the present day in its major center on Mount Athos, in Greece.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Roman Catholic church were a period of rationalization and the systematization of meditative and contemplative processes. This movement looked back to a medieval interest in the methodology of meditation developed among the Franciscans. A major figure in this movement was Bonaventure (1217–1274). In his De triplici via, he gives an exemplary statement for Western Christianity on the three processes of meditation: purgation, illumination, and union.

Ignatius Loyola (1495–1556), the founder of the Jesuits, wrote a treatise entitled Spiritual Exercises, in which he outlines a progression in meditative practice. His notions of meditation may not be so exalted as others, but his methods are of interest insofar as they involve cataphatic visualization techniques that bear some resemblance to Hindu and Buddhist practices. For example, Ignatius's fourth method requires that the practitioner choose a specific image, such as the passion or the resurrection of Jesus, and apply each of the five senses to that image. Thus, through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, the image is vivified in the consciousness of the meditator.

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) was a member of the Carmelite order. In her Autobiography, she narrates her meditative experiences and describes a period of spiritual desiccation followed by a series of ecstatic experiences. Teresa describes the latter in sexual images and draws upon the symbolism of the bride and the bridegroom, a symbolism that dates back at least to the time of Origen. In the Autobiography she catalogs degrees of meditation, using the symbolism of the husbandry of plants. She compares discursive meditation to watering the garden, bucket by bucket; recollection is analogous to the use of a water wheel, and quiet, to springs of water. Union is compared to a drenching rain.

Teresa's contemporary and fellow Carmelite, John of the Cross (1542–1591), modified the three ways of meditation developed by Bonaventure. Purgation is retained but illumination is replaced, using the bridal imagery, with betrothal, and union with spiritual marriage. Both Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross describe a stage in contemplation referred to as the "dark night of the soul," an experience of alienation and isolation preparatory to illumination through the grace of God. This theme continues a long-standing tradition of a vision of God that includes the perception of darkness.

A major figure of the French church involved in codifying meditation was Francis of Sales (1567–1622). In his Introduction to the Devout Life, he teaches a five-step meditation. The preparatory stage of meditation involves three steps: (1) placing one's self in the presence of God, (2) praying for divine assistance, and (3) imagining a scene from the life of Jesus. The second step builds on the first through identification with those images that most affect the practitioner. In the third step feelings generated in the second are converted into acts of understanding and will. The fourth step involves thanksgiving and offering up the results of the meditation as a sacrifice, and petition for the putting into practice of the insights gained. The fifth step is the development of the "spiritual nosegay" or the preparation of some content of the meditation to sustain one in daily affairs.

Islam

The prophet Muḥammad (b. 570) considered his prophecy to be a continuation and reaffirmation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The word islām means "submission" in Arabic; thus a Muslim is one who submits. Islamic theology emphasizes the transcendent majesty and unity of God. Humanity is considered to exist face to face with this transcendent majesty without intercessors. Humans are not expected to try to share the secrets of God.

In the more orthodox forms of Islam, daily prayer (ṣalāt ) is one of the obligatory observances. Usually this prayer is conducted communally. Although it is also recommended that a Muslim perform dhikr, or remembrance of God, these practices are external formalities and not necessarily related to contemplation and meditation in the present sense.

By the eighth century, strict Muslim orthodoxy began to be challenged by Sufism, the generic term for Islamic mysticism. The Ṣūfī movement favored an interiorization and esotericization of the basic institutions of Islam. The orthodox religious attitudes of fear and obedience before the transcendence of God changed in Sufism to an attitude of ecstatic love of God and hope of union with him through a transcendence of the phenomenal self. Meditative and contemplative practices became an important part of this quest, and dhikr became a constant practice of the presence of God.

Ecstasy is the goal of the Ṣūfī path, and dhikr, in an expanded and intensified form, becomes a means to the goal. Techniques familiar in other traditions such as control of the breath, visualization of sacred words, and repetition of sacred phrases were adopted as important means to this end. The goal is termed fanāʾ, or annihilation of the lower self, which enables God through his grace to bestow on the mystic the rapture of union with him.

The Ṣūfīs developed sacred dance as a technique for the induction of ecstasy. The turning and whirling movements of the dance accompanied by hypnotic music and chanting of poetry bypassed the intellectual faculties and created a trancelike state of centeredness and concentration. The Mevlevi order of Ṣūfīs founded by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī institutionalized this practice as the foundation of its worship.

Eastern Traditions

Sophisticated psychologies and techniques of contemplation and meditation were developed within the spiritual traditions of India and China. These traditions, which antedate the beginning of the common era, developed independently until the introduction of Buddhism into China in the first century ce. Thereafter, India's techniques of meditation strongly influenced Chinese religious thought.

India

A concern for meditative asceticism, which runs through Indian religious history, can be traced as far back as the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium bce. Artifacts recovered from this civilization can be interpreted as representing individuals or deities in meditative attitudes.

Yoga

An early systematization of meditative technique is found in the Yoga Sūtra of Patañjali, dating from the third century bce. Patañjali defines yoga as "the cessation of the modifications of the mind." This statement forms the basis of much of pan-Indian spirituality. The Yoga system is one of the classical darśana s, or "viewpoints," of Indian philosophy. The object of meditation and other ascetic practices is to still the mind and the emotions with which the individual usually identifies. When this is accomplished, consciousness can reflect the pure absolute spirit (or puruṣa ), which is the principle of consciousness itself. Realization of the puruṣa as one's true and ultimate identity brings with it release (mokṣa ) from the tendency to identify with temporal experience.

The mind (citta ) in Yoga philosophy is considered to be the repository of saṃskāra (the root impressions of past deeds). These impressions are stored from present and past lives in unconscious layers of the psyche and, in turn, produce binding proclivities, good and bad habits, and all forms of limited vision and false identification, which modify and determine a person's life in the unenlightened state. The unenlightened mind is modified by its past ignorant experience and in turn perpetuates such modifications into the indefinite future. (This is the pan-Indian doctrine of karman, which becomes axiomatic for much of Indian spirituality.) Hence the importance of causing the modifications of the mind to cease so that the pure unconditioned spirit may become manifest in meditation.

A primary object of Yoga discipline is to bring the mind into a state of one-pointedness or intense concentration. Moral and ethical abstinences and observances form the first two limbs of an eightfold prescription for attaining this state. A comfortable posture (āsana ) is recommended, especially one that enables the practitioner to keep the spine correctly aligned and one that can be comfortably held for protracted periods of time as the mind becomes abstracted from the body. Breath control (prāṇāyāma ) is then recommended, since states of breathing and states of consciousness correspond closely to each other. A calming and quieting of the breath produces a corresponding calming and quieting of the mind.

As concentration deepens, the next limb of Yoga, pratyāhāra (withdrawal of the senses from their objects), contributes to a further interiority. The next step is dharaṇa, or the concentration of the mind on a single object. This is followed by dhyāna, or the achievement of an uninterrupted nonverbal current of consciousness focused on the meditative object. The eighth and last limb of this meditative program is samādhi, in which the goal of complete cessation of the modifications of the mind is achieved, and a transcendent awareness of one's ultimate identity as puruṣa, or unconditional spirit, is attained. In this state of ecstasy, the normal ego sense and the experience of a dichotomy between subject and object is overcome. Yoga discipline in a variety of forms becomes an important ingredient in several Indian spiritual traditions and religions, including Jainism, various forms of Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Hinduism

Hinduism is a generic term used to refer to a variety of religious manifestations within the Indian subcontinent and other areas subject to Indian influence. In the early history of Hinduism, a stage referred to as Brahmanism, there was a movement away from the practice of exoteric ritual and toward meditative interiority and realization. As the tradition developed, Hindus came to be divided into three main sects: the Vaiṣṇava, the Śaiva, and the Śākta.

Vaiṣṇavism. The Vaiṣṇavas, worshipers of the god Viṣṇu and his many incarnations, developed a form of active, affective, and cataphatic meditation in which chanting, singing, and dancing were used to induce transic absorption into the deity. Perhaps the most popular incarnation of Viṣṇu is the deity Kṛṣṇa, whose worship is bhakti ("devotion"). In addition to performances of chanting and dance, a devotee was expected to remain ever mindful of his object of devotion. In turn, the deity extends his grace and love to the devotee. In both Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva forms of theistic meditation, the emotions are given a much freer rein than in the more abstract classical Yoga system. Transmutation of the emotions through devotion to Viṣṇu, Śiva, and their avatāra s became popular and had a far-reaching effect on Indian art and literature.

Devotional theism borrowed some of its elements from Sanskrit poetics. The term bhāva, which refers to an intense personal emotion in poetic theory, was adapted by the Vaiṣṇavas to refer to the meditative attitude that a devotee assumes toward Kṛṣṇa. There are four types of contemplative mood, determined by the form of relationship with the deity. These range from a relationship to Kṛṣṇa as supreme deity, as friend, as brother, and, perhaps most importantly, as lover. A devotee's chosen bhāva was to be cultivated through meditation, chanting, and dance until he experienced himself as the friend or lover of Kṛṣṇa. Continual absorption into these various roles enabled the adherent to experience the love and the personality of the deity.

Śaivism and Śaktism. The devotees of Śiva developed their own forms of contemplative worship. One is the growth of a cult dedicated to Śakti, the female consort of Śiva. Śakti is the active female energy of the universe in contradistinction to the passive contemplative energy of Śiva himself. Śaktism became an important part of the Tantric manifestations of Hinduism. Tantric Hinduism developed several techniques of meditation, including the use of the yantra. A yantra is a geometric diagram that represents an abstract form or manifestation of a deity. Deities are essentially formless in their own nature but are thought to manifest themselves in a movement from the subtle to the gross, in the forms of sound, the geometric forms of the yantra, and the mūrti (or sculpted) image. A yantra is a series of triangles, squares, and circles emanating from a central point, which serves to focus the mind of the meditating yogin.

Visualization of a sculpted or painted form of the deity became important in Tantric meditation. The object was to achieve a high degree of absorption in the outward form so that it could be reproduced in complex detail within the mind of the meditator. When this stage was reached the outward form could be dispensed with. The general goal of Tantric meditation is the complete unification of the body, speech, and mind of the Tantric yogin with the body, speech, and mind of his chosen divinity. Mantra s, symbolic sounds or phrases for the sound form of the divinity, were used in this practice. Mudrā s were used in meditation also as symbolic gestures of the hands and body representing various stages of the unification process.

In kuṇḍalinīyoga, the macrocosmic Sakti is further identified, within the microcosm of the human body, as kuṇḍalinī. Kuṇḍalinī literally means "coiled" and refers to the visualization of Sakti as an energy within the body in the form of a sleeping serpent. This energy is associated with a meditative physiology of the subtle body of the human. The meditator visualizes six vital centers called cakra s placed along the spine from its base to the crown of the head. The cakra s are connected to each other by a central vein with two lesser veins, or channels, on either side. The object of the meditation and physical exercises of this form of Tantric yoga is to wake the latent energy of Śakti coiled at the base of the spine and to cause it to enter the central vein. As kuṇḍalinī ascends and is drawn upward through meditation, it energizes the six cakra s until it reaches the topmost cakra, where it is reunited with Śiva. At this point the body of the yogin and the body of the cosmos are resolved into the primal unity.

Buddhism

Buddhism is a tradition that seeks to penetrate the veil of appearances and social conditioning and, through meditative insight, to achieve a vision of the truth of reality. This vision leads to liberation from the round of karmic cycles and the achievement of ultimate freedom in nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa is the goal of Buddhist ascesis subsumed under the term bhāvana, or meditation. Bhāvana has two secondary objectives: the first is the achievement of śamatha, or calm; the second is vipaśyanā, insight or higher vision.

As a foundation for other Buddhist meditation practices, a monk starts with the practice of mindfulness (Pali, sati). This practice is basic to both śamatha (Pali, samatha ) and vipaśyanā (Pali, vipassanā ) and can be used for both calming and higher vision. The practice of mindfulness, or total awareness, takes place in four main areas: the body itself, the sensations, thought, and mental objects. Mindfulness of the body begins with the observation of breathing. Strict attention is paid to inhalation and exhalation, note being taken of the duration of each as the practitioner becomes aware of this usually unconscious activity. Such concentration involves narrowing of the mind's focus. The effects of mindfulness of breathing include a refined awareness of the entire body and a sense of tranquillity.

Mindfulness of the body is next applied to a monk's postures and movements. Every bodily action is performed with complete awareness and consciousness. This discipline brings into awareness bodily activity, which normally goes on beyond the conscious level. As activities are performed, mindfulness tranquilizes, calms, and controls the body; mindfulness can then proceed with an examination of the constituent parts of the body, external and internal, and a breakdown of the body into its primary physical elements. These practices break up any tendency to identify with the body.

Mindfulness is then applied to the sensations that are discerned as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In a continuing progression, from the gross to the more subtle, mindfulness is then applied to the mind, or thought itself, and its objects. Attention is paid to each thought as it occurs, whether it is with or without such factors as passion, hatred, delusion, or freedom. The objective is detachment and a loosening of the tendency to identify with any factors of experience. With the achievement of detachment, the monk has an increased ability to respond actively to the actual circumstances of life.

Through concentrative attention, a monk sees the momentary quality of life, and sees that a moment of experience arises based on temporary causes and conditions. The monk thus can see the real nature of experience, which had previously been obscured by incorrect mental fabrications and the false projection of permanent identity on a transient stream of moments.

The Buddhist śamatha practices are associated with dhyāna, or the achievement of meditative absorption. Dhyāna practice continues the work of mindfulness into an even greater experience of detachment, one in which contact with the normal content of worldly experience is gradually attenuated and almost altogether eliminated. The dhyāna s (absorptions) are as follows: four absorptions with form, four absorptions without form, and finally the cessation of conception and feeling. These stages represent a gradual elimination of the verbal, discursive, and affective contents of the mind. They lead a monk gradually out of the world of sense-based experience to a new, detached interior dimension. These stages are increasingly independent of the external world and signify a developing autonomy on the part of the monk. The monk is no longer bound by the accidental and chaotic sensory stimuli of the world of ordinary experience or by intellectual concerns, and begins to acquire the power of turning away from the "given world" and toward the ability to "create" an interior world of attenuated, simplified, and peaceful content. This is the meaning of śamatha, the calming of the contents of consciousness, and the attainment of release from subjection to external circumstances.

Calming, transic absorption and insight are important features of Buddhist ascesis; they continue to be fundamental in both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna schools. The Vajrayāna, or Tantric form of Buddhism, also developed elaborate visualization meditations in which carefully delineated images of deities, or maṇḍala s, were reproduced with great exactitude within the mind of the meditator. The Tantric form of Buddhist meditation became firmly established in Tibet.

China

Contemplation and meditation have held a position of high importance in Chinese religious traditions. This is particularly true of the indigenous Daoist tradition and the various schools of Buddhism imported from India.

Daoism

Daoism in its early literary form (here referred to as "classical Daoism") and its later offshoot, which is usually termed "Neo-Daoism," are usually thought of as the primary province of contemplation in the Chinese indigenous tradition.

Laozi (seventh century bce?) and Zhuangzu (365–290 bce?) are the two main figures of classical Daoism. Since their existence as historical figures is questioned, here they shall be referred to only by their works, now known as the Laozu (or Dao de jing ) and the Zhuangzi. These two books contain the early formulation of the Daoist worldview and ethos. In Daoism there is a contrast between the superficialities of conventional reality and the insight achieved by the Daoist sage. The task of Daoist contemplation is to move from a partial and self-centered view of things to a holistic view of the cosmos and its spontaneously functioning dynamism.

The Dao is the primary object of contemplation and meditation in the Daoist tradition. It is the ultimate principle beyond phenomenal manifestations and yet within which all phenomenal manifestations are brought forth and undergo change. The first chapter of the Dao de jing emphasizes the ineffability of the true Dao:

The Dao (Way) that can be told of is not the Eternal Dao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the mother of all things. (Zhan, 1963, p. 139)

The Dao is the substratum that remains when all verbal and physical phenomena are discarded. Awareness of the Dao can be reached through apophatic contemplation and meditation, that is, only through direct meditative experience. In order to attain inner illumination, the Daoist sage has to follow a way of unknowing, of abandoning learning in favor of looking directly into himself. Real education for the Daoist, in the phrase of Zhuangzu, is "sitting and forgetting."

Buddhism

From the time when Buddhism entered China from India and Central Asia around the first century bce, the Chinese were exposed to a bewildering variety of Buddhist teachings. The major Indian schools were represented, including the Madhyamika (Sanlun) and the Yogacara (Faxiang). Another school that developed in China, the Tiantai, promulgated an elaborate meditative regime based on a variety of scriptural sources. The Huayan school developed a teaching and meditative discipline that led to a vision of the harmony of totality and the mutual interpenetration of all things.

Two schools of Chinese Buddhism, the Chan and the Jingtu (Pure Land school), developed different understandings of meditation practice, a difference often referred to as that between "self-power" and "other-power." "Other-power" refers to a reliance on the grace of a deity for the achievement of salvation, an idea characteristic of the Pure Land school. The idea behind this emphasis is that human beings are not strong enough to bring themselves to nirvāṇa through their own meditative practices. Paradoxically, an adherent of this school is advised to call on the name of the saving deity (Amitabha; Chin., Omituo Fo; Jpn., Amida) with an undivided mind, thus constituting a mantralike form of apophthegmatic practice. Meditation in the "other-power" schools tends toward the affective and cataphatic.

"Self-power" schools, like Chan (Jpn., Zen) Buddhism, are more austere and apophatic. The word chan is a transliteration of the Sanskrit term dhyāna, which means "meditation" or "contemplation." The Chan school emphasized "self-power" and sitting in formless meditation. Because of its exclusive emphasis on meditation, Chan developed an iconoclastic attitude toward other forms of religious observance. In Chan, personal enlightenment through intense meditation was the goal, and nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this pursuit, not even the religious and doctrinal trappings of Buddhism itself.

In Chan monasteries, meditation occupied a major part of the daily routine. Formal meditation usually took place in a separate building erected for the purpose and was supervised by a senior monk. Attention was paid to details of technique, including posture in the lotus position, with an erect spine, and the achievement of comfort and relaxation therein. Chan meditation focuses on the process of breathing, leading to a gradual withdrawal from external stimuli. A monk is instructed simply to observe the thoughts, feelings, and visions that may come into consciousness, and let them pass away of their own accord. When a monk is successful in detaching from both external and internal stimuli, the result is an experience of stillness and emptiness. This breaks up the tendency to identify with the body and mind and provides a new perspective on ordinary experience, marked by detachment, equanimity, and freedom from a sense of the ego as a reference point for experience. This is a realization beyond doctrine and beyond words themselves. The semilegendary founder of Chan in China, Bodhidharma, is said to have described Chan as "a special transmission outside the scriptures; no dependence on words and letters; direct pointing at the mind of man; seeing into one's own nature and the attainment of Buddhahood."