Differences Between Daoist, Yogic And Buddhist Meditation

Daoism, yoga and Buddhism all have different end goals. These differences are primarily portrayed through their differing meditation techniques. This short lecture will cover both topics above in order to give you a better understanding and hopefully some more insight into your current meditative practise.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Sean Ramston and welcome to this very short lecture on the difference between Taoist,

Yogic and Buddhist meditation.

I've actually written an academic paper on this which you can find on academia.

Com.

Just put in my name Sean Ramston.

It's for free so you can go there and download it.

It's just a lot more academic than what I'm going to go through with you in this lecture.

I want to keep this lecture short,

Easy,

Simple and just give you a little bit of insight so maybe you can decide what method of meditation may be most suitable for you.

The first thing we need to look at is what is the goals of yogic,

Taoist and Buddhist meditation.

The goal of Taoist meditation was to make your body healthy and therefore to achieve longevity.

Yogic meditation was to achieve mukti.

It's a hard way to translate but it was normally translated as liberation.

Buddhist meditation's goal was different.

That was nirvana which is translated as enlightenment.

Nowadays though,

These three meditations are done let's say with different goals in mind and the way that they're practiced now may be not the way they've done in the past.

So let's have a look at yoga first.

Yoga of course in modern times has simply and primarily become doing postures and therefore the asanas.

You'll do a 55 minutes of asanas and 5 minutes of meditation.

Ancient yoga practice of course was not like that and was probably very very much the other way around.

You've got to remember it was a process of doing these 8 different techniques let's say or 8 different practices so that one could meditate properly.

So the goal of yoga was to do asana so your body was prepared to do pranayama so you could do breathing exercises which allowed your mind to focus well by which then you could go and try and do concentrated and meditative absorption.

Interestingly yoga is not like that anymore and it has been let's say changed.

If you're interested in yoga stuff there is no doubt that Krishnamurti and his student BK S Iyengar really provide great in depth old school yoga techniques in great detail and depth.

Modern day yoga is focused on asanas.

Now let's look at Taoism.

Taoism has always had a primary focus on philosophy.

If you look at the Tao Te Ching which was written by Laozi and even his successors who came after him,

It was philosophy.

They focused primarily and wholly on philosophy.

If you look at the entire Tao Te Ching there is no meditative text,

Sorry no meditative paragraphs within it.

We need to be aware here that Taoism is heavily based on philosophy.

Modern times now Taoism is for no choice of a better word let's say a combination fried rice.

It's got a little bit of everything in it.

There's Buddhism in it,

There's yoga practices in it,

There is very odd Qigong practices and by the way Qigong is a very modern word and actually so is Taoism.

To say that a person is Taoist is a very modern terminology.

We also need to be aware that there are two forms of Taoism,

Tao Jia and Tao Jiao,

One representing philosophy and one representing religion.

So Buddhism though is a little bit different.

If we look at Buddhism you have the Four Noble Truths and then you have the Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path again in the end the primary focus doesn't matter if you are a Theravada Buddhist or Mahayana or Vajrayana whether you are a Northern,

Southern or Eastern Buddhist.

In the end the primary focus is on meditation.

This is where it gets really interesting.

As you might be well aware Zen Buddhism is done in Japan.

They use a lot of Taoist meditation techniques.

What that means we'll describe shortly but that basically means breathing by focusing on the expansion and contraction of the abdomen.

Now just to stop here and pause for a second.

That is 100% intrusive into Buddhist meditation.

Buddhist meditation never ever focused on the abdomen.

Now Zen Buddhism came from Chan Buddhism which was from China.

DT Suzuki said that Zen Buddhism is the evolution of Buddhism under Taoist conditions.

This is why so much of Zen Buddhism there is a Taoist feel to it.

If you've studied Taoist philosophy you cannot help but notice the flavor of Taoist philosophy throughout Zen.

This doesn't mean it's right or wrong.

It's just what it is.

Now for those of you who don't know in Theravada Buddhism there is a major focus on Jhana.

You might not know this or you might know this but Dhyana which is the Sanskrit word for Jhana.

Zen is the Japanese word for Dhyana.

Chan is the Chinese word for Jhana.

I've just made that really complex but let's put it this way.

Sanskrit which is what they use in India.

Dhyana was used in the eight limb path of yoga which means let's just say meditation for now.

Jhana means meditation.

Zen means meditation.

Chan means meditation.

They are actually all one in the same word.

Dhyana,

Jhana,

Zen,

Chan.

They're just the same word in different languages.

One is Sanskrit,

One is Pali,

One is Japanese,

One is Mandarin.

So just going back Buddhism's focus right from the get-go is meditation.

You are meditating.

Day one you're meditating.

It's very different to Taoism and Yogic where meditation comes much later.

Okay let's now move over to the different types of meditation and how you meditate according to the Yogic traditions,

The Taoist traditions and the Buddhist traditions.

Just want to pause for one second here and talk about mind training.

So mind training is different.

Mind training is not meditation.

Mind training is called Lodon and an example of the mind training is the four Brahma Vaharas which is loving kindness metta which is the general wishing for happiness for all,

Compassion karuna,

The wish for all beings to be free of suffering,

Empathetic joy,

Mudita,

Happiness for the others good fortune,

Equanimity upaka,

Equanimity in all of life's ups and downs.

So let's have a look now at the three different types of meditation.

So yoga meditation.

Let's just,

As you're well aware,

There are many,

Many different types.

But let's just say the two main ones are firstly found in Shavasana which is the death pose where you lie down and you meditate.

This meditation is kind of a,

And just letting your mind settle and letting your body settle after a relatively hard training.

There is not too much specific stuff going on.

It's meant to be that you do this when your mind's ready to calm and it just calms.

Some people do focus on the breathing and what not but it really is lying down,

Relaxing and letting all the cognitive and mental faculties just calm and settle.

Chakra meditation is probably a little bit more modern than what people think and it wasn't done originally in terms of imagining a flower petal opening in each of the different chakras.

Actually,

Early chakra meditation was based on sounds creating vibrations within each of the chakras.

It is something that is certainly not recommended unless you have a very experienced teacher because it can be quite dangerous.

One example of this which is said to be safe is the chanting of Aum.

As you might know,

It's actually a-u-m not o-m so it's Aum.

And each of these sounds are the first sounds that children or I shouldn't say children,

I should say babies make without the use of their tongue.

So they're base sounds from which all other sounds come from.

So sometimes you can chant as A-u-m and you'll notice when you do this,

A vibrates in your abdomen,

U will vibrate in your chest area and M will vibrate in your throat.

So these are affecting each of the chakras.

There's actually a lot of work on this and Sadguru teaches this as a part of his courses.

So that's yogic meditation.

Daoist meditation,

There's a lot of different types of Daoist meditations.

Microscopic orbits and really the list goes on and on and on.

Let's focus on the early styles of Daoist meditation which was all about focusing on the contraction and expansion of the breath within the abdomen.

For everything else that came about with Daoist meditation,

All these added things and in my opinion a lot of it came from yoga,

A lot of it was intrusive,

A lot of it was certainly not well understood.

Therefore one needs to be very careful.

So focusing on the abdomen.

Because we want our diaphragm to expand and contract very naturally,

It is paramount in Daoist meditation that you have a very good sitting posture.

What that means is that you need to sit with a straight spine,

You need to rotate your hips slightly forward,

You need to open your chest and you need to lift the crown of your head like it's being pulled from a string.

If you do not do this,

That diaphragm will not contract and expand naturally and I can tell you that that will end up causing some problems.

So if you're going to do this,

Do it properly.

So you've got the correct posture,

Now you're sitting.

Now what you do is you don't mess with the breath at all.

All you do is you observe the movement of the breath by putting your mind's focus into the abdomen and you let the breath be as natural as possible.

Now you watch,

I shouldn't say watch,

I should probably say feel the abdomen moving,

Expanding and contracting.

Expanding and contracting.

Let's just have a little bit of a side wind here and talk about where this came from.

The idea of doing this comes straight out of Chinese medicine or what was just generalized Chinese philosophy.

In China,

The most important part of your body is the kidneys because the kidneys represent your pre-heaven chi and they also represent the base foundation energy of the entire body.

So what we need to do is we focus our mind on the abdomen which is where you're putting the fire down underneath the water to create steam.

This steam is kidney steam,

Also known as kidney chi because the character for chi is rice with steam coming off of it.

So chi is a transformation of water,

Steam when fire comes underneath it.

So that was the basis of it.

They also think you should put your mind in the lowest part of your body.

You may be thinking is my feet the lowest part of the body?

They would say to you where is the bottom of the earth?

Of course the response is the center.

So the lowest part of the human body is the abdomen.

Now that area is also known as the sea of chi.

That part is known as life gate and in the areas in between is known as the dan tian.

Now why that place is called the sea of chi and what not?

Not in 20 years have I ever come across a Chinese explanation of why that area was so important.

Hence the fact that I have a very sneaky suspicion that it may have come from India.

The reason why I say that is of course in Ayurvedic medicine and Indian medicine you've kind of got a yin and yang channel running around a central channel.

Those female or male or water and fire channels that wind around the middle channel,

Those have channels that come off of it.

36,

000 on the left,

36,

000 on the right and all those channels cross at one point place in the body.

They cross through the abdomen.

So I've never read that in a Chinese text anywhere but that is very interesting and kind of a little bit scary of why that is.

Why did they call it the sea of chi?

Why did they say the engine room of the body?

But there was no explanation for this.

The explanation was it's because that area is related to kidney energy.

Anyways,

The meditation technique is focusing on the abdomen.

By focusing on the abdomen you're putting the fire underneath the water by which you're creating steam.

You're filling the ocean of chi with more chi.

The key point here that was written in the Tai Sijing and is not normally discussed or talked about that often is that if we're doing this meditation it is paramount that you're not breathing in air from your nose.

It's paramount that the air that comes in comes from the abdomen.

So I'll give you an example.

Let's say you have a straw and you're sucking up water.

When you're sucking up that water it sucks up from your mouth.

Your mouth in this case is your abdomen.

This was called in ancient China Tuna which basically means to spit and receive.

It's not a very good translation but that is the direct translation.

But we need to do it from the abdomen.

Okay,

Buddhism meditation is very different and very unique.

The reason why I say that is that Buddhist meditation does not focus.

By not focusing it's separated itself from focusing on the chakras,

Focusing on your abdomen,

Focusing on your breath.

Sometimes Buddhism uses focusing at early stages to help you concentrate the mind.

This of course is very important but later on you're not focusing.

What Buddha found was awareness.

So let's just pause for a second here and just look at the essences of Buddhism.

The essence of Theravada Buddhism is Anatta which means no self.

The essence of Mahayana Buddhism is Buddha nature.

So what is the idea of no self?

What is the idea of Buddha nature?

How come we all have Buddha nature?

How come we have no self when there appears to be a self?

These questions are deep questions but the answer is that at your essence you are pure awareness.

You may have an identity which is Sean or Charles or Anne or Mary.

Why do you have that identity?

You have that identity because you have personal memories.

You have an intellect that you use by going back into your memory silos to talk and sound clever and work and do different things.

So you can kind of see now that these things,

The memories and the intellect and therefore your identity which is created from those two are all externally inputted into you.

So how can they really be you?

You of course are a blank white piece of paper.

You are the emptiness of this room.

You are the emptiness of this universe.

You are pure awareness.

You are awareness at your essence.

Everything else is like marks on a piece of paper.

Taking a pen and writing marks on a white piece of paper.

Those are not you.

You are the white piece of paper.

You are the emptiness of the room before anything is put in it.

This is the essence of what Buddhism was.

Therefore,

When you meditate,

How do you meditate?

You meditate with awareness.

What does this mean?

At its essence,

What this means is when I sit down and do Buddhist meditation,

I sit in my own awareness.

I can be aware of sensations.

I can be aware of the breath,

Not focus on that.

I can be aware of the blissful feeling that I'm having,

But I'm never focusing on these things.

Because as soon as you focus on it,

You make it tangible.

And when you make it tangible,

You are making it into something that it is not or could not be.

So let's just take a step back here.

We're now in awareness.

Therefore,

In Buddhist meditation,

You can sit in any posture you want.

Don't lie down because you're probably going to fall asleep,

But you can sit in any way we want,

And then you close your eyes and you be in your awareness.

What initially happens is that thoughts come into your mind.

When thoughts come into your mind,

You may greet them,

Or if you don't want to greet them,

You just let them come and let them go.

But do not have a conversation with your thoughts.

Remember,

You want to abide in the awareness of your mind.

You don't want to attach to the thoughts that come in.

How do you attach the thoughts that come in?

You start talking to them.

After you stop talking to your thoughts for a relatively decent amount of time,

Images appear.

When those images appear in your mind,

You also don't want to attach to them.

You don't want to go on a fantasy fair movie world where you start going off with your images because again,

You're attaching to your images.

Normally what happens if you don't attach to them,

You'll end up seeing landscapes and you'll start to get a blissful feeling.

Again,

If you don't attach to the landscape,

You just let them come and go,

Then you start moving to nimittas,

Which is basically flashing lights in the mind's eye.

As those flashing lights slow down because you're not attaching to them,

It's very easy to go on a whirlwind ride with the nimittas.

And then you're stuck again because you're not in your awareness,

You're focusing.

This is why you can't focus because focus means attachment.

We're not focusing.

Instead,

We are being aware and now the nimittas start to stop circling around in all these beautiful colors and movements in your eyes and they stop moving and then suddenly you end up with one light.

You will start moving towards that light,

It's normally white,

And then you'll be feeling these amazing blissful feelings.

We won't go much further than this because then you probably need a meditative teacher.

Also once you start getting close to the white light,

You're at the very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very early stages of the first jhana.

I hope this lecture has given you some insight.

I hope it hasn't been too boring or too long,

But I've tried my best to keep it relatively non-academic and a little bit interesting.

So thank you for listening and I hope you have got some benefit from this again.

Reviews

OMG!!! Boring???? You are fascinating. For two years I've been on IT and have enjoyed the ride trying to make sense of what this adventure is really. You took me to the next level because I know I want to focus on something specific rather than be in this playground. I want to go deeper to find my 'tribe' I'll call it for now. Every word you spoke captured my mind and the talk felt like 2 minutes. Please can you give a 17 hours talk? 💕

Intriguing, detailed. I’m going to read his academic paper.

What happens after you meditate and see the light? You mentioned white light. But for me it is more like a golden light, pulsating like the Iris of an eye, the iris gold and around it grey. Off course any time you try to grasp it disappear.

I am older I want to live as a Buddhist and learn how to live and be as it is.

Thanks Shaun. Your talks are never too long or boring.for me. The academic side of human experience and longing are the forest. The trees are the individual philosophies and the branches are the philosophy expanded. But the forest is so important for me. To see the whole. It gives me context for the ideas that on the surface seem to conflict.

Great explanation of the differences between Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu meditation traditions.

Thank you for this information. I’m saving this to listen to again. 🙏

Excellent quick lecture!
Answered so many questions for my personal journey. ✨🙏✨

Deeply researched and concisely presented. Talk is drawn from a paper published on Academia.com which goes into more detail. Informative rather than “ inspiring .”

I found this very interesting & informative in a way I could understand. Making me want to learn more about this fascinating subject. Thank you 🙏🕊

Great talk, I enjoyed the quick survey and the similarity of the 4 words. I was wondering when you talked about Ayurveda if that abdomen sea knowledge would be found in ancient chinese medicine, perhaps you’ve already researched there.

Thanks heaps. I have always felt quite confused about the differences and the crossover of these 3. Very helpful. So much gets lost in all the myriad of translation s and discussion.

Super interesting, had many of the stages you describe during non-guided meditations and did not know that was typical. Thanks!

Very good and very informative. Do you have anything contrasting these Eastern Types of meditation with Christian Meditation (James Finley, John Main) and Centering prayer ( Thomas Keating)? Thanks again.

It cleared up some confusion about Zen and Buddhism. I wasn't aware that Buddhism doesn't concentrate on the breath.

Wow! I learned so much in such a short time!! Thank you!!

Thank you, awesome clarifications!
Now, I’m going to read your academic paper.

Grateful! Very informative and helpful and I will be revisiting this again. ✌🏼💕

Brilliant, worth every second of listening! Many thanks for this eye-opener.

Excellent explanations, never a dull moment. Thanks. Will look for the article mentioned