The 7 Types Of Meditation

In this short dharma talk, we look at the 7 types of meditation that exist out in the world today. Almost all meditations can be reduced down to these 7 categories. It takes wisdom, understanding, and experience to know which meditation to apply in specific situations... this comes with time. The ego gets bored with meditation, so it can be powerful and useful to switch your meditation once you reach the wall of the effectiveness of a certain practice and to try something new and useful.  

Transcript

Welcome,

My name is Evangelos.

I am a Dharma teacher in the Nam Jao lineage and a co-founder of Four Ways to Freedom.

Today we're going to be describing the seven types of meditation.

You may find them useful to understanding the different styles and categories of meditations that exist out in the world today.

And they're very useful in terms of knowing what meditation to apply in specific situations.

There are obviously thousands of meditations that exist and you can find them in different apps and in different spiritual books.

And they can all be reduced down to these seven categories.

It takes wisdom,

Understanding and experience to know which meditation to apply in what situation.

And this will come with time.

The ego gets bored with meditation.

It's powerful and it's useful to switch your meditation once you reach the wall of the effectiveness of a certain practice and to try something new and useful.

We all have our favorite meditations and after a while when we do them,

We notice that our mind can still wander while we're in the middle of our practice.

So the purpose of teaching you these is so that you understand that many creative meditations that exist are elaborations and remixes of the seven classical meditations.

The first six meditations which I will describe in some detail as well as the seventh one in some detail.

But the first six meditations serve the purpose of cultivating joy,

Calm and tranquility.

While the seventh meditation called insight serves the purpose of cultivating wisdom and understanding.

So the first six meditations which are often lumped in the category of samatha,

Which means tranquility are breathing meditation,

Sound or mantra meditation,

Chakra or energy work,

Devotional work,

Meaning giving service,

Creative visualizations and movement.

So movement means it's more active.

And then the seventh meditation is called insight or analytical meditation or investigative meditation.

So I'm going to go through these again so you understand them in a little more detail.

And remember that any meditation you do can be specifically allocated to one of these categories and they're all meant to serve your awakening,

Your unraveling,

Your unfoldment,

And they're all meant to bring peace and liberation from your mind,

Your thinking mind,

Your body,

Your emotions.

The first type of meditation we're going to talk about is called breathing meditation.

And in terms of breathing meditation,

We use breathing as a focal point or an anchor point to bring us into the meditative present moment,

Into presence.

Because breath is always with us,

It's a powerful tool to keep us centered in the here and now.

Curiously,

Breathing meditation and the discovery of breathing meditation is often allocated to the Buddha as the discover and the development of breathing meditation.

And there's different ways to do breathing meditation.

In terms of the Buddha,

He cultivated the practice of anapanasati,

Which means mindfulness of breathing,

And he divided it into tetras,

Meaning four categories with four steps each,

Meaning there's 16 ways to tune into the breath,

16 steps to really get you to focus in on your breath,

And they're all meant to just help you so that your mind doesn't wander.

And we're not going to go into the 16 tetras.

You can read about it,

Anapanasati,

On the internet.

There's a lot of wonderful material out there,

And you don't necessarily need to know the 16 steps.

You can just focus in on the breath,

And that's called breathing meditation,

Meaning you're using that to calm your nervous system.

You're using it as an anchor because consciousness needs a point and an object in its meditation so that you wander less.

The next type of meditation we can call mantra or sound meditation.

And what that means is that we're using words quite often in Sanskrit or Pali or another spiritually rich language.

And how we use it is we're repeating the same sound or words over and over and over again to replace our thinking mind.

It can be omaham omaham omaham or ommani padmeham ommani padmeham ommani padmeham.

Or it can even be in English.

Please heal in me what needs to be healed.

Please teach me what I need to learn.

So you repeat these simple phrases,

These simple sounds,

These simple,

What are sometimes called seed syllables,

To get yourself,

To get over yourself so that you're not just randomly talking to yourself.

So you could also call it replacement therapy.

You're replacing your thinking mind and thinking words and how you talk to yourself with other words,

With other sounds,

With other vibrations.

The next type of meditation,

The third one is called devotion or service.

This is an interesting one because part of the practice of meditation is to learn to get over yourself.

And to get over yourself,

Sometimes it's very difficult to meditate.

And so what this means is that you are generous with your time,

You're generous with your actions by serving other or others.

And this doesn't mean serving in a people pleasing kind of way,

But serving from a generous heart.

And in terms of devotion and service,

You can serve a teacher,

You can serve your intimate partner,

You can serve your next door neighbor,

You can serve an organization.

And what that means is that you're giving,

You're giving your time,

You're giving your talents without expecting anything in return.

Have you ever noticed that when you go out and you help somebody that you feel better,

That you feel calmer,

That you feel more tranquil.

One of my practices used to be that I would shovel the snow early in the morning of all my neighbors.

In other words,

I was devoted to serving my neighborhood by clearing the snow after a heavy snowfall.

I would feel wonderful after this practice.

And it would feel like I was just meditating for 30 minutes.

And I did this practice when I found that I was restless and couldn't sit.

So I was just getting over myself by giving to others and they didn't even have to know it.

So this is devotion.

And devotion means that you're serving others and giving to others or giving to a cause that's greater than yourself in your own personal immediate needs.

The next type of meditation is called chakra meditation,

Or energy meditation.

And this is a meditation where we focus on energy channels in the body,

Like at the forehead or the throat or the heart or the belly or the perineum.

These are meditations where we study energy lines like meridians.

You can see these meditations and the effect of them when you do something like reiki,

Where again you're studying the energy channels.

And when you focus on the energy channels,

Which are pools of light,

Pools of energy that intersect and have intensified energy that help you clear the blocks in your body,

The blocks in your energy system.

Quite often these are associated with colors.

These are associated with qualities of the human experience.

And when we focus on the chakras or the energy points,

We feel a release of energy,

Which also produces bliss,

Joy,

And eventually calm.

The next type of meditation is called visualization.

Sometimes it's called creative visualization.

And this is where we replace the images or stories in our head with a creative visualization where we imagine a situation that brings us peace and calm.

So for example,

You can visualize nature.

You can visualize a flower.

You can visualize a candle.

You can visualize the planet healing.

In other words,

You have this powerful consciousness tool that can imagine various situations and sceneries that produce a sense of beauty inside of you.

Some people find it difficult to visualize.

So visualize doesn't always mean that you're seeing something.

It could mean that you're just having a general feeling about your inner world.

And there are objects that are more sacred than other objects.

So for example,

If you visualize,

Let's say an old sneaker,

It's probably not going to be as powerful as visualizing a calm lake,

For example.

Visualizations often have color and are often associated with nature or with space.

The next type of meditation is called movement.

You could also call it mindful movement.

And these are practices like yoga,

Tai chi,

Conscious movement.

It's where the body is used and you mindfully pay attention to how your body moves through space.

Again,

These are powerful meditations.

And we don't really ever say that one meditation is better than the other.

It's just you want to be aware of which meditation is used in certain situations.

We have a body and we definitely want to bring awareness to the body and how it moves through space.

Usually for these mindful movement meditations to be considered meditations,

There's an element of repetition,

But not always.

For example,

In conscious movement,

You don't always repeat things,

But you might.

And you're slowing yourself down to get to the meditative state.

We don't really refer to it as mindful movement.

For example,

If you play soccer,

It could be mindful movement,

But it's not mindful movement if you're attached to the result.

In other words,

You want to win a game because that keeps you busy and that keeps you chasing something.

But you could play soccer in the spirit of being aware of your body.

So again,

We're not discounting any physical activity unless of course you're obsessed with winning or obsessed with achieving something because meditation is the art of being in the here and now and accepting what is.

Then the final meditation is called insight.

And in sight,

If you break down the word,

It means an understanding is coming into view,

Into your sight,

Into your sphere of seeing.

We can also call this analytical meditation or investigation or inquiry.

And this is where we start to connect the dots of our inner world,

Where we explore repeating patterns.

How do physical sensations connect to emotions connect to thoughts?

Classically,

Insight meditation serves the purpose of leading you to an understanding that life is impermanent.

That when an arising comes into you that there's a struggle for it to be born and there's a struggle for it to die.

So you're exploring the struggle of your inner world in terms of how phenomena inner and outer actually come together inside of you.

And there is a there's some tension that's produced.

So it's your understanding of how that tension comes into being,

Has a life and then passes away.

And then an understanding that this world is a dream,

That your manifestation is a dream,

And that life is happening and will happen in pretty much the blink of an eye in terms of the whole scope of life.

Insight can also be where you drop a question into consciousness and it falls into the bottom of the lake of consciousness and you just listen.

So the question could be,

Please show me the next steps in my life.

Or a question could be who am I?

Or question could be,

What is this experience?

So you drop a question and then you listen for the answer.

But quite often in insight practice,

The question you pose leads to better questions.

Because ultimately,

There are no answers.

Because we really don't know what the human experience is all about.

It is really a mystery of why we're here and what it is that we're supposed to be doing.

And so insight leads to understanding,

It leads to wisdom,

And eventually,

It leads to peace.

So I'll repeat those again,

The seven types of meditation are breathing,

Sound,

And mantra meditation,

Devotion or service,

Chakra or energy meditations,

Visualizations,

Movement,

And the last one is insight.

If you explore all the meditations that exist in the world,

They're all elaborations of these seven meditations.

And it's important to understand that none is better than the other.

We want to get into the practice of stilling our body,

Stilling our emotions,

Stilling our thinking mind,

Because this leads to freedom.

This leads to peace,

Liberation,

Awakening,

Is being able to sit still and receive the beauty of the divine.

Thank you.

Namaste.

Reviews

As a person new to meditation, this was very insightful and helpful to understand