Discover the Buddha’s Teachings on Mindfulness and Meditation
The new year invites reflection and renewal, perfectly aligning with the Buddha’s teachings on awareness and meditation. It’s a time to set intentions, clarify our purpose, and cultivate a mindful approach to the future.
Within the Tibetan Buddhist canon, the sūtras offer many teachings on the virtues of calming the mind through meditation or contemplation to pacify difficult emotions and thoughts. In several profound sūtras, the Buddha describes levels of concentration that lead to higher states of awakening. The sūtras also tell us that there are four key applications of mindfulness that can help guide our meditation: these include the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena.
Instructions on Right Mindfulness
While there aren’t many sūtras that discuss the actual practice of meditation, we can read the Buddha’s instructions on the method of “right mindfulness” in the sūtra Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings. This sūtra offers a step-by-step contemplation of all facets of reality and freedom from suffering, and concludes with the Buddha exhorting the monks to meditate in solitude and avoid negligence.
The sūtra describes the teachings commonly known as the eightfold path (1.54): right view, right thinking, right speech, right activity, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samādhi. When explaining “right mindfulness” the Buddha states:
“It is well placed, unshakeable, upright, is not crooked, and rightly sees the flaws of saṃsāra as being misery; it is the mindfulness that guides on the path to nirvāṇa; and it means not to forget the path of the noble ones. This is called right mindfulness.” (1.61)
The sūtra follows with the Buddha’s instructions on mindfulness of inhalation and exhalation with sixteen aspects (1.63)—a method of meditation that requires the practitioner to be aware of different aspects of the breath and what accompanies it. These include mindfulness of breath, mindfulness of breathing as it relates to the body, mindfulness of breathing as it relates to joy, and so forth.
For example, the first instruction states: “Mindful as one breathes in, one is perfectly aware, as it is, that ‘Mindful, I am breathing in.’ Mindful as one breathes out, one is perfectly aware, as it is, that ‘Mindful, I am breathing out.’” (1.63)
More Sūtras Related to Meditation
Toh 127: The King of Samādhis Sūtra
This sūtra, much quoted in later Buddhist writings for its profound statements, especially on the nature of emptiness, relates a long teaching given by the Buddha mainly in response to questions put by a young layman, Candraprabha. The Buddha describes various aspects of conduct, motivation, and understanding of emptiness, and offers an explanation of the four kinds of meditation on the path (24.47).
Toh 287: The Application of Mindfulness of the Sacred Dharma
At the request of his monks, the Buddha delivers a comprehensive discourse on the effects of virtuous and non-virtuous actions, explaining these matters from the perspective of an adept practitioner of his teachings, who sees and understands all this through a process of personal discovery. In the final section, which is presented as a scripture on its own, the sūtra focuses on mindfulness of the body and the ripening of karmic actions that is experienced among humans in particular.
Toh 9: The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines
This text, the second longest of three long Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, records the major teaching on the perfection of wisdom given by the Buddha on Vulture Peak, detailing all aspects of the path to awakening. At the same time, the sūtra emphasizes how bodhisattvas must put them into practice without taking them—or any aspects of enlightenment—as having even the slightest true existence.
Within the sūtra is a discussion of the four applications of mindfulness (see Chapter 9), which are often taught as meditations on the four aspects of emptiness. These include the application of mindfulness with regard to the body, the application of mindfulness with regard to feelings, the application of mindfulness with regard to the mind, and the application of mindfulness with regard to phenomena.
More Resources
Read 84000’s knowledge-base article, “Perfection of Wisdom.”
Watch 84000’s “Teachings on Sūtra” episode with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche on the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines.
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~Story written by Carol Tucker, 84000 communications editor