How many meditation techniques did the Buddha teach?
Well, as I said, I think you can't really put a number on them.
Why I say this is because the Buddha had something called indriya-propriyanyuta, the knowledge of the
the faculties of beings, knowledge of which faculties were lacking and which faculties were
present in the people that he taught so he knew right away how to teach one monk he taught him by having him hold a cloth up in the sun and as he was holding the cloth up in the sun it became dirty and because of something that he had cultivated in a past life he was able to become enlightened so the
techniques of meditation that the Buddha taught are, I would say, only limited by the number of people that he taught.
When he would give a talk, he knew exactly how to teach for that audience.
Sometimes he would travel a long ways just to teach one person, because he had seen that they were ready to hear the teaching and ready to realize the truth.
So that's one thing that can be said.
Now in Theravada Buddhist tradition we separate meditation into two types and the Buddha
So it's possible to suggest that the Buddha did as well, that the Buddha said there are two things that are of benefit and this is samatha and vipassana.
So we therefore try to explain the Buddha's teachings and the many meditations that the Buddha has taught under these two headings.
And Samatha is the cultivation of tranquility.
Vipassana is the cultivation of insight.
Because it seems quite clear and quite readily apparent that there are certain meditations that don't directly lead to wisdom.
because they are focused on a concept.
For instance, if you focus on a light, there's many of these traditional meditations where you focus on a white color or something.
I did this video for kids to teach them the basics of how to focus on something.
So I've had them focus on colors in this video.
I don't know if many kids actually watched it, but it's out there.
But this one can't lead to wisdom.
It can't lead to insight.
So we call this one Samatha meditation.
Because you can stare at white for as long as you want.
There's nothing about the way reality works in the contemplation of white.
If you meditate on the Buddha or you meditate on God, for example, there's nothing in those objects that will lead you to insight.
Yet the Buddha had us practice meditation or in some sense practice meditation on the Buddha to recite to ourselves iti piso bhagava, to recollect the Buddha's virtues.
And so this is samatha.
Now vipassana is the practice to see clearly.
So you would take this meditation object, for example this white disc, and you would begin to look at it differently.
Once your mind became calm through the practice of tranquility,
you would then begin to examine it simply as seeing.
As the Buddha said, This monk asked for the most concise teaching, the concise practice.
So none of this long practice of having to develop common tranquility first.
What's the practice that is going to be the most...
brief the most the quickest to the shortest path to become enlightened and so the Buddha gave him the shortest path and there's a very important sutta for this reason because it's an answer to the question what is the shortest path and the Buddha said train yourself so that seeing will just be seeing hearing will just be hearing smelling will just be tasting feeling will just be feeling thinking will just be thinking
And when you do this, basically there will be no self.
You will not have any attachment to any of these things.
You will not find yourself in any of these things.
And when you do that, your mind will become free.
And so simply by practicing in that way, Bahiya was able to become enlightened, prostrating himself there at the Buddha's feet, or standing there with the Buddha, listening to the Buddha teach.
Now this is the practice of vipassana, when you begin to look at things as they are, rather than trying to cultivate some...
some specific state or some specific concentration.
You begin to look at even the states of concentration.
So these women, the next question these women had, or the one woman had, is the question that I always get from people who are practicing on their own, who don't have, who haven't cultivated meditation to, over the long term with the teacher.
They will ask,
They will explain that after some time they get to a state of nothingness, where there's nothing.
So they'll be practicing whatever meditation they were practicing for some time, and then suddenly they enter into a state where there is nothing.
There is no breathing if they were watching the breath, or no Buddha if they were thinking of the Buddha.
There would just be nothing.
And so they don't know what to do at that point.
And so the practice of vipassana, this is where the practice of vipassana kicks in.
This is where you begin to look at even the state of, in this case, peace or calm or tranquility of mind, which is called pasadhi.
Begin to examine that state because you'll see that actually it is also a contrived state.
You say to yourself, calm, calm, or quiet, quiet.
And you'll get a grasp of this feeling and you'll pick up this subtle liking and the subtle attachment to it and the subtle encouragement that exists in the mind that leads you to fall into this state again and again.
And then you begin to see that these are also impermanent, unsatisfying and uncontrollable.
They don't last forever.
They don't really bring you true and lasting peace and happiness.
And so you're able to give them up and of course as a result give up anything else that might be even less pleasant and less comfortable.
So these are the two types of meditation.
The first one is for the practice of bringing calm.
The second one is for the practice of bringing about insight.
And you might say that basically the Buddha taught these two practices.
For people who had time, he would teach them to practice Samatha first and then give them insight.
For people who didn't have time, he would teach them what you might call Samatha and Vipassana together.
The way I would like to explain it, let's use a graphic here.
There's two qualities of mind.
One is concentration or focus and the other is wisdom or insight.
And you need them both.
Samatha and Vipassana, you need them both.
Some people will practice Samatha first and their concentration comes to a peak without any insight, without any knowledge whatsoever.
Their mind is focused, but they don't really have a clue about reality.
And then they start to develop wisdom until it comes up and joins together.
And when it joins together, that's the moment where you enter into Nibbana.
Now another way, and one that most teachers nowadays will encourage of their students, is to develop both together.
So at the same time that you're developing calm, that you're focusing on an object, as we have people sit and do meditation, for example, watching the rising and falling of the stomach, or other people will watch the nose or so on.
to focus on reality as well, but to do it in a concentrated way as well.
So at the same time as you're developing insight, you're also developing concentration.
And so they still come together, and you still need both of them, and they still lead you to nibbana.
But they come up together.
The third way that the Buddha taught is where you practice to see things clearly first without any concentration.
So this might be where you're studying and when you're thinking a lot, when you're examining reality but you don't have much concentration, and then you start to quiet your mind down afterwards.
So first vipassana and then samatha.
There's one sutra where the Buddha talked about these differences, the different ways of becoming enlightened.
And this is where a lot of the controversy in Buddhism comes from, because everyone wants to say that, no, no, only this way is right, or only that way is right, and so on.
But the point being that there are these two aspects of meditation practice.
And observation suggests that they can be developed individually, but eventually have to balance out and come together in order to lead one to enlightenment.
So that's, I think, one answer on how many meditation techniques.
You could say how many types of meditation or aspects of the meditation practice are there.
There's two aspects.