Expert: Justin Choo - 4/19/2005

Question
What types of meditation are there and why do they have so many types of meditation?

Answer
Hi Poppy Smith,

Thank you for asking me.

There is actually only one purpose in Buddhist meditation, and that is training the mind to be still.  The Buddhist term is "Bhavana" which simply means "mental cultivation".
The different terms given are mainly to emphasize certain objectives after having calmed the mind.

Our mind is very restless when we do not know how to calm it.  The Buddha described an untrained mind being like a fish out of water, fluttering uncontrollably. Generally, Buddhist meditation are of 3 types:

1. Meditation on radiating "loving kindness" (Metta Bhavana).  This is a very simple kind of mental concentration where the mind is projected towards radiating of "loving kindness and goodwill" to all living beings.

2. Meditation for tranquility (Samatha Bhavana).  This is to focus our mind on one object, for example, the inbreath and outbreath  at the tip of the nostril.  By concentrating such for a period of time, the mind will be stilled and concentrated, until one experiences a very high degreee of calmness or tranquility.

3. Insight meditation (Vipassana Bhavana).  We can say that this is a further step towards a higher level of Buddhist meditation.  After calming the mind we can train our mind to be "mindful" of all our thoughts and feelings; to watch all of them with detachment until we experience a certain degree of "insight" to the "true nature of all the mental activities".

I try to explain in the most simplest way, and hope that you are satisfied with the comments.  Please come back if you need further explanation.

Smile from justinchoo :-)