Śamatha · vipassanā · mettā · zazen · visualisation
House of AnandaMovement · Stillness · Wisdom · JourneyMeditation Traditions · Śamatha · vipassanā · mettā
Buddhist meditation.
Many vehicles, methods and aims.
Meet calm-abiding, insight and loving-kindness in their ethical and doctrinal settings across diverse Buddhist traditions.
Begin with context
There is no single Buddhist meditation. Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions preserve different texts, cosmologies, vows, ritual worlds and methods. Even widely used terms such as śamatha and vipassanā may name complementary qualities, structured techniques or later systems depending on context.
Ethics, wisdom and the path beyond suffering
Defined through awakening traditions, not relaxation alone
Mindfulness is not the whole of Buddhism
Śamatha and vipassanā
Śamatha means calm or tranquillity and cultivates steadiness; vipassanā means clear seeing or insight into experience. In early Buddhist and later traditions they may be developed together rather than treated as rival branded methods. Theravāda systems differ in how they organise concentration, insight and stages of practice.
- Breath meditation is taught in the Ānāpānasati Sutta and many later lineages.
- Satipaṭṭhāna joins mindfulness to body, feeling, mind and principles of experience.
- Modern insight-meditation movements have identifiable nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories.
Mettā and the brahmavihāras
Mettā is goodwill or loving-kindness. It is practised with compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity as four immeasurables or brahmavihāras. Phrase-based guided practices familiar today are important forms, but wording and sequence vary across monastic, lay and modern teaching lineages.
- Goodwill is not forced affection or permission for harm.
- A practitioner may begin with an easier recipient rather than a painful relationship.
- Ethical conduct and community remain part of the traditional frame.
Beyond one Buddhist map
Chan and Zen traditions develop seated practice, kōan study, ritual and monastic forms. Pure Land practice centres recollection and invocation of Amitābha. Tibetan traditions include calm-abiding, analytical meditation, deity yoga, mantra, compassion practices and Mahāmudrā or Dzogchen within distinct transmissions.
- Deity yoga does not mean belief in a simple external god.
- Vajrayāna practices may require empowerment and qualified instruction.
- Use the school’s own vocabulary before comparing it with yoga or psychology.
Practice with care
An introduction is not an initiation.
Use this room to understand language, history and context. Where a practice depends on vows, empowerment, mantra transmission, advanced breath retention or close supervision, learn through a recognised living lineage and an appropriately qualified teacher.
Return to the practical meditation library ↗Source path
Read beyond
the summary.
House of Ananda names both primary-text collections and institutions that preserve, teach or research these traditions. Translations and historical interpretations still differ.
Continue comparing traditions