Meditation Room


Ānāpānasati

Mindfulness of breathing

Anapana meditation is a common form of meditation and is often considered the first step toward Vipassana, or insight, mediation. Anapana focuses attention on natural breathing (in contrast to controlled breathing exercises).

Vipassanā

Insight meditation

Vipassana, often called insight meditation, translates as clear-seeing or seeing the world as it truly is. Through this practice, we seek to cultivate wisdom, clarity, and non-judgement. Practitioners will often begin by observing the breath, and with practice begin mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of emotions, and mindfulness of thoughts.

Mettā

Loving-kindness meditation

Metta or loving-kindness meditation seeks to cultivate a sense of good will, friendliness, and loving-kindness toward all beings. Unlike anapana and vipassana, metta is a mantra based meditation.

The six stages of metta are:

  1. Yourself
  2. A benefactor: a teacher, mentor, or other respected person.
  3. A good friend
  4. A neutral person: a bus driver, store clerk, someone you don't have feelings toward one way or the other.
  5. A difficult person: someone you may find challenging or frustrating, such as a difficult co-worker.
  6. All beings without exception.

The four metta phrases are:

Tonglen

Sending and taking

All the aforementioned meditation techniques come out of the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, whereas tonglen is a Tibetan practice, but tonglen complements these other practices very well and focuses on cultivating compassion.