Mind &
Meditation

from a
Buddhist
Perspective

By Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

According to Buddhism, the fundamental nature of the mind is pure, and defilements are adventitious. This means that through training, problematic ways of behaving and thinking can be eliminated, and the mind’s natural qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom can be made manifest. Like physical exercise, meditation requires hard work, skill and discipline. But unlike physical training, meditation is not about acquiring something new, but rather about uncovering or allowing to manifest the positive qualities that are innate to the mind. Because defilements never penetrate to the basic nature of the mind, and because the mind’s innate natural qualities can be unfolded limitlessly, it is said in Buddhist teachings that every living being has the potential to attain full enlightenment and awakening, or Buddha-hood.

Despite a growing interest in meditation and health among scientists and the public at large, there remains one dimension of the scientific study of meditation that is not often talked about, and that is how such studies may challenge the way we view the mind itself. The predominant view in neuroscience today is that we should be able to explain mental activity solely in terms of its physical basis, i.e. brain activity.

This view stands in some contrast to the view held by the Buddhist teachers, meditators and monks whom these scientists study and with whom they meet in dialogues such as the annual Mind and Life conferences convened by the Dalai Lama. Buddhism teaches that the mind cannot be simply reduced to the physical, and that it can be profoundly transformed through systematic training. This transformation of the mind, and with it the person, is in fact the central goal in Buddhist practice.

It was for this reason that the Buddha taught the practice of meditation. The first step is to assemble the conditions most conducive for meditation. A quiet place, it is said, free from distractions, is very beneficial – a closet or a corner of a room may work for those who cannot set aside a larger meditation space. Cutting back on unnecessary activities and business in one’s life creates time for meditating, and reduces distractions. Most important, however, is some form of ethical discipline in one’s life. Without it, the mind will be too disrupted by negative actions of body, speech and mind to be tamed through meditative practice.

Buddhism teaches a wide variety of meditative techniques, but these can be divided into two main kinds of meditation: shamatha (calm abiding) and vipashyana (special insight). Shamatha meditation is done by focusing the mind on a chosen object of meditation – most commonly, one’s own incoming and outgoing breath. In the meditation, one practices maintaining an unbroken awareness of the breath free from interfering conceptual thoughts and feelings, such as anticipations about the future, memories about the past, sensations that arise in the body, and so on. The aim of the practice is to develop a concentrated and focused mind that is characterized by clarity and stability, and free from mental distraction and laxity.

Anyone who has tried this has probably discovered that the seemingly simple task of keeping the mind focused on one object for even a few seconds at a time seems virtually impossible. The mind is likened to a wild, untamed elephant that refuses to stay in one place.
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Nevertheless, if one persists in bringing the mind back again and again to the breath, the wild elephant becomes tamed over time. It realizes that there is no point running away, and comes to rest with greater and greater ease on the object of meditation. The result is a heightened faculty of attention as well as greater balance and peace of mind.

Achieving peace of mind this way is itself a great accomplishment, but more importantly from the Buddhist point of view, it creates the foundation upon which the complete qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom can then fully unfold. It will be interesting to see if further scientific studies of meditation move beyond their current confines and begin to break into this relatively unexplored territory of the full development of the human potential, as it could lead to a minor revolution in the way we view our world and ourselves.

Brendan Ozawa-de Silva is a Visiting Scholar at Candler School of Theology of Emory University and the Associate Director, Drepung Loseling Institute for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Practice and Culture.