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term bhāvanā, which means ‘culture’ or ‘development’, i.e., mental techniques of meditation. The crucial question is what would be
culture or mental development. The Buddhist bhāvanā, properly
speaking, is mental culture in the full sense of the term. It aims at
cleansing the mind of impurities and disturbances, such as lustful
desires, hatred, ill-will, indolence, worries and restlessness, sceptical
doubts, and cultivating such qualities as concentration, awareness,
intelligence, will, energy, the analytical faculty, confidence, joy, and
tranquillity, leading finally to the attainment of the highest wisdom
which sees the nature of things as they are, and realises the Ultimate
Truth, Nirvāṇa.” [Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (Grove
Press, 1974), p. 68]
Ven. Walpola Rahula rightly defined what Buddhist meditation
or bhāvanā is all about. It is about development of the mind by
cleansing it of impurities and defilements and cultivating positive
qualities, with the ultimate objective of seeing the nature of
things as they are and realising the ultimate truth. Following this
understanding of bhāvanā, we can see that the acid test for a well-
developed mind lies on how much impurities are discarded and
how much positive qualities are cultivated, and not on how long a
person sits during meditation, or how many students he has, or how
long can he concentrate on his breath, or what state of Jhāna one
claims to have attained.
There are many techniques or methodologies of Buddhist
meditation. Some were introduced by the Buddha himself
and others were developed by great masters over the years, and
sometimes meditators spent hours arguing which is the right
technique. Such arguments only reflect our attachment to our own
preferred techniques of meditation. Whether we concentrate on the
breath or we concentrate on the rise and fall of the abdomen, or we
observe our footsteps as we walk, we are merely adopting certain
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the outcome of such practices and not how good we are at those
techniques. Therefore, as meditators we should check and ask
ourselves whether we have reduced our greed, hatred, and delusion
after practicing meditation, and whether we have developed
certain good qualities like loving kindness (mettā) and compassion
(karuṇā), and not boasting how many hours we can sit meditating
or what jhāna we have attained.
This International Seminar on Teaching and Practice of
Meditation in South East Asia provides a platform for teachers
and practitioners of meditation in this region to interact, share
experiences, and to explore new areas of cooperation. We have
distinguished meditation masters from Thailand, Malaysia,
Myanmar and Hong Kong to share with us their rich and profound
experiences. I want to specially thank you, our meditation masters,
for consenting to our humble request to be with us in this Seminar.
I thank all of you for your attendance at this seminar. Once
again, I wish to thank the World Buddhist University for initiating
this very meaningful seminar.
(Welcome speech at the International Seminar on The Teaching and Practice
of Meditation in South East Asia, Bodhi Park, Shah Alam, Malaysia. Nov 2-5,
2012)
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