A quick YouTube search will reveal dozens of meditation techniques you can try right now.
But in Buddhism, there are only two main types of meditation. The first is aimed at achieving serenity (samatha), the other is aimed at gaining insight (vipassana).
Achieving serenity leads to one-pointed concentration of the mind (samadhi). And gaining insight into such spiritual truths as impermanence, suffering, and not-self leads to wisdom (panna). Here’s a more formal definition of these two types of Buddhist meditation by a scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi from the book The Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha:
The methods of meditation taught by the Buddha in the Pali Canon fall into two broad systems. One is the development of serenity (samatha), which aims at concentration (samādhi); the other is the development of insight (vipassanā), which aims at understanding or wisdom (paññā).
In the Buddha’s system of mental training the role of serenity is subordinated to that of insight because the latter is the crucial instrument needed to uproot the ignorance at the bottom of saṁsāric bondage.
Bhikkhu Bodhi also notes that serenity meditation was practiced by Indian spiritual teachers long before the Buddha included it in his own system of spiritual contemplation:
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The attainments possible through serenity meditation were known to Indian contemplatives long before the advent of the Buddha. The Buddha himself mastered the two highest stages under his early teachers but found that, on their own, they only led to higher planes of rebirth, not to genuine enlightenment….
However, because the unification of mind induced by the practice of concentration contributes to clear understanding, the Buddha incorporated the techniques of serenity meditation and the resulting levels of absorption into his own system, treating them as a foundation and preparation for insight and as a “pleasant abiding here and now.”
He then writes that “The attainments reached by the practice of serenity meditation are … the four jhānas, … profound states of concentration in which the mind becomes fully absorbed in its object.” Then he adds:
Although in the Theravāda tradition the jhānas are not regarded as indispensable to the attainment of enlightenment (Nirvana), the Buddha invariably includes them in the full gradual training because of the contribution they make to the intrinsic perfection of the path and because the deep concentration they induce provides a solid base for the cultivation of insight.
Then he mentions specific meditation techniques that can be used to develop serenity (samatha) and attain the four jhanas:
Mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati), to which the Buddha devotes an entire sutta …, provides an ever accessible meditation subject that can be pursued through all four jhānas and also used to develop insight.
Another method for attaining the jhānas mentioned in the suttas is the four [sublime states of mind] (brahmavihāra) — … loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy …, and equanimity …. Tradition holds the first three to be capable of leading to the three lower jhānas, the last of inducing the fourth jhāna.
Then he goes on to explain the cultivation of insight (vipassana) and how it differs from serenity (samatha):
Whereas in serenity meditation the meditator attempts to focus upon a single uniform object abstracted from actual experience, in insight meditation the endeavour is made to contemplate, from a position of detached observation, the ever-shifting flux of experience itself in order to penetrate through to the essential nature of bodily and mental phenomena.
The Buddha teaches that the craving and clinging that hold us in bondage are sustained by a network of “conceivings” (maññita) — deluded views, conceits, and suppositions that the mind fabricates by an internal process of mental commentary or “proliferation” (papañca) and then projects out upon the world, taking them to possess objective validity.
The task of insight meditation is to sever our attachments by enabling us to pierce through this net of conceptual projections in order to see things as they really are.
Then he mentions the relationship between insight (vipassana) and the three marks of existence:
To see things as they really are means to see them in terms of the three characteristics — as impermanent, as painful or suffering, and as not self. Since the three characteristics are closely interlinked, any one of them can be made the main portal for entering the domain of insight, but the Buddha’s usual approach is to show all three together — impermanence implying suffering and the two in conjunction implying the absence of self.
When the noble disciple sees all the factors of being as stamped with these three marks, he no longer identifies with them, no longer appropriates them by taking them to be mine, I, or self. Seeing thus, he becomes disenchanted with all formations. When he becomes disenchanted, his lust and attachment fade away and his mind is liberated from the taints.
Then he talks about a meditation system aimed at developing insight (vipassana):
The single most important lesson on the practice conducing to insight is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Discourse on the (Four) Foundations of Mindfulness…. The sutta sets forth a comprehensive system called satipaṭṭhāna designed to train the mind to see with microscopic precision the true nature of the body, feelings, states of mind, and mental objects.
The system is sometimes taken to be the paradigm for the practice of “bare insight” — the direct contemplation of mental and bodily phenomena without a prior foundation of jhāna — and, while several exercises described in the sutta can also lead to the jhānas, the arousing of insight is clearly the intent of the method.
Now that you know the difference between samatha and vipassana mediation in Buddhism as explained in Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha, revisit our articles on what is meditation in Buddhism, what is mindfulness of the body, what is mindfulness of feelings, what is mindfulness of mental states, and what is mindfulness of the five hindrances.
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