Brief Introduction to Analytical Meditation For Beginners

Transcript of the teaching video:

Now to begin, in the Buddhist tradition when we speak about meditation, there are two types which encompass all forms of meditation. One is analytical meditation and the other is stability meditation.

Let's take the first for our topic, analytical meditation. In general, to develop analytical meditation, you don't necessarily need to sit down in the proper meditation posture like you do for single-pointed meditation or stability meditation such as calm abiding. The posture and sitting are indispensable for stability meditation, but it's different for analytical meditation. You use analytical meditation throughout the day in each and every action you do. This develops a habit in the mind to follow virtue and avoid non-virtue.

For this, you need to develop a type of mind that controls its state, like a police officer controlling traffic. You need a monitoring tool in your mind to check whether the mind is going into virtue or a negative direction and to pull it back into a positive direction in your thought process. To do this, you need to set up a program that starts right away in the morning with motivation. You need to set your intention with motivation that will carry through all your activities during the day. A motivation not like I will work and serve my family, I will take care of my kids, my partner, not just for that. But whatever I do, I will do for the purpose of benefiting all sentient beings throughout space.

This motivation should habituate the mind with monitoring, like a police officer monitoring each and every thought, every moment, every minute, every hour throughout the day. You need this watchful type of mind that checks whether the mind abides within the framework of that morning motivation or not. It should check whether the mind is being taken over by inappropriate attention which triggers conceptualizations of attachment, anger, and so on.

At the beginning, the most important thing in meditation is to develop a habit of monitoring the state of our mind and correcting it.