The First Method of Walking Meditation In Buddhism

The First Method of Walking Meditation

In Buddhism

With determination, focus your concentration on stepping slowly forward with your left leg while thinking ‘Bud’, then step slowly forward with your right leg, thinking ‘Dho’.

While the mindfulness is focusing on the mantra-words, it must also be focusing on the motion of each leg while it is stepping forward. Any time that you are not aware of the motions of the legs, it means that your mindfulness becomes unknowingly distracted and that your determination is insufficient. You must restore your determination and proceed with what you are doing again and again until you can manage to be mindful of everything all the time. Do not walk too slowly or too rapidly; the paces should be the same as when you are walking
normally.

This is walking meditation in ‘concentration’, meaning that you treat the motions of the walking as ‘mental target’ or ‘nimitta’ of your concentration in order to exercise your mindfulness and determination. When you reach the end of the path, it is a tradition to always turn back in a clockwise direction.

The Second Method of Walking Meditation

In Buddhism

In this exercise, do not focus your concentration on the motions of the legs while you are walking. With determination, concentrate on breathing the air in deeply while thinking ‘BUD’. With determination, concentrate on breathing the air out deeply while thinking 'DHO'.

Try to keep your the mindfulness, the mantra-words, the ‘knowing-facility' of the mind, and determination in the same picture so that you will be able to concentrate whenever you want to.

When you are tired of walking, you can stop walking but remain standing. Keep concentrating on the mantra-words and the breathing so that there is no interruption during the transition.

The Third Method of Walking Meditation

In Buddhism

With determination, nominate a part of the body as 'mental target' or ‘nimitta’ of your concentration.
You can choose any part of the body as long as it is a part that you are comfortable with and easy to see. Make the part a ‘mental target’ for mindfulness to concentrate upon. Let the mindfulness together with the 'knowing-facility' of the mind concentrate on the part without being distracted away from it unknowingly.

At first, the mental image that you will see will be rather blurry but what you must do is to limit the area where the part of the body is situated to be small enough so that the mind will have no trouble focusing on it.

In the beginning, when you are still not very good at concentrating on a part of the body, you must use imagination. Try to make it looks like what you can see with your eyes, be they, colors, hues, shapes, texture of the skin, location on the body, etc. After you have done it often enough, familiarity will set the image in your mind, you will see the image regardless of whether the eyes are opened or closed. When you can do it to one part you can do it to other parts as well and the results will be the same. And when the mind can see parts of the body clearly, it will be very useful when you use it in contemplation.

In this method of walking meditation, do not concentrate on the movement of the legs, but concentrate on the image of the part of the body and mantra-words which is the name of the body part in Pali [Pali is the Old Indic Prakrit, or dialetct, of the southern Buddhist scriptures, which has become the religious language of Buddhism – Webster’s New World Dictionary].

Suppose you concentrate on a skin, the mantra-words for skin are TA-JO. You will say ‘TA’ silently when breathing in and ‘JO’ silently when breathing out while the mind is concentrating on the mental image of a skin. If you concentrate on a piece of bone, the mantra-words will be UT-TI which means bone in Pali while concentrating on the mental image of a bone.

In stead of a bone, you can even imagine the whole skeleton doing a walking meditation. Hence, the ability to see body parts clearly in your mind will be a big help when coming to wisdom; but I will explain on temptation of the body later so you will not be confused now.

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