The Great Buddha: Buddhist meditation is the practice of meditation in Buddhism.

✨ Buddhist meditation is the practice of meditation in Buddhism. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā ("mental development"),mand jhāna/dhyāna (mental training resulting in a calm and luminous mind).

Buddha Shakyamuni meditating in the lotus position, India, Bihar, probably Kurkihar, Pala dynasty, c. 1000 AD, black stone - Östasiatiska museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward liberation from defilements (kleshas) and clinging and craving (upādāna), also called awakening, which results in the attainment of Nirvana,and includes a variety of meditation techniques, most notably anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing). Other techniques include asubha bhavana ("reflections on repulsiveness");reflection on pratityasamutpada (dependent origination); anussati (recollections, including anapanasati) and sati (mindfulness), culminating in dhyana (developing an alert and luminous mind);and the Brahma-viharas (loving-kindness and compassion). These techniques aim to develop equanimity and sati (mindfulness); samadhi (unification of mind) c.q. samatha (tranquility) and vipassanā (insight); and are also said to lead to abhijñā (supramundane powers). These meditation techniques are preceded by and combined with practices which aid this development, such as moral restraint and right effort to develop wholesome states of mind.

While these techniques are used across Buddhist schools, there is also significant diversity. A basic classification of meditation techniques is samatha (calming the mind) and vipassana (gaining insight). In the Theravada tradition, emphasizing vipassana, these are seen as opposing techniques,[note 4] while Mahayana Buddhism stresses the interplay between samatha and vipassana.[6] In both traditions, breath meditation is a central practice. Chinese and Japanese Buddhism also preserved a wide range of meditation techniques, which go back to early Buddhism, and were transmitted via Sarvastivada Buddhism. In Tibetan Buddhism, deity yoga includes visualisations, which precede the realization of sunyata 

Modern Buddhist studies have attempted to reconstruct the meditation practices of early Buddhism, mainly through philological and text critical methods using the early canonical texts.

According to Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst, "the teaching of the Buddha as presented in the early canon contains a number of contradictions,"presenting "a variety of methods that do not always agree with each other," containing "views and practices that are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected."^] These contradictions are due to the influence of non-Buddhist traditions on early Buddhism. One example of these non-Buddhist meditative methods found in the early sources is outlined by Bronkhorst:

✨🔥The Vitakkasanthāna Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya and its parallels in Chinese translation recommend the practicing monk to ‘restrain his thought with his mind, to coerce and torment it’. Exactly the same words are used elsewhere in the Pāli canon (in the Mahāsaccaka Sutta, Bodhirājakumāra Sutta and Saṅgārava Sutta) in order to describe the futile attempts of the Buddha before his enlightenment to reach liberation after the manner of the Jainas.🔥✨

According to Bronkhorst, such practices which are based on a "suppression of activity" are not authentically Buddhist, but were later adopted from the Jains by the Buddhist community.

✨The two major traditions of meditative practice in pre-Buddhist India were the Jain ascetic practices and the various Vedic Brahmanical practices. There is still much debate in Buddhist studies regarding how much influence these two traditions had on the development of early Buddhist meditation. The early Buddhist texts mention that Gautama trained under two teachers known as Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, both of them taught formless jhanas or mental absorptions, a key practice of Theravada Buddhist meditation.Alexander Wynne considers these figures historical persons associated with the doctrines of the early Upanishads.^[11] Other practices which the Buddha undertook have been associated with the Jain ascetic tradition by the Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst including extreme fasting and a forceful "meditation without breathing".According to the early texts, the Buddha rejected the more extreme Jain ascetic practices in favor of the middle way.

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