Meditation Is An Action Word

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A reader of the Hongaku Jodo newsletter asked me why we rarely – he said “never” – directly wrote about meditation. Honestly, we do all the time, but we do it from the perspective of trained Buddhists. What we write about is usually incorporated into meditation. One who is not familiar with meditation will almost always not understand what meditation concerns itself with.

For many in the West, or trained by “cult” leaders who claim to be gurus or meditation masters, the theory is that meditation is used to become more relaxed. This may have been a result of using the term šamatha, usually translated as “tranquility”. In the West we take “tranquility” to mean, “calm”, “blissful” or just “relaxed”. So many meditate to relax. You can see them in meditation halls all over America. They are the ones sitting in chairs, leaning back again it with blankets wrapped around them looking like they are asleep, sometimes they are.  Unfortunately, this is not meditation. Meditation is very active and not very relaxing.

The paradox is this: one does not meditate to relax; one relaxes to meditate. You have to already be relaxed or calmed down in order to meditate. If the potential meditator is clinging to ideas as they begin their session then they are creating stress. Creating thoughts is precisely the brain’s function, and an idea arises in the brain a person clinging to their preconceptions and opinions will invariably begin to follow the ideas that arise. The stop watching the ideas as they come and go and start engaging the ideas begging them to stay. They begin judging and analyzing the ideas that arise.

There are many relaxation exercises taught in monasteries and by competent meditation teachers, but sitting in meditation to relax is not one of them. To be begin meditating one should have already relaxed and let go of the fear of being wrong, preconceived notions of reality and how things are supposed to be. Without that state of mind that makes no judgment possible meditation cannot even begin.


The infinitive “to meditate” is an active verb. It means to do something. In the original vernacular of Buddhism it is called, bhāvanā, which means “to cultivate”, “to develop”, “to produce”. If you are just sitting there all snug and cozy you are not producing anything, cultivating much or developing anything but a callous on your butt.

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