section_path: Meditation traditions/Indian religions/Buddhism
section_name: Buddhism
paragraph_text: Buddhism
  
  Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward awakening and nirvana. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā ("development"), and the core practices of body contemplations (repulsiveness and cemetery contemplations) and anapanasati (mindfulness of in-and-out breathing) culminating in jhāna / dhyāna or samādhi.
  
  While most classical and contemporary Buddhist meditation guides are school-specific, the root meditative practices of various body recollections and breath meditation have been preserved and transmitted in almost all Buddhist traditions, through Buddhist texts like the Satipatthana Sutta and the Dhyana sutras, and through oral teacher-student transmissions. These ancient practices are supplemented with various distinct interpretations of, and developments in, these practices.
  
  The Theravāda tradition stresses the development of samatha and vipassana, postulating over fifty methods for developing mindfulness based on the Satipatthana Sutta, and forty for developing concentration based on the Visuddhimagga.
  
  The Tibetan tradition incorporated Sarvastivada and Tantric practices, wedded with Madhyamaka philosophy, and developed thousands of visualization meditations.
  
  Via the Dhyana sutras, which are based on the Sarvastivada-tradition, the Zen-tradition incorporated mindfulness and breath-meditation. Downplaying the "petty complexities" of satipatthana and the body-recollections (but maintaining the awareness of immanent death), the early Chan-tradition developed the notions or practices of wu nian ("no thought, no fixation on thought, such as one's own views, experiences, and knowledge") and fēi sīliàng (非思量, Japanese: hishiryō, "nonthinking"); and kanxin ("observing the mind") and shou-i pu i (守一不移, "maintaining the one without wavering," turning the attention from the objects of experience, to the nature of mind, the perceiving subject itself, which is equated with Buddha-nature.
  
  The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism introduced Buddhist meditation to other Asian countries, reaching China in the 2nd century CE, and Japan in the 6th century CE. In the modern era, Buddhist meditation techniques have become popular in the wider world, due to the influence of Buddhist modernism on Asian Buddhism, and western lay interest in Zen and the Vipassana movement, with many non-Buddhists taking-up meditative practices. The modernized concept of mindfulness (based on the Buddhist term sati) and related meditative practices have in turn led to mindfulness based therapies.