Meditate or "Rocky & Bullwinkle"? (cartoon)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly, Wikipedia edit

Tibetan Vajrayana meditation, deity worship. Goddess Green Tara visualization thangka.

One can either meditate (cultivate, develop, grow) or watch cartoons like "Rocky & Bullwinkle"

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Östasiatiska, Sweden, c. 1000 AD

Buddhist meditation is the practice or cultivation of purification of view (wisdom), virtue, and concentration in Buddhism.

The closest words for meditation in the classical Buddhist languages like Pali and Sanskrit are bhāvanā ("cultivation, development" lit. "bringing into being"), jhāna/dhyāna ("meditative absorption, "mental training resulting in a calm and luminous mind"), and kammatthana ("field of endeavor or effort").

Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path of purification toward liberation, awakening, and nirvana, which includes a variety of meditation techniques -- usually divided into two, serenity and insight.

Mindfulness of death, Thai Theravada

• For the gaining of insight or vipassana
• there is asubha bhavana ("reflections on repulsiveness"),
• contemplation of Dependent Origination (pratityasamutpada),
• mindfulness (sati), and recollections or reflections (anussati),
• including mindfulness of in-and-out breathing (anapanasati),
• jhana developing singlepointednesss of mind),
• the Four Sublime Abidings (Brahma Viharas, loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity).

The historical Buddha

These techniques aim to develop mindfulness, samadhi (coherence, focus, lucidity, concentration) or, more generally, shamatha (tranquility) and insight (vipassanā). They can also lead to magic power (abhijñā).

These meditation techniques are preceded by and combined with practices that aid self-development, such as moral restraint (virtue, sila), and right effort to develop wholesome states of mind/heart.

Standing, walking, reclining, sitting meditation

While these techniques are used across Buddhist schools, there is also significant diversity. In the old  Theravada tradition, reflecting developments in early Buddhism, meditation techniques are classified as either shamatha (calming the mind) and vipassana (producing insight).

Later Chinese and Japanese Mahayana Buddhism preserved a wide range of meditation techniques, which go back to early Buddhism, most notably the defunct Sarvastivada school.

In Tibetan, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Mongolian, and Russian Vajrayana Buddhism, deity worship and tantric yoga include visualizations, which precede the realization of shunyata ("emptiness" or the impersonal nature of all things). More