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View submission: Is Anapanasatti and Zazen the same practice?
In Far East Asian Buddhism, Chih-i's Móhē zhǐguān and The Essentials of Buddhist meditation describes how to practice and move between shamatha and vipaśyanā. Although, written from the Tiantai tradition, it pops up elsewhere as a method. Some Chinese and Vietnamese Pure Land traditions seek a Nianfo samadhi as well which can involve shamatha or rather specific instructions besides vipaśyanā. For example, practicing with incorporating breaths and then switching to a method of counting to ten. This is very similar to some of the methods of Chih-i.
Here is an entry on silent illumination meditations.
mozhao Chan (J. mokushōzen; K. mukcho Sŏ n 默照禪) from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
In Chinese, “silent illumination meditation”; a form of Chan meditation attributed to the Caodong zong (J. Sōtōshū), and specifically the masters Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157) and his teacher Danxia Zichun (1064–1117). This practice builds upon the normative East Asian notion of the inherency of buddhahood (see tathāgatagarbha) to suggest that, since enlightenment is the natural state of the mind, there is nothing that needs to be done in order to attain enlightenment other than letting go of all striving for that state. Authentic Chan practice therefore entails only maintaining this original purity of the mind by simply sitting silently in meditation. Hongzhi’s clarion call to this new Caodong-style of practice is found in his Mozhao ming (“Inscription on Silent Illumination”), which may have been written in response to increasingly vehement criticisms of the practice by the rival Linji zong, although its dating remains uncertain. In Hongzhi’s description of the practice of silent illumination, silence (mo) seems to correlate roughly with calmness (Ch. zhi, S. śamatha) and illumination (zhao) with insight (C. guan, S. vipaśyanā); and when both silence and illumination are operating fully, the perfect interfusion of all things is made manifest. Silent-illumination meditation thus seems to have largely involved prolonged sessions of quiet sitting (see zuochan) and the cessation of distracted thought, a state likened to dead wood and cold ashes or a censer in an old shrine. The Linji Chan adept Dahui Zonggao deploys the term to denigrate the teachings of his Caodong contemporaries and to champion his preferred approach of practice, investigating meditative topics (see kanhua Chan) through Chan cases (C. gong’an), which demands a breakthrough to enlightenment, not simply what he claims is the passive sitting of the Caodong zong. After Dahui’s obstreperous critique of mozhao, the term seems to have acquired such a pejorative connotation that it stopped being used even within the Caodong tradition. See also shikan taza.
Here is an entry on single practice samadhi, nianfo samadhi is one example of such a practice, although people tend to envision the seated version of the practice in the west more often.
yixing sanmei (S. ekavyūhasamādhi; J. ichigyō zanmai; K. irhaeng sammae 一行三昧) from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
In Chinese, “single-practice samādhi.” The term yixing sanmei seems to first appear in a passage in the Chinese translation of the Saptaśatikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra: “The dharmadhātu has only a single mark; to take the dharmadhātu as an object is called one-practice samādhi.” Two practices are then recommended by the text for cultivating yixing sanmei, viz, the perfection of wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) and recollection of the Buddha’s name (S. buddhānusmṛti; C. nianfo). The concept of yixing sanmei was later incorporated into the apocryphal Chinese treatise Dasheng qixin lun and the influential meditation manual Mohe zhiguan. Tiantai Zhiyi, the author of the Mohe Zhiguan, identified the practice of constant sitting, the first of the so-called four kinds of samādhi (sizhong sanmei), with yixing sanmei. Famous teachers of the early Chan community, such as Daoxin, Huineng, and Heze Shenhui, also emphasized the importance of yixing sanmei, which they identified with seated meditation (zuochan) and the cultivation of prajñāpāramitā. According to the Liuzu tanjing (“Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch”), Huineng interpreted yixing sanmei as the maintenance of a straightforward mind (yizhi xin) while walking, standing, sitting, and lying. Shenhui identified yixing sanmei with “no mind” (wuxin; see also wunian).
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