Meditation As Investigative Method
Orientation to Buddhist Meditation Theory
Foundation • Module 1
Estimated time to complete: 90 minutes
Beginning with Meditation
You’ve probably tried meditation. Maybe through an app promising better sleep, a corporate wellness program teaching stress reduction, a parent’s recommendation to “just breathe,” a friend’s admonishment to enjoy the present moment, or even a Buddhist teacher’s smiling suggestion to let things be as they are. The instructions were simple enough—follow your breath, notice your thoughts, let them go. But what are you actually doing? How is this supposed to help you? What were those techniques designed to do long term? And why did the instructions stop there? What comes next? Is this all there is to meditation?
Here’s the problem: whether you encountered meditation through Mindfulness apps or through Buddhist teachers, you likely received preliminary instructions without the theoretical framework that clarifies the immediate and long term primary and secondary goals, not to mention how meditation will supposedly get you there. You’re given fragments—techniques without context, instructions without theory, practice without support. Many people don’t even know that the initial meditation instructions are not the meditation itself, like someone learning the alphabet and thinking that this is what it means to read Shakespeare.
To go deeper into meditation and the theory behind it, the curriculum provides context about Buddhism—not because you need to become Buddhist, but because Buddhism developed something invaluable for anyone who meditates: phenomenological categories for understanding experience, and a precise language for discussing mind and its world. Terms like duḥkha (the pervasive dissatisfaction that marks ordinary experience), emptiness (the lack of fixed identity in persons and things), and the three vehicles (progressive frameworks for practice) need not be taken as religious doctrines requiring belief. They can be seen as investigative tools refined over two thousand years of systematic contemplative inquiry.
To be clear, people often use the word “meditation” loosely to refer to many different types of meditation exercises—like following the breath, cultivating loving kindness or other positive emotional states, and so on—or to the temporary results of those exercises, whether it be a peaceful feeling, awareness of different experiences, or whatever. These loose usages of the term may obscure the meaning and make people think meditation is something very vague—which it is not. So, it may help to give a working definition of Buddhist meditation: devoting ourselves consistently to observing and investigating our own mental and emotional landscape in a non-judgmental, non-reactive way to gain direct insights into the problems of life and death, into whether they can be solved, and if so, how. The job of meditation theory then is to explain how, through cumulative direct insights that dawn as wisdom, we can ideally reduce our existential dis-ease that proliferates into toxic mental states, increase our existential ease that blossoms into healthy emotional perspectives, and develop the wise and compassionate mindset necessary for a truly good life and a good death.
This first module has four video lectures that introduce meditation as an investigative method. The first lecture video provides Buddhism’s historical context and raises questions about meditation as “secular inner science.” The second explains how meditation technique works. The third guides you through practice. The fourth addresses posture for those who choose to practice regularly.
A Note on the Videos
The videos in this curriculum were recorded for courses at Dartmouth College between 2019 and 2023. You may notice occasional references to course materials or classroom elements. Please interpret “this course” as referring to Buddhist meditation study generally.
How to Engage This Module
We recommend trying the guided meditation at least once, even if you don’t intend to practice regularly. The experience of attempting to observe your own mind—whatever happens—provides a reference point for everything that follows. The reflection questions at the end are designed as ongoing investigations rather than one-time exercises.
Video 1: Introduction to Buddhist Meditation Theory
Duration: 19 minutes
What to watch for: How Buddhism spread geographically and evolved into different frameworks. The relationship between these frameworks—are they separate traditions or something more integrated? The question of whether meditation can be extracted from its religious context.
Where Meditation Comes From
The video traced Buddhism’s geographical spread and raised the question of whether meditation can be extracted from its religious context. You don’t need to resolve that now. What matters is understanding that meditation techniques can be practiced without religious belief while recognizing they emerged from a larger framework of investigation.
The next video explains how the meditation technique actually works—why it has two aspects and how they work together.
What to watch for: How meditation technique has two aspects that work together. The analogies used to explain this relationship. The role of questions in developing insight. Most importantly: what attitude to bring when you notice your mind has wandered.
Video 2: How Śhamatha-Vipaśhyanā Works
Duration: 25 minutes
Preparing to Practice
Before we practice, a note on posture. The third video explains the traditional seven-point posture, but what matters most is being comfortable enough to sit still. If the traditional cross-legged position doesn’t work for your body, sitting in a chair is fine.
The guided meditation is straightforward: follow the breath, notice when the mind wanders, return without judgment. The instructions emphasize meeting the moment of wandering with delight rather than frustration—curious and gentle, not judgmental.
Try the meditation at least once. Whatever happens is the actual subject matter we’re investigating.
What to watch for: The seven points of Vairochana posture and why each matters. But also: adapt these to your body. What we’re developing is capacity to observe mind, not achievement of some ideal physical form.
Video 3: Meditation Posture (Optional)
Duration: 14 minutes
Posture matters because discomfort takes up all the oxygen in your mental room. If your back hurts or your legs have fallen asleep, you won’t be investigating anything except pain. The instruction is simple: find a position that allows you to be both alert and comfortable for the duration of your meditation. You can adjust between sessions until you find what works.
The guided meditation that follows uses the breath as the object of meditation. This isn’t special breathing—just breathing as you normally would, but with attention placed on the physical sensations of breathing. The video will walk you through the technique. If your mind wanders (which it will), simply return attention to the breath. This return is not failure; it’s the practice itself.
What to watch for: The basic instructions for working with breath. The emphasis on non-judgment when mind wanders. Try it—this direct experience provides reference for everything that follows.
Video 4: Guided Meditation on Breath
Duration: 17 minutes
What You May Have Noticed
If you tried the guided meditation—and we hope you did—you encountered your own mind directly. Whatever happened during those minutes is worth examining more closely, not to judge it but to understand it.
Perhaps your mind wandered constantly. You’d return to the breath, only to find yourself planning tomorrow’s schedule moments later. Or thinking about what just happened yesterday. Or analyzing the meditation itself. This isn’t failure. This is exactly what human minds do, and noticing it is the first step toward investigating it.
Or perhaps you found brief moments of calm focus, where the breath held your attention and everything else receded. Then suddenly you were somewhere else—lost in thought again. That contrast between presence and distraction, that recognition of having wandered, that’s the mechanism we’re learning to work with.
Some people just experience physical discomfort the whole time—back pain, restlessness in the legs, an overwhelming urge to move. Others find the whole exercise boring. Still others feel surprisingly peaceful, then worry they’re doing it wrong because it shouldn’t be this easy. All of these experiences are valid points of investigation.
The crucial instruction—the one that distinguishes Buddhist meditation from mere concentration training—is the attitude we bring to the moment we realize we’ve wandered. The instruction emphasized delight rather than frustration. Why? Because judging ourselves harshly doesn’t help us see more clearly. It adds another layer of mental activity. But gentle, curious observation—“Oh, look, the mind wandered again”—creates space for investigation. We begin to see not just that we wandered, but what the wandering was toward, what it felt like, what patterns emerge.
This is śhamatha and vipaśhyanā working together in seed form. Śhamatha provides enough stability to notice the wandering. Vipaśhyanā begins to observe what’s actually happening underneath the surface in that moment. The technique is simple; the investigation it enables is profound, especially once we get past the initial awkwardness of sitting still in this rapidly moving world.
A few Insights:
When I first encountered meditation, I thought the goal was to achieve some pure state of concentration free from thoughts. When I’d sit down and focus on the breath, sometimes I felt I was successfully concentrating on it for long periods of time. Other times I would be lost in thought the whole time, like a person trying to swim in a choppy sea. Yet other times I would find myself thinking about whether I was thinking, like a cat chasing its tail. I had a very limited—and it turns out, incorrect—idea of what it meant to meditate.
What changed this was understanding that meditation isn’t about stopping thoughts. It’s about observing them. The wandering mind isn’t the problem to be solved—it’s the phenomenon to be investigated. Every time my mind wandered and I looked into the nature of my mental state, it was a successful moment of awareness, not a failure of concentration.
This reframing matters enormously. If we think meditation is about achieving some special state—calm, clarity, emptiness, whatever—then most of our practice will feel like failure, because most of the time our minds won’t cooperate with that goal. But if meditation is about developing the capacity to observe whatever’s actually happening, then every session is success if we simply notice mind wandering or see what our mental state is.
The working definition we provided earlier captures this: “devoting ourselves consistently to observing and investigating our own mental and emotional landscape in a non-judgmental, non-reactive way to gain direct insights into the problems of life and death, into whether they can be solved, and if so, how.” This isn’t about achieving bliss. It’s about developing a particular kind of open-minded attention—curious, sustained, non-judgmental—that can look directly at experience without immediately reacting to it.
The modules ahead explore what this investigation reveals. For now, what matters is establishing the basic capacity: the ability to notice when we’ve become lost in thought, and the willingness to return our attention without judging ourselves harshly. This simple practice—repeated over and over—lays the groundwork for everything that follows, and learning about different types of meditations with different types of goals.
Until Next Time
The next module begins to provide Buddhist context for what you’ve experienced. You’ll learn about establishing daily practice—how much to meditate, what’s realistic given our lives, what to watch for, and how to work with common challenges that arise. What you bring from this first meditation—whatever happened—will inform how you receive that guidance.
Questions for Reflection
These questions are designed as ongoing investigations, not one-time exercises. If you’re practicing meditation, let them inform your sessions over time. If you’re studying theory without practicing, use them to think critically about the frameworks you’re learning.
1. The Wandering Mind What form did your mind’s wandering take during the meditation? Direct questions about what you were doing? Thoughts about other concerns? Physical restlessness? Planning? Memories? Notice whether these different forms might share something in common—a movement away from simply being present.
2. The Moment of Return When you realized you had wandered, what was your response? Did you judge it as failure? Feel frustrated? Simply return? The instruction emphasized meeting this moment with “delight”—did that feel possible? What would it take to cultivate that attitude?
3. The Two Aspects The video explained that śamatha (calming) and vipaśyanā (insight) work together—you need enough calm to focus, then you can observe with clarity. Did you experience anything like this progression, even briefly? Or did calming and observing seem like the same thing?
4. The Microscope and the Slide Meditation was compared to a microscope—you have to focus the instrument before you can see what’s on the slide. If meditation is the microscope, what is it focused on? What are you trying to observe? This question doesn’t have an obvious answer; let it remain open.
5. The Inner Science Question The first video raised the controversy over whether meditation is a “secular inner science.” Based on your brief experience, does that framing resonate? Does it seem like you were doing something scientific—observing, investigating—or something else? What would make it more or less scientific?
If You Want to Practice
More guidance for how to establish a daily practice comes in the next Foundation module. For now, if you are interested in meditating, simply return to the guided meditation in this module over and over until you know these initial instructions by heart. After that, you can dispense with the video and try following the instructions on your own. In the beginning, daily consistency is more effective than pushing for longer time periods. So commit to doing even just five or ten minutes per day. If you cannot meet your goals for some day, don’t beat yourself up. Just think about what derailed you, see if you could manage those circumstances differently the next time, and try again the next day. It takes at least a few weeks of trying before daily practice becomes an enjoyable effortless habit and the benefits start to permeate one’s day.
This module is part of Tarpa's Palace of Learning curriculum, a secular educational program exploring Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and contemplative practice. All content © 2025