Introduction

Sati Meditation

In today’s complex and hectic world, meditation is playing a more and more important role for those who seek psychological well-being and balance. Many teachers, mostly from the East, provide many different forms of meditation. Some teachers use breath-counting and breath-concentration. Others teach concentration on a "mantra", to visualize a religious image, light, color, or other objects. Unless a practitioner can advance to vipassana practice, these methods all share the same central theme -- concentration of the mind.

Luangpor Teean, an important teacher in the world of Thai Buddhism, introduced a new way of looking at and practicing meditation --Sati Meditation. He taught that meditation is the art of seeing things as they are with awareness and wisdom. Usually we see the world and everything around us through the filter of our concepts or thoughts and through our mental images which we have collected in our daily life since childhood. Thus, these thoughts and mental images form the way we look at the world. Thought is both the source of human activity and human suffering.

Thought is, for Luangpor Teean, the root of greed anger and delusion -- the three sources of suffering in a human being. Luangpor Teean said that we cannot simply suppress greed, anger, and delusion by keeping moral precepts, nor can we suppress them by maintaining calmness through some form of meditation based on concentration. Though these activities are useful to some extent, we need to go to the root of suffering: to let awareness see thought and break through the chain of thought - to go against the stream of thought. When we see things as they are, outside of thought, the mind changes its qualities completely. At the very moment of awareness, the mind immediately becomes fresh, pure and quiet. With this fresh, pure and quiet mind we look at the world in which we live from a totally new dimension, our suffering will lessen, and other wholesome qualities in life such as love, compassion and wisdom can come into being.

Sati Meditation is a form of moving insight meditation. In Sati Meditation the practitioner moves rhythmically with their awareness open to the movement of body and mind. The movement are simple and repetitious, yet Sati Meditation is a powerful, deep and advanced method of self-realization.

Periods of sitting meditation alternate with walking meditation. There is complete flexibility in the amount of time spent on each posture. The aim of Sati Meditation is to attain direct insight into one's self- freedom from pain and suffering, and to attain a healthy mind, one that is stable and wise, and eventually to become fully enlightened. This healthy mind benefits not only the practitioner, but also has a beneficial influence on the practitioner's surroundings, including those who are close to him or her, and to society in general.

Luangpor Teean

The story of Luangpor Teean, the founder of Sati Meditation is, in many ways, similar to that of Hui-neng, the famous sixth patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism in China: both achieved Enlightenment while a lay person; both became monks afterwards, and both had a profound influence on the development of Buddhism in their own country.

For many years Luangpor Teean tried different forms of meditation -breathing, counting, and mantras - all with limited success. While these practices helped to calm his mind, none led to deep understanding - to Enlightenment. Abandoning these forms, he practiced a form of moving meditation and, through it, achieved self-realization or Enlightenment. He then spent the remainder of his life teaching others and founding monasteries that served as meditation and teaching centers.

Awareness

In Luangpor Teean's teachings, thought and awareness are two basic elements in a human being. When awareness is weak, thought drags us away into the past and future, forming a strong chain. Sati Meditation stimulates, develops, and strengthens awareness to see thought am break through its chain.

Technique

Luangpor Teean's Sati Meditation incorporates rhythmic bodily movements as a way to stimulate and develop awareness. Through meditation of bodily movement, awareness becomes active and clear, and as a natural consequence, encounters the process of thinking and sees thought clearly. Languor Teean often warned practitioners that it is very important in meditation not to suppress thought by any kind of concentration. If we do, though we might find contentment and joy, we will be unable to see the nature of thought. Rather, he taught that we should let thought flow freely and let awareness know and see it clearly. All we have to do is properly set up the mind and strengthen awareness through rhythmic bodily movements, one movement at a time. Through the movements of the body we come to see the movements of the mind. As a result, suffering is reduced and wisdom arises. The practice of Sati Meditation, in addition to formal meditation sessions, can be carried out through our daily activities. Sati Meditation is life itself.

The "object of practice" in Sati Meditation is a series of experiences by which the mind progresses step by step towards the end of suffering. These experiences are those discovered by Luangpor Teean. They now serve as guideposts for practitioners of Sati Meditation.