Reading Room · Metaphysical Practices · Method
Where does meditation come from?
Meditation has no single inventor. Its earliest traces are placed in Vedic India, around 1500 BCE, with later forms appearing in Buddhism, Jainism, Christian monasticism, Sufism and Jewish mysticism. Accounts differ on dates and origins, and older practices may be older still.
Facts checked on against 26 sources, 15 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| c. 5,000–3,500 BCE | Wall art on the Indian subcontinent is reported to show people seated in meditative postures with half-closed eyes; some archaeologists date meditation this early.123 |
|---|---|
| c. 1500–1200 BCE | The earliest written references to meditation are found in the Vedas, where the practice is called dhyana.45 |
| c. 800–200 BCE | The Upanishads explore the relation between the individual self (atman) and universal consciousness (Brahman), and describe meditation forms such as the Chandogya Upanishad's progression from outer to inner meditation.46 |
| c. 600–400 BCE | Forms of meditation are recorded in Taoist China and Buddhist India in this period, and the Neiye is dated to about the 4th century BCE.78910 |
| c. 400 BCE–400 CE | The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, placed in a debated range of roughly 400 BCE to 400 CE, codify dhyana within the eight-limbed path of yoga.4511 |
| 5th century CE | Buddhaghosa writes the Visuddhimagga, a meditation manual, and the commentaries on the Satipatthana Sutta are ascribed to him.1213 |
| c. 520 CE | Bodhidharma is traditionally said to have traveled to China, where his meditation became the Chan school, later called Zen in Japan.1415 |
| 1191–1253 | Eisai introduces the Rinzai school to Japan in 1191, and Dogen founds the zazen-oriented Soto school in 1236.15 |
| 1975 | Acharya Mahapragya formally develops Preksha Dhyana, a Jain practice, under Acharya Tulsi's guidance.16 |
Buddhist, Jain and East Asian lines
In Buddhist tradition, the Buddha's own path centred on the dhyanas. The Mahasaccaka Sutta records that he recalled a first dhyana under a rose-apple tree, and the Dhammapada states that without dhyana there is no wisdom.12
Other religious traditions
In Islam, Tafakkur is described as a contemplative reflection upon the universe and is the more mainstream form mentioned in the Qur'an, while Sufism is described as a more mystical form of meditation.2
Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello described how the spiritual exercise of dhyana can assist Christian prayer and contemplation, and Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises are shaped by prayer at Manresa.1017
Modern clinical mindfulness is a separate history
Modern clinical mindfulness is a separate line of development from the traditions above. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the eight-week MBSR course in the 1970s, and Kabat-Zinn's MBSR and Segal et al.'s MBCT were both developed as secular clinical interventions.1819
Kabat-Zinn removed core meditative principles from their Japanese Zen cultural and religious context and combined them with scientific literature, a combination called Mindfulness.20
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Hindu and yoga teachers describe dhyana as the seventh limb of yoga and as a means to samadhi, and Swami Akhandanand Saraswati presents the terms dhyana and gnaana as words carrying a tradition handed down through generations.2122
Buddhist practitioners of Vipassana, Zen and Tibetan traditions describe their practice in their own technical terms; Soma Thera learned vipassana bhavana in Burma in 1936-37, and Dogen described shikan-taza as a form of zazen with neither koan practice nor controlled breathing.1314
Sikhism treats naam simran, meditating on the name of God, as a salient form of worship, and Sahaja Yoga was developed by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi in 1970.108
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Cahn, Delorme and Polich describe Vipassana as a Buddhist practice that focuses on present-moment sensory awareness, and they state that the Vipassana tradition served as the foundation for contemporary mindfulness meditation techniques such as MBSR.23
Early EEG studies by Das and Gastaut reported widespread high-frequency activity during meditation in advanced yogis, and Kasamatsu and Hirai reported EEG changes during zazen in Soto Zen masters.2324
Traditional Buddhist texts describe unpleasant meditation-related experiences, and regular meditators have been found to report them as well. Shapiro (1992), in a preliminary investigation of long-term meditators, observed adverse effects, including two of 27 vipassana retreat participants discontinuing practice.25
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- The practice of meditation is best understood as several traditions that developed in parallel and in exchange, rather than as one origin point. The Indian dhyana vocabulary, Buddhist dhyanas and Jain dhyana each have distinct early sources, and later Chan, Zen, Christian and Sufi forms adapted them.45826
- Modern clinical mindfulness is historically distinct from the religious traditions it draws on. MBSR and MBCT were developed as secular clinical interventions, so the history of Buddhist and yogic practice should not be read as a history of the clinical method.1920
Not yet confirmed
- How far back do the earliest practices of seated concentration reach before the Vedas?
- Did Indian yoga meditation develop before or after the Upanishads, as Weber and later scholars disagree?
- How much of the Chan and Zen meditation method came from Indian teachers before Bodhidharma?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- liveanddare.com: The History of Meditation (A 5,000 Years Timeline) - Live and Dare. Read on · Reference
- psychologytoday.com: An Overview of Meditation: Its Origins and Traditions | Psychology Today. Read on · Reference
- time.com: Meditation History: Religious Practice to Mainstream Trend. Read on · Reference
- positivity.org: History of Meditation: 3,500 Years From Vedic India to Today. Read on · Reference
- mindful.net: History of Meditation: A Sourced Timeline | Mindful.net. Read on · Reference
- hinduwebsite.com: Meditation - History of Dhyana in Hindu Tradition. Read on · Reference
- positivepsychology.com: The History of Meditation: Its Origins & Timeline. Read on · Reference
- wemeditate.com: History of Meditation | We Meditate. Read on · Reference
- news-medical.net: Top Health Categories. Read on · Reference
- pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: Sakshi and Dhyana: the origin of mindfulness-based therapies. Read on · University
- journals.lww.com: Exploring cardinal principles of Dhyana: Constructivist... : Yoga Mimamsa. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- Internet Archive: The Nude Monk's Burning Robes. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: The Way of Mindfulness by Soma Thera. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: [philip Kapleau] Les 3 Piliers Du Zen. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: Zen Culture. Read on · Primary text
- link.springer.com: Mapping the scientific landscape of preksha dhyana: a bibliometric analysis | Advances in Traditional Medicine | Springer Nature Link. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- gutenberg.org: The spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius | Project Gutenberg. Read on · Primary text
- news.harvard.edu: Harvard researchers study how mindfulness may change the brain in depressed patients — Harvard Gazette. Read on · University
- Chinese Medical Journal: Mindfulness Meditation for Primary Headache Pain. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- clarku.edu: History of Mindfulness | Human Resources and Organizational Excellence | Clark University. Read on · University
- archive.org: Full text of "Dhyana And Gnan". Read on · Primary text
- jahm.co.in: Study of Dhyana according to Yogic Literature – A Review | Journal of Ayurveda and Holistic Medicine (JAHM). Read on · Reference
- Cognitive Processing: Occipital gamma activation during Vipassana meditation. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- Internet Archive: Zen Training By Katsuki Sekida. Read on · Primary text
- PLoS ONE: Unpleasant meditation-related experiences in regular meditators: Prevalence, predictors, and conceptual considerations. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
- wisdomlib.org: Dhyana, Dhyāna, Dhyānā: 51 definitions. Read on · Reference