Bhavana in the context of "Samatha"

Buddhism, also known as Buddha-dharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and philosophy based on teachings attributed to the Buddha, a śramaṇa and religious teacher who lived in the 6th or 5th century BCE. It is the world's fourth-largest religion, with about 320 million followers, known as Buddhists, who comprise 4.1% of the global population. It arose in the eastern Gangetic plain as a śramaṇa movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia. Buddhism has subsequently played a major role in Asian culture and spirituality, eventually spreading to the West in the 20th century.

According to tradition, the Buddha instructed his followers in a path of cultivation that leads to awakening and full liberation from dukkha (lit. 'suffering'; 'unease', 'unsatisfactoriness') by attaining nirvana, the 'blowing out' (extinguishing) of the passions. He regarded this path as a Middle Way between extreme asceticism and sensory indulgence, and also between the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Teaching that dukkha arises alongside attachment or clinging, the Buddha advised meditation practices and ethical precepts, rooted in non-harming. Widely observed teachings include the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the doctrines of dependent origination, karma, and the three marks of existence. Other commonly observed elements include the Triple Gem, the taking of monastic vows, and the cultivation of perfections (pāramitā).

Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. 'the awakened one'), was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order (sangha). Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence").

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarised in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own (svabhava).

Buddhist meditation is the practice of meditation in Buddhism. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā ("mental development") and jhāna/dhyāna (a state of meditative absorption resulting in a calm and luminous mind).

Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward liberation from defilements (kleshas) and clinging and craving (upādāna), also called awakening, which results in the attainment of nirvana. The Indian Buddhist schools relied on numerous meditation techniques to attain meditative absorption, some of which remain influential in certain modern schools of Buddhism. Classic Buddhist meditations include anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing), asubha bhavana ("reflections on repulsiveness"); reflection on pratityasamutpada (dependent origination); anussati (recollections, including anapanasati), the four foundations of mindfulness, and the divine abodes (including loving-kindness and compassion). These techniques aim to develop various qualities including equanimity, sati (mindfulness), samadhi (unification of mind) c.q. samatha (tranquility) and vipassanā (insight); and are also said to lead to abhijñā (supramundane powers). These meditation techniques are preceded by and combined with practices which aid this development, such as moral restraint and right effort to develop wholesome states of mind.

Sati (Pali: sati; Sanskrit: स्मृति smṛti), literally "memory" or "retention", commonly translated as mindfulness, "to remember to observe", is an essential part of Buddhist practice. It has the related meanings of calling to mind the wholesome dhammas such as the four establishments of mindfulness, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven awakening-factors, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the attainment of insight, and the actual practice of maintaining a lucid awareness of the dhammas of bodily and mental phenomena, in order to counter the arising of unwholesome states, and to develop wholesome states. It is the first factor of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. "Correct" or "right" mindfulness (Pali: sammā-sati, Sanskrit samyak-smṛti) is the seventh element of the Noble Eightfold Path.

In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit: ध्यान) or jhāna (Pāli) is a component of the training of the mind (bhāvanā), commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions and "burn up" the defilements, leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness (upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi)." Dhyāna may have been the core practice of pre-sectarian Buddhism, in combination with several related practices which together lead to perfected mindfulness and detachment.

In the later commentarial tradition, which has survived in present-day Theravāda, dhyāna is equated with "concentration", a state of one-pointed absorption in which there is a diminished awareness of the surroundings. In the contemporary Theravāda-based Vipassana movement, this absorbed state of mind is regarded as unnecessary and even non-beneficial for the first stage of awakening, which has to be reached by mindfulness of the body and vipassanā (insight into impermanence). Since the 1980s, scholars and practitioners have started to question these positions, arguing for a more comprehensive and integrated understanding and approach, based on the oldest descriptions of dhyāna in the suttas.