What is the purpose of walking meditation and how is it practiced? ~ by Ajahn Jayasaro ~

What is the purpose of walking meditation and how is it practiced?
~ by Ajahn Jayasaro ~

Walking meditation provides both a supplement and an alternative to sitting meditation. 

Some meditators prefer it to sitting and may make it their main practice. 

Walking meditation is a particularly useful option when illness, tiredness or a full stomach make sitting meditation too difficult. 

Whereas in sitting meditation mindfulness is developed in stillness, in walking meditation it is developed in movement. 

Practicing walking meditation in combination with sitting thus helps the meditator to develop a flexible all-round awareness that can be more easily integrated into daily life than that which is developed by sitting meditation alone. As an added bonus, walking meditation is good exercise. 

To practice walking meditation, a path of some 20-30 paces long is deter-mined, with a mark placed at the mid-point. 

Meditators begin by standing at one end of the path with hands clasped in front of them. Then they begin walking along the path to its other end, where they stop briefly, before turning around and walking back to where they started. After another brief halt, they repeat this, walking back and forth along the path in this way for the duration of the walking meditation session. Meditators use the beginning, the end and the mid-point of the path as check-points to ensure that they have not become distracted. The speed at which medi-tators walk varies according to the style of meditation being practiced and to individual preference. 

In the initial effort to transcend the five hindrances to meditation a variety of methods may be employed. 

One popular method, similar to that mentioned in the discussion of sitting meditation, is to use a two-syllable meditation word (mantra): right foot touching the ground mentally recit-ing the first syllable; left foot touching the ground, the second. Alterna-tively, awareness may be placed on the sensations in the soles of the feet as they touch the ground. As in sitting meditation, the intention is to use a meditation object as a means to foster enough mindfulness, alertness and effort to take the mind beyond the reach of the hindrances, in order to create the optimum conditions for the contemplation of the nature of body and mind. 

(From “Without and Within, Bhavana (Mental cultivation) by Ajahn Jayasaro)