The Buddhist Path 179
discs as a meditation subject. Upatissa and Buddhaghosa go into
some detail concerning the analysis of different character types
and how the way one carries out various tasks (how one eats or
walks, for example) reveals the tendencies of one's personality.
In this connection, they also emphasize the need for a medita-
tion teacher-the good friend (kalyii]Ja-mitral-mitta)-who can
suggest and teach a suitable meditation subject. The importance
of the teacher is, of course, one of the great themes of Buddhist
practice. The teacher of meditation stands in the place of the
Buddha himself and, just as one should have faith and trust in
the Buddha and his teachings, so one must have faith and trust
in the meditation teacher and his instructions; without such faith
it is impossible to put the teacher's instructions into practice with
the necessary sense of commitment. Thus kneeling before one's
teacher and paying him appropriate respect are recommended
as generating faith.
It is sometimes suggested in scholarly studies that 'medita-
tion' is traditionally the preserve of a minority and elite group
of Buddhist monastics.^21 Obviously the question of which Bud-
dhists 'meditate' depends on how one defines 'meditation'. As
. I suggested above, it is not entirely clear which Buddhist tech-
nical term the English word 'meditation' corresponds to. But it
is clear that much of ordinary, everyday Buddhist devotional prac-
tice takes the form of some kind of recollection of the Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha, and also the other recollections of good con-
duct, generosity, and the gods.^22 For Upatissa and Buddhaghosa
such recollection practice constitutes the preliminary stage of
calm meditation. There is, then, a real sense in which nearly all
Buddhists-lay or monastic-can be considered 'meditators'. Even
if the term bhiivanii is taken to imply the systematic cultivation
of a particular meditation subject, the line between Buddhist devo-
tions and formal, systematic meditation is not sharp. Devotions
arouse faith and compose the mind; to this extent they form a
preliminary stage of calm meditation, settling the mind in a state
close to dhyiina, technically termed 'access concentration'. To fully
develop calm, however, one must cultivate a further subject of
meditation.
