Samatha
Samatha is a family of Buddhist meditation practices that develops tranquility and concentration, often by sustaining attention on a chosen object.
Meditation object: A chosen sensation, image, phrase, or idea used as the focus of meditation. Attention repeatedly returns to this chosen focus when it wanders.
Samadhi: A broad Buddhist term for collected, concentrated, or meditative mental unification. Samatha develops this wider quality of collectedness.
Vipassana: Buddhist insight meditation that investigates experience to cultivate understanding of its nature. Vipassana emphasizes insight, while samatha emphasizes tranquility and concentration.
Pali Canon: The collection of scriptures preserved in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, written in the Pali language. Its discourses and commentaries preserve influential accounts of tranquility meditation.
Kammatthana: A Pali term for a meditation subject or practice framework used in Theravada Buddhism. Traditional samatha training selects among prescribed meditation subjects.
Breath meditation: A meditation practice that uses sensations of breathing as its primary focus. The breath is a widely used object for cultivating samatha.
Sati: A Buddhist mental quality involving remembering, attending, and maintaining awareness of what is present. Mindfulness helps notice distraction and re-establish the meditation object.
Zazen: The seated meditation practice central to Zen Buddhism, commonly involving upright posture and a range of attentional approaches. Some Zen approaches do not organize practice around attaining samatha concentration.
Visuddhimagga: A fifth-century Theravada compendium by Buddhaghosa that systematizes Buddhist doctrine and meditation practice. It gives a detailed map of concentration practices and meditation objects.
Kasina: A Theravada meditation practice that develops concentration using a visualized or physical device such as a colored disk. Kasina exercises are classical methods for developing strong concentration.