Sitting Meditation and the Art of Settled Stillness (Friendly)¶

Does Sitting Meditation Actually Work?¶

You've probably seen someone who meditates every day without fail — cross-legged on a cushion, eyes closed, looking serene. Maybe you've tried it yourself and found your mind racing the whole time, going nowhere.

Xuefeng has a characteristically blunt take on this:

Many people love sitting meditation, advocate it, and believe it can calm the mind, produce supernatural abilities, and lead to Buddhahood — and this is true.

But if you haven't resolved the following issues, your meditation is absolutely pointless:

He then lists eight questions: Have you resolved the basic problems of survival? Have you resolved the problem of sexual hunger? Have you taken care of your parents and children? Is your heart actually free of troubles and clinging? Have you repaid your karmic debts from past lives? Have you accumulated enough merit? Have you cleared the weeds from your inner life? And — do you actually know where you're going after you die?

Until all eight of those questions are answered, sitting meditation is, in his words, "a blind person lighting a candle — a complete waste of wax."

This is vivid because it's true. Imagine trying to meditate in a room where someone has left the gas on. No matter how good your technique, your body knows something is wrong. The unresolved tensions of life are exactly that gas leak — and no sitting posture can substitute for actually turning off the valve.

So What Is "Settled Stillness"?¶

Xuefeng makes an important distinction: settled stillness is not the same as sitting still. It's not about the body. It's about the mind and consciousness.

The spirit is found in stillness; through stillness one sees the spirit. Demons are found in agitation; through agitation one encounters demons. This stillness is not empty blankness — it is stillness of intention and heart.

Think of it this way: a lake surface that has no wind blowing across it can clearly reflect the moon. When waves disturb it, the reflection is broken. Settled stillness is when the lake of your consciousness becomes genuinely calm — not just on the surface, but at depth. In that state, something remarkable becomes visible.

Without serenity there is no far-reaching vision; without stillness of heart one cannot become a celestial being. Stillness generates wisdom; movement generates confusion.

The Chinese word gōngfu (功夫) that appears in the term 定静功夫 is the same word as "kung fu" — it means a real skill, earned through sustained effort. Settled stillness isn't a passive state you fall into; it's an achievement.

When Can You Start Seriously Practicing?¶

Once someone has genuinely resolved the eight life questions and met the inner conditions Xuefeng specifies — at least two years in the Second Home community, a mind that doesn't cling, fluid adaptability, a return to childlike openness — then a specific practice becomes available: the Art of Transcending Mortal Bones.

The Art of Transcending Mortal Bones: From Sitting to Ascension¶

The Art of Transcending Mortal Bones is what Xuefeng discovered during his own meditation sessions. It's not complicated to begin:

Find a quiet place that is fragrant with birdsong, with fresh open air, clean and unpolluted. Invite a trusted friend to stand guard... Sit — whether in full lotus or half lotus, sit as suits you. Hold the body upright, let it be at ease... Once body and mind are fully settled and the breath is even and calm... slowly close the eyes. Then begin to regulate the breath — not coarse, not gasping; let it be fine, gentle, and continuous. Do not think; have no intention. Simply sit.

What makes this practice different from ordinary meditation is where it leads. There are five distinct levels:

First level: After working through the initial waves of thoughts and memories, the mind gradually empties. Then something shifts — the body becomes soft and light, a gentle bliss arises, ten qualities of wholeness emerge. Xuefeng says this state is "a hundred times more pleasurable than the sensation of one's wedding night." More importantly: you have genuinely awakened to the meaning of life.

Second level: After rejecting the first level's bliss (yes, you have to release even that pleasant state to go deeper), a subtler clarity arrives — Buddha-nature itself becomes visible. The heart settles in a way that it "will not easily regress."

Third level: This is the threshold of celestial being-hood. The most telling sign? You can go ten days without feeling hunger. The body has reorganized itself into a kind of self-contained energy system. The highest attainment in Indian yoga — the deepest samādhi — corresponds to this level.

Fourth level: Supernatural abilities become available. The practitioner can choose to ascend to the Thousand-Year World or the Ten-Thousand-Year World.

Fifth level: This is Buddhahood. The practitioner can ascend to the Elysium World.

A Note from Xuefeng¶

Even Xuefeng himself, who developed this system, approached it with caution:

I practiced cultivation exercises for about ten years, mainly for health. I practiced outdoors... In-room sitting meditation I did less often, but the effects were excellent — the Art of Transcending Mortal Bones was mainly known to me through sitting. However, I noticed a problem: the more I sat in meditation, the more easily I could become destabilized — harmful to family and close ones. So I did not go deeper. Awakening and direct verification complement each other; verification doesn't require sitting. It happens everywhere in life.

This is a grounding reminder: the destination of settled stillness is more important than the particular vehicle of seated practice. Life itself, lived rightly, is also a practice.

One Sentence Summary¶

Sitting meditation is valuable — but only when life's foundations are in order; then it becomes the path through which consciousness transcends the ordinary world, level by level, until it arrives at its true home.

Rectifying Body and Mind · Inner Cultivation · Purifying the Mind · Advanced Refinement · Becoming a Celestial Being · Becoming a Buddha · Elysian Bliss · Peak Experience · Mind Without Abiding · Mind Without Hindrance