Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation

This is what I understand from reading on about this mystical religion and the importance of meditation to it.

There are two main types of meditation:

1) concentration meditation (focusing),
2) insight meditation (mindfulness)

Most kinds of meditation are the concentrative type which is, simply put, a form of self-hypnosis i.e focusing on something.
The other main type of meditation -- insight meditation -- is the analysis of thoughts and feelings in such a way as to cause 'realization of the subjectivity and illusion' of experience. This is done in a effort to attain transcendental awareness.Buddhist meditations are usually of this type.

Buddism and Meditation

Through meditating we relax which is then a prelude to awareness. Meditation is how you relate to things, not thinking of the past or the future, but the present, in the moment, from moment to moment.

Ego:

Difficulty is that the ego mind tries to control everything, and by trying to discipline your mind by meditating the ego tries to take control. Meditation helps you to stop controlling things and helps you to relate to things in a peaceful way.....by stop trying to control things you find freedom....'its not the noise disturbing you its you disturbing the noise'. By being still and by not controlling you can face things, and by facing things can become one with things. Then beyond oneness, nothingness where no fighting, no conflict.This is the gap between our thoughts (not to be confused with a suppression of thought or simple blankness).The gap between two thoughts is essence. But if in that gap there is a lack of presence, it becomes ignorance and we experience only a lack of awareness, almost an unconsciousness. If there is presence in the gap, then we experience the ultimate].

In has been suggested that in this gap the increased awareness we experience is like the difference in our awareness between our usual dreaming and awake selves.

Silent spaces between thoughts:

In the gap between thoughts nonconceptual wisdom shines continuously. -Milarepa
When through meditation we are able to access the silent spaces between thoughts, we enter into the field of unbounded awareness. The silence we experience in meditation is in the "gap" between thoughts. Glimpsing this field of quiet, expanded awareness allows us to recognize that our essential self is not the perpetual traffic of thoughts that fill our minds, but the silent witness to our thoughts, words, and actions. This is the "software of the soul" where we are able to connect with our higher self-where energy, creativity and inner awareness are our natural state of being. The purpose of meditation is to enrich all aspects of life-body, mind, and spirit. (Dr. Deepak Chopra)

or put another way:

'the play of the mind includes three elements: differentiated and undifferentiated mind-moments, and the larger background awareness in which the interplay between these two takes place...these three elements are known as movement, stillness, and awareness....The pulsation of the mindstream, with its alternation between movement and stillness, belongs to the the realm of energetic flow. And the larger open ground of awareness, first discovered in moments of stillness, is the realm of pure being itself, eternally present, spontaneous, and free of entrapment in any form whatsoever.' (http://www.purifymind.com/PlayMind.htm)