Running and walking meditation are not aimed at training us how to run or walk fast.
In other words, do we carrying out running meditation to help us become better runners? Of course not! No matter how hard we train this way, we will never be a runner like professional runners. It is not going to work that way. We do not do it for that reason at all. We do it to train our minds to have a specific quality.
So, what is the quality that we look for? In all forms of meditation, sitting meditation, running meditation, or so, what Chan practitioners keep investigating all the time are questions like "who recites the name of Amitabha?", "Who drags the dead body?" and so on. With the aid of the reasoning method of Madhyamaka, they realize that the body is not made of matter and consciousness is just a secondary factor in forming the body. In running meditation, Chan practitioners set out to discover the ultimate agency and the most fundamental essence of the mind.
During running, at a certain point, we will suddenly hear a sharp sound of a bat being hit. We stop running at that moment. Our minds go blank, and all thoughts seem to disappear. At this moment, if we try to think about what the blankness is in the way we would habitually do when we carried out an academic analysis, we find nothing because it is not what we think it is.
At this point, how should we go about it? When we suddenly hear the sound, our minds go blank. Do not conceptualize what the blankness is. No matter what it is, just let it go. Simply aware of it. Our mind would only blank out for real if we passed out and lost our awareness at that moment. However, since we are conscious at that moment, we are clearly aware of the blankness we are experiencing.
That blankness we experience at that moment is different from what we would normally experience with our old cognitive habits, in which our minds are not a total blank because our six senses still function in a more subtle way. Our old cognitive habits push us to unconsciously read more books, do more things, browse through more messages on our smartphones, and hit the like button on various social platforms more times. But, when we suddenly hear the sound, the continuum of the six senses, a powerful and biased cognitive tendency, seems to be cut off instantaneously. Yet, we are still somehow aware of what is happening, which is somewhat similar to Alayavijnana, the base consciousness. Therefore, Running Meditation is a way of changing how our minds work.
All forms of meditation can help a practitioner with a higher capability achieve realization in a sudden manner, for example, the Chan Master Xiang Yan. He achieved his realization by accidently hearing a pebble hitting the bamboo. As the majority of us do not have the capability to achieve a sudden realization, we better go about it gradually by systematically carrying out long-term study, contemplation, Sitting Meditation, Running Meditation, and Walking Meditations. By doing so, we gradually change how we habitually perceive things and how our minds work accordingly. If we truly understand what the nature of mind is, then walking, sitting, talking, silence, moving, or stillness, everything is meditation for us.
