Meditation (Dhyāna)
Attention flowing unbroken toward one object — the steady deepening just before absorption.
Dhyāna is meditation in the precise sense: once attention has been fixed on an object (concentration), dhyāna is the steady, unbroken flow of that attention, like oil poured in a continuous thread. It is the seventh of Patañjali's eight limbs, the deepening that ripens into full absorption. The word and the practice radiated far beyond the Yoga school — across the Vedānta traditions and, in its Pali form jhāna and Chinese form chan/zen, into the wider Buddhist world.
How it traveled
- Bhagavad-gītāKuru-Pañcāla region · -150applies
- Yoga-sūtraKāśī (Varanasi) · 375explains
- Gheraṇḍa-saṃhitāKāśī (Varanasi) · 1700explains
Key passages(20)
With the mind not moving towards anything else, made steadfast by the method of habitual meditation, and dwelling on the Supreme, Resplendent Purusha, O son of Prithâ, one goes to Him.
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'Reflection (dhyâna) is better than consideration. The earth reflects, as it were, and thus does the sky, the heaven, the water, the mountains, gods and men. Therefore those who among men obtain great
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Better indeed is knowledge than (blind) Abhyâsa; meditation (with knowledge) is more esteemed than (mere) knowledge; than meditation the renunciation of the fruit of action; peace immediately follows
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Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Then Saivya Satyakâma asked him: "Sir, if some one among men should meditate here until death on the syllable Om, what would he obtain by it?"
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By making his body the under-wood, and the syllable Om the upper-wood, man, after repeating the drill of meditation, will perceive the bright god, like the spark hidden in the wood .
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The wise who, by means of meditation on his Self, recognises the Ancient, who is difficult to be seen, who has entered into the dark, who is hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, he ind
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