Meditation (Dhyāna)

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.