Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Fri 05 Jan 2007 03:28 PM PST
...Dhyana is the generic Sanskrit term for meditation, which in the
Yoga Sutras refers to both the act of inward contemplation in the
broadest sense and more technically to the intermediate state between
mere attention to an object (dharana) and complete absorption in it
(samadhi). The earliest known reference to such practice on the Indian
subcontinent occurs on one of the seals, a figure seated in the lotus
posture, found in the ruins of the pre-Aryan civilizations at Harappa
and Mohenjodaro which existed prior to 1500 BCE. Most of the orthodox
Hindu schools of philosophy derive their meditation techniques from
yoga, but superimpose their own theoretical understanding of
consciousness onto the results of the practice...
Meditation is also referred to as a spiritual practice in China.
Chinese forms of meditation have their origins in the early roots of
popular Taoism which existed long before the codification of Taoism as
a formal philosophy during the seventh century, B.C.. However, there is
no concrete evidence to prove that meditation first arose in Hindu
culture and then spread elsewhere. Thus, for the time being the
original meditative traditions in China and India should be considered
as separate and indigenous. To further complicate the issue, analogies
between meditative states and trance consciousness suggest that even
earlier precursors to the Asian meditative arts can be found in
shamanic cultures such as those in Siberia and Africa.
As for modern developments, in trying to formulate a definition of
meditation, a useful rule of thumb is to consider all meditative
techniques to be culturally embedded. This means that any specific
technique cannot be understood unless it is considered in the context
of some particular spiritual tradition, situated in a specific
historical time period, or codified in a specific text according to the
philosophy of some particular individual. Thus, to refer to Hindu
meditation or Buddhist meditation is not enough, since the cultural
traditions from which a particular kind of meditation comes are quite
different and even within a single tradition differ in complex ways.
The specific name of a school of thought or a teacher or the title of a
specific text is often quite important for identifying a particular
type of meditation...
The attempt to abstract out the primary characteristics of meditation
from a grab bag of traditions in order to come to some purified essence
or generic definition is a uniquely Western and relatively recent
phenomenon. This tendency should be considered, however powerful and
convincing its claim as an objective, universal, and value-free method,
to be an artifact of one culture attempting to comprehend another that
is completely different.
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