Dear friends,
In the past, I was told that samadhi means concentration, and samatha means concentration too. (I did think that it was odd, but I knew nuts then.) Closely related is ekaggata, which I was told means one-pointedness.
That's about 15 years ago, when I started to practice meditation. I practiced hard thenhard enough with enough of wrong ideas to end up being uptight, groggy and oftentimes both. It took a nervous disorder during a meditation retreat to seriously doubt the way I was practicing.
I'm fortunate that I later met Sayadaw U Tejaniya who helped me immensely to get on the right path'right' as in moving out of suffering, rather than into more suffering as I had been experiencing earlier.
With this liberating practice, I found that some of my past understanding of the Buddha's teachings seem to be grossly wrong. With some knowledge of Pali, guided by Venerable Aggacitta, and some phenomenological research, I've decided on these English translations of some Pali words:
samadhi composure
samatha settling
ekodibhava unified
ekagga collected
ekaggata collectedness
These meanings of the Pali words agrees with the right path for me. I invite you to consider them in the light of your own practice. Bear in mind though that right meditation involves other factors, such as . These roughly covers only one aspect of it.
I'm not against the use of "concentration" in spiritual or meditation practice. It's just a word. My understanding of it didn't work for me. I've just checked a dictionary and found the meaning of it that I had: complete attention; intense mental effort. Synonyms of it are absorption, engrossment, immersion. Yes, that's it. Looking at it from my present point of view, I'm thinking: No wonder I ended up groggy and uptight.
peace
Kumâra Bhikkhu
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