Dear Ven. Kumara,

Thanks very much for sharing this. I think these are excellent translations for
these words - esp. "composure" for samaadhi and "settling" for samatha,

Metta, Bryan








________________________________
From: Kumara Bhikkhu <kumara.bhikkhu@...>
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, October 1, 2010 1:16:00 AM
Subject: [Pali] Not Concentration


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 then—hard 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

Catch the news from Sasanarakkha Buddhist Sanctuary! To be informed of special
activities in SBS and Dhamma teaching tours by SBS monks, join SBSmail:

* EITHER register at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sbsmail/join/ (Yahoo! ID
required. You can read the group description here too.)

* OR send a blank mail to
<mailto:sbsmail-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>sbsmail-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (If
you don't have and don't want a Yahoo! ID, when you get the request for
confirmation, just click reply and send off mail, with or without the body
text.)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]