History Project: dhyana/samadhi/concentration

As many of us are aware, the Ch'an part of the Ch'an School comes from dhyana, meditation, or concentration.

The sanskrit word for concentration is samadhi.

I think Ch'an might have some root in it therefore, including the Mahayana and non-Mahayana named samadhis/concentrations.

I started thinking about it when I translated that the monks were in meditation/concentration in the lecture hall:

https://old.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/sy6zqz/xutang_28_perfectly_imperfect/

Hoffman completely glossed over meditation.

Here's my translation:

 

舉。長慶一日陞堂。眾集定。
On one occasion, Chángqìng went up to the dharma hall where there were numerous monks gathered in meditation.

 

My scope:

1. Sometimes it seems easy to take instructions and start saying that "look here, this is the only way." No. This is a historic investigation into the concentrations.

2. I have no objections that Dhyana can be practiced seated as much as it can be practiced "standing, walking, sitting, eating, talking, etc, etc, etc"

3. I have no objections to the scope of the concentrations appropriate to their categories: Anything that Ch'an masters discuss is on topic. Anything that others in Buddhism and Buddha talks about can get earmarked for cross referencing.

Purpose:

1. Historic record
2. As fun things to grok
3. Connecting to tradition

Examples of applications to purpose:

1. wikis
2. records
3. chitty-chat
4. practice
5. yelling-at-me-over-the-internet-because-you-think-this-is-dumb

My charge:

If anyone knows anything about

1. The Big "D": Dhyana-- of which the school is named. (I think ZM's talk alot about this-- my specific charge here would be to really hone in and see if you can quote ZM's 3 times to make your own little hypothesis about dhyana)

2. Evidence/Counter-evidence Dhyana is linked to Samadhi

3. Evidence/Counter-evidence there are subsets of dhyana, or that dhyana is a category, etc

4. Evidence/Counter-evidence of other concentrations that Ch'an Masters talk about

5. A list of named (Priority:Chinese/Sanskrit/English) Samadhis in Buddhism (Gautama)

6. A list of named (Priority:Chinese/Sanskrit/English) Samadhis in Mahayana Buddhism (Shakyamuni)

 

Please specify between 5 and 6. Remember, they are cross referencing names only. We can take them and search them in the CBETA. The point is not to open 5 & 6 up to open religious speculation and bible thumping.

If we're going to talk in length about concentrations in /r/zen they should have someone in the zen linage talk about them.

For this once, just the names are okay though, even without English-translated ZM quotes.

 

Submitted March 09, 2022 at 07:55PM by eschox https://ift.tt/PGrRQ6D