What Is Meditation?
In the west, the word meditation has a long and complicated history, and it has no precise counterpart in Asian traditions.
- Encounters with Asian culture, particularly the spiritual traditions of India, have had a significant influence on contemporary use.
- In my observation, the modern concept of meditation represents a mingled knowledge of Western and Asian issues, a strange combination of the old and the new.
The word "meditation," typically in its Latin form meditti, has been associated with Christianity in the West, but also with philosophy and the arts.
In this complex tradition, the word usually refers to an associative and nonlinear form of thought that goes beyond simply logical thinking but nevertheless “engages the intellectual or discursive faculties,” as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it.
- Meditation is a kind of reading, prayer, or creative imagery that is frequently based on scripture.
- When Western academics started to interpret Indian and other Asian classics, the word "meditation" came to be used in a broader meaning, referring to Buddhist and Yogic practices that are "aimed at the elimination of rational or worldly mental activity," according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
- The technical focus of the scientific study of these activities has bolstered such non-discursive interpretations of the word.
- Almost all scientific meditation research investigates technical (rather than content-oriented) Asian techniques, and they have also dominated the general public's interest in meditation in the last half-century.
- As a consequence, the word "meditation" is now increasingly often used to describe activities that do not mainly involve "the intellectual or discursive powers."
- The Asian traditions examined include a wide range of activities, including discursive and non-discursive practices, content-oriented and strictly technical techniques.
- The current article tries to define the word "meditation" in a manner that raises interesting issues about the nature of meditation as a starting point for these debates.
How Does Meditation Work?
Meditation is an attention-based method for inner change, according to the proposed definition.
- This concept is wide and comprehensive, but it is also very radical in certain ways.
- On the one hand, it encompasses a variety of activities that are frequently referred to by other titles, such as ritual, prayer, and contemplation.
- However, it specifically excludes a variety of methods that are often referred to be meditation, such as pure relaxation techniques.
- Furthermore, the proposed definition is limited to technical activities and excludes spontaneously generated mental states.
- It also eliminates artistic or philosophical works that are often referred to as "meditations" on a certain subject.
The many elements of the concept of "meditation," as well as the boundaries between meditation and other phenomena, will be discussed in depth in this article.
We must also try to demonstrate the cultural significance of the definition by connecting these elements to the history of meditation throughout the Eurasian continent, using material from previous articles in this collection.
Meditation - Arriving At A Definition
However, certain fundamental definitional issues must be addressed before further with this topic. Definitions that are generic:
- Certain cultural historians object to the use of general, unitary definitions, such as the one that defines meditation as "an attention-based method for inner change," since they are intentionally oblivious to cultural and historical characteristics in some ways.
- In contrast to the historical, cultural, and social “situatedness” portrayed in most of the articles in this collection, such a description of meditation may readily be accused of the anachronistic and Eurocentric imposition of modern-day Western ideas on a mainly premodern Asian material.
This is readily mistaken for what cultural historians derisively refer to as "essentialism," a way of thought that ascribes a constant and sometimes abstract "essence" to social, cultural, or other human events.
- As a result, generic definitions are often seen as tools by natural scientists, who tend to ignore cultural and historical differences and regard actual language usage and local conceptual frameworks as irrelevant to their study.
- Indeed, scientists engaged in biological research or psychology proposed the majority of early general definitions of meditation.
- Furthermore, although generic definitions avoid making explicit references to cultural and historical characteristics, they are far from neutral in the sense that they are unaffected by their surroundings.
- The above-mentioned description of meditation is connected to theoretical issues, which are also rooted in culture and history.
Some might argue that the definition's reference to "technique" reflects a strong Asian influence, since European and Middle Eastern forms of meditation are typically less technical and more devotional than many Indian and Chinese forms, while others might argue that the reference to "technique" is a product of modern scientific and technological concerns and thus in reality reflects a strong Asian influence, since many Indian and Chinese forms of meditation are typically less technical and more devotional, while others might argue that the reference to "technique" is a product of Both ideas may have some truth.
- The fact that a definition's theoretical implications are likely to reflect certain cultural and historical concerns merely means that these concerns should be explained and made the subject of critical thought, which is exactly what this article aims to accomplish.
- Our description refers to certain characteristics of a "thing" termed "meditation" that may, at least for the time being, be considered helpful and interesting to investigate and discuss.
- In any event, it's unclear what would constitute an alternative to a general definition.
We should not “rest satisfied with replicating native lexicography and, therefore, give in to the prevailing attitude of localism, labelling e very effort at generalization a western imposition,” as religion historian Jonathan Z. Smith puts it.
- The systematic stipulative and precising processes by which the academy disputes and tries to regulate second-order, specialized use cannot be substituted for how ‘they' use a word.”
- In particular, if a comparative study of meditation were entirely focused on local ideas rather than a definition of meditation that transcends each unique language and culture, it would be difficult to understand what it would be comparing.
Smith's own proposal for a "self-consciously polythetic method of categorization that surrenders the notion of flawless, unique, single differentia" does not seem to address the problem.
- Smith acknowledges that he is aware of "no examples of attempts at the polythetic classification of religions or religious phenomena," and a reviewer of Smith's work observes that "the reader who expects an exhaustive list of [the] characteristics [of a polythetic definition of religion] is in for a disappointment; Smith does not supply it."
While some academics have made efforts in this approach, the task has mostly proved to be too difficult.
- Polythetic definitions have proven helpful in biology, where they have helped to solve issues left unsolved by conventional monothetic species definitions.
- Even polythetic definitions, in such circumstances, have a monothetic core, since they assume a shared evolutionary origin of species classed together.
- Meditation, as a social and personal phenomenon, has no such monothetic core—no permanent "essence," if you will.
Furthermore, while biological species are usually defined by features that have a real, distinct, and independent character, social and personal phenomena cannot be defined by reference to discrete empirical particulars, but [entail] instead a reliance on further features of the same character that are likewise polythetic.
- Because “comparative investigations, whether morphological, functional, or statistical, are made more intimidating and maybe even unfeasible,” the immense complexity of polythetic categorization of social and personal phenomena may ultimately make it impractical.
- There's no reason to believe that social and personal phenomena like meditation, which lack the monothetic core found in biological species, are naturally classified into classes.
- More than likely, they are not natural taxa, and any categorization, beyond the conceptualizations imposed on them by various languages in various ways, will include artificial elements.
- The goal of defining meditation is to create a single point of reference to which comparative studies of meditation may relate, rather than to propose a natural class of contemplative experiences.
- A monothetic definition fulfills this goal better than a polythetic one since it is more exact and less ambiguous, which is why some academics have wondered “whether a definition of a [polythetic] notion is, after all, a definition, because it is definitely imprecise.”
Despite accusations to the contrary, a precise generic definition can easily be combined with a keen awareness of the historical and cultural situatedness of natural language concepts, as well as the ambiguities, family resemblances, overlaps, and gradient distinctions that underpin both language and reality.
- Natural language notions like English "meditation"—or, for that matter, Arabic dhikr, Sanskrit dhyana, and Chinese jng-zu—are multivalent, changeable, and hazy, as are the social and personal experiences to which they relate.
- These ideas and experiences, on the other hand, may all be usefully linked to a single definition of meditation, even if they differ in different ways.
- If meditation is defined as a practice, the states of mind encompassed by the English word “meditation” and the Sanskrit dhyana, as well as the philosophical and artistic outputs alluded to by the English term, fall beyond the definition.
- However, the recitation indicated by the Arabic dhikr, the imagery implied by certain Tantric usage of the Sanskrit dhyana, and the sitting position required by the Chinese jng-zu limit these words to a considerably smaller range of activities than our common understanding of meditation.
- A monothetic definition provides us with a common focus in a comparative study of meditation, against which the idiosyncrasies of each tradition may be emphasized.
“Just as thinking about dhikr as meditation helps us understand the practice better, examining meditation in the light of presumptions coming from dhikr highlights meditation's connection to modern forms of human subjectivity that are ingrained in the way we think and act but are not always easily recognizable,” Shahzad Bashir wrote in an essay on the personal and social aspects of the Sufi practice of dhikr.
- Bashir uses the phrase "in its most commonsensical English sense," but his argument is as true if we conceive of meditation as a technical word with a single definition.
- A rudimentary form of a generic definition would be simply stipulated, having no higher theoretical ambitions than to provide a common basis for the comparative study of comparable phenomena across cultures and languages.
- A theoretical definition is a more powerful form of a generic definition, since it not only has practical consequences but also aims to connect the defined concept to broader theoretical problems.
As we've seen, defining meditation as a technique rather than a state or a nontechnical form of practice implies a particular theoretical perspective on meditation, as does the idea of meditation being attention-based rather than automatized ritualistic practice and practiced for long-term inner transformation and not just passing changes of state or changes that affect only the body.
Because of these theoretical ramifications, a debate of the definition becomes much more than a simple terminological issue, since it touches on the nature of the phenomena to which the term refers.