Dhyana - The Perfection of Meditation

"Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it - that is the only way to know it."
― Rajneesh

Today our lecture is going to cover the topic of meditation. As we have moved through the discussion of various qualities of consciousness (of so-called Paramitas in Sanskrit), we today arrive at the fifth. So, to remind you, to set the context for this very important Paramita, we will quickly review the ones that lead up to this.

The first Perfection (Paramita) is usually called generosity or charity, and, in its essence, generosity is the aspiration to develop Bodhichitta. And, as you recall, Bodhichitta means "awakening mind," or "mind of wisdom," or even "wisdom heart."

The Bodhichitta is composed of two elements:

Compassion or conscious love, and the realization of emptiness, the understanding of emptiness.

The second Paramita is related to ethics, discipline.

The third is forbearance or patience.

The fourth is zeal or diligence or activity.

The fifth is usually called concentration or meditation, but for this one I want to refer to Sanskrit term, which is Dhyana, the Sanskrit word.

The sixth Paramita, or the ultimate conclusion of the development of all these consciousness attitudes, is Prajna.

You will hear a lot of variations of how to pronounce this word: `pra-na (`prazh-na), `pra-na, `pra-h-na. There is some disagreement how that "j" and "n" sound is made, but commonly it is 'nya'. This relates well to sounds that are not common in English, but are common in other Asian languages.

Prajna is usually translated as "Wisdom." And of course, we have to indicate that "Wisdom" in Hebrew is Chokmah, and as you know, Chokmah is the Christ.

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