[Buddha-l] Samaadhi

[Joy Vriens]

« In the Maitrayaniya Upanishad (ca. 200-300 BCE) yoga surfaces 
as:"Shadanga-Yoga - The uniting discipline of the six limbs (shad-anga), 
as expounded in the Maitrayaniya-Upanishad: (1) breath control 
(pranayama), (2) sensory inhibition (pratyahara), (3) meditation 
(dhyana), (4) concentration (dharana), (5) examination (tarka), and (6) 
ecstasy (samadhi). »

In the completion stage of the Kalacakra teachings, we find back those 
same six branches of yoga (sbyor ba yan lag drug) although in a 
different order :

sor sdud / bsam gtan / srog rtsol / 'dzin pa / rjes dran / ting nge 'dzin
pratyaahara / dhyaana / Praa.naayaama / dharana / anusm.rti ?/ samaadhi

The final objective in both systems is samaadhi and one would expect a 
certain similarity in meaning, including in the progressive build-up. 
Yet, it is generally stressed that the meaning of samaadhi in Brahmanism 
and Buddhism is different. In the former it means successful 
identification with the absolute/divine and in the latter something much 
less lofty, concentration, trance (Edgerton). In what is it then 
different from dhyaana or dharana etc. ? It can even mean « the subject 
of concentration, a verbal formula to be meditated upon » (Regamey) 
verbal and therefore discursively… So what happened with samaadhi in 
Buddhism ? Why this anti-climax, or at least in the translations of this 
term  ? I can imagine a wish to distantiate themselves from 
identification with Brahman or other absolutes on behalf of more 
militant anattavadist Buddhists, but then why preserve the term samaadhi 
? At the time of the much less anattavadist Kalacakra the term samaadhi 
apparently regained a bit of its former splendour, or had it perhaps 
never lost that splendour completely ? I expect that even in Buddhism 
there is a connotation of identification (dissolution - or conflation as 
David Loy would say- of the subject in the object). Could someone point 
me to some literature about this subject?

Joy