[Buddha-l] Tibetan word for meditation

[RonLeifer at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/21/2006 5:42:03 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
rhayes at unm.edu writes:

But  we'll try to fire the person 
who first said that the Tibetan word for  meditation means paying attention. 
We just can't have such egregious  errors on buddha-l.




As that person I take responsibility, in lieu of Jamgon  Kongtrul Rinpoche 
whose definition of meditation I reported but who,  unfortunately, has by now 
reincarnated and is not available to account for  utterances from his previous 
life. 
 
I don't think Rinpoche was giving a dictionary definition. He was tailoring  
it to his audience. I had the opportunity to discuss American  psychiatry with 
Rinpoche while planning the Karma Kagyu conference on Buddhism  and 
psychotherapy in 1986. He was aware that American psychiatry, the  so-called medical 
science of mind, is immature and confused compared to  Buddhist views of mind. 
When a psychiatrist asked him to define meditation, he  clowned around, 
pretending not to know the word. It was a moment of high,  ironic comic art. With his 
response, Rinpoche implied to his  incredulous audience that he did not know 
anything about meditation while he  knew and his audience knew that it was 
they that knew nothing about  it. 
 
In contrast to the present dialogue between Buddhists and  neuro scientists 
in which he latter try to show that meditation is a  function of the the brain, 
Rinpoche gave a simple,  basic definition. Meditation is a function of mind, 
namely, paying  attention. This definition fits Shine or Shamatha - breath 
awareness, and  also lag thong or vipassana which also involves paying attention. 
In fact,  every form of meditation, including all that have been given to 
this list,  involve paying attention. 
 
So perhaps Rinpoche's definition is correct, even if it not literal or  
dictionary based, although it seems to me to be consistent with all those given.  
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