The Spiritual Guide
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93 All,
I have just started reading the Spiritual Guide by Miguel de Molinos and am kinda confused by the terms he is using.
He says that there are two ways to approach God, by meditation and by contemplation and goes on to define the two by saying;
When the Mind considers the Mysteries of our holy Faith with attention, to know the truth of them, reasoning upon the particulars, and weighing the circumstances of the same, for the exciting of affections in the Will; this mental discourse and pious Act is properly called Meditation.
and contemplation by saying;
When the Soul already knows the truth (either by a habit acquired through reasoning, or because the Lord hath given it particular light) and fixes the eyes of the Mind on the demonstrated truth, beholding it sincerely with quietness and silence, without any necessity of considerations, ratiocinations, or other proofs of conviction, and the will loves it, admiring and delighting it self therein; This properly is called the Prayer of Faith, the Prayer of Rest, Internal Recognition or Contemplation
Now my understanding is that meditation is a passive form of thought and contemplation is the active form.
So is there something I'm not getting here? Or if I'm correct, why does he use these words to describe these states? -
There are both active and passive forms of meditation. Most, in fact, are active.
In any event... You didn't say what translation you are reading or where this is found but, in the usual translations, Molinos' reference to "meditation" means dharana, and his reference to "contemplation" means dhyana.
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"You didn't say what translation you are reading or where this is found"
The translation is by Trevor Boiling. It was the easiest one to find, in fact the only hard copy that I could find.
He states this in the second preface parts nine and ten.
"in the usual translations, Molinos' reference to "meditation" means dharana, and his reference to "contemplation" means dhyana."
Ok this makes a little more sense. But there are parts later on that almost seem like, in contemplation, he is referring to a species of samadi. When he's talking about realizing 'your nothingness'.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"There are both active and passive forms of meditation. Most, in fact, are active.
In any event... You didn't say what translation you are reading or where this is found but, in the usual translations, Molinos' reference to "meditation" means dharana, and his reference to "contemplation" means dhyana."
Dhyana is the same thing as Dharana but simply a higher stage, as in it is more intense and things are starting to fall away... Where did you get this idea?
Meditation here does not refer to Dharana or Dhyana but the Western notion of meditation as "contemplating something," going around the details in one's mind. It means "continued or extended thought; reflection; contemplation" and in a religious context refers to this in a devotional sense. This is what meditation meant before Eastern methods came along and we had to superimpose a word of ours onto their methods.
Ratiocination means reason, by the way, if you run into that one.
He is defining his use of the term Contemplation right there in the text - it is that certain meditation. He uses Mind in the sense of consciousness it appears, not hte ratiocinative faculty. If anything contemplation is dharana/dhyana/samadhi which are 3 degrees of the same exact thing: samyama.
IAO131
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@Aum418 said
"Dhyana is the same thing as Dharana but simply a higher stage, as in it is more intense and things are starting to fall away... Where did you get this idea?"
Actually, they're quite distinctive, especially since dharana is more method and dhyana is partly method and mostly result (with quite distinctive characteristics). - The "idea" came from simply reading Molinos and seeing what he actually meant by the words he was using.
We're agreed on his intent with "mind."
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Aum418 said
"Dhyana is the same thing as Dharana but simply a higher stage, as in it is more intense and things are starting to fall away... Where did you get this idea?"Actually, they're quite distinctive, especially since dharana is more method and dhyana is partly method and mostly result (with quite distinctive characteristics)."
They are two degrees of Samyama, Samadhi of which is the last 'degree.'
IAO131
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93,
Well, my primary form of working is archetype work -- one form of this is called 'active imagination' by Jung, but there are varying forms with varying traditional backgrounds. I call it meditation but it is definitely 'active', not so much intellectually as experientially (when done right).
I think there are a lot of definitions of meditation which are simply someone's personal way of using the words based on the mental models they've got about it. Eons ago I used to do TM (Transcendental Meditation) which is the 'no-mind' sort most people associate with the term "meditation". It was nicely relaxing but about 180 degrees removed from what I do now.
There's a lot of stuff that our language fails to have enough words to cover (and sometimes has none at all for). I think making "labels" be more flexible and letting the details of something define what it "is" helps a lot in these areas.
93 93/93,
RC