Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Doctrines

Samadhi

Mind, Self and Emptiness

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Samadhi is the state of collected absorption that stands as the eighth and final limb of Patanjali's ashtanga yoga, and that appears with a different emphasis in Buddhism as the concentration of the eightfold path. The Yoga Sutras describe it in grades, from absorption still accompanied by thought and object to absorption in which both have fallen away. The word is used across Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions without one fixed meaning between them, so which samadhi is meant depends on the school using the term.

Facts
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Buddhism
Buddhist teaching places samadhi within the threefold training of morality, concentration and wisdom, necessary but not sufficient for liberating insight.
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Hinduism
Classical yoga philosophy holds samadhi itself, in its highest form, to be the goal of practice.
Position Profile
Key Text
The stages of samadhi are set out in the Pali Canon's accounts of the four jhanas and, in the yogic tradition, in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The eighth and final limb of Patanjali's eightfold yoga, a state of meditative absorption so complete that the sense of a separate observer dissolves into the object of meditation. 2
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Buddhist teaching places samadhi within the threefold training of morality, concentration and wisdom, as necessary but not sufficient for liberating insight; classical yoga philosophy holds samadhi itself, in its highest form, to be the goal. 1
The Claim
The Claim
A state of deep meditative concentration in which the mind becomes single pointed and unmoving on its object. 1
Origins
Held By
Both Hindu yoga philosophy, where it is the highest goal of practice, and Buddhism, which places it within the threefold training of morality, concentration and wisdom as necessary but not sufficient for liberating insight. 1
Structure
Structure
Classical commentary divides samadhi chiefly into savikalpa, absorption retaining some subtle distinction or form, and nirvikalpa, formless absorption in which that residual distinction disappears. 3
Learn More
The Eighth Limb

Samadhi, from Sanskrit roots meaning to bring together or to concentrate fully, names the eighth and final limb of the eightfold path Patanjali sets out in the Yoga Sutras, the culmination of a sequence that runs from ethical restraint through posture and breath control to progressively deeper stages of concentration, dharana, and meditation, dhyana. In Patanjali's system, samadhi is reached when meditative absorption becomes so complete that the meditator's sense of being a separate observer dissolves into the object of meditation itself, awareness and its object no longer experienced as distinct.

The term is not exclusive to classical Yoga: Hindu traditions generally, Jain meditative practice and the whole of the Buddhist meditative path use samadhi or close cognates for comparably deep states of unified concentration, though each tradition situates the state within its own account of what concentration is ultimately for, liberation from rebirth in most Indian frameworks, but reached through different metaphysical routes and, in Buddhist usage particularly, without the assumption of a permanent self that non-Buddhist Indian traditions typically retain. Patanjali describes the final three limbs together, concentration, meditation and samadhi, as samyama, a combined discipline whose mastery is said to yield the extraordinary powers, siddhis, discussed later in the Yoga Sutras.

One Word, Many States

Classical yogic and Vedantic literature does not treat samadhi as a single undifferentiated state but distinguishes multiple grades and kinds, most importantly the broad division between savikalpa samadhi, absorption that retains some subtle distinction or form, and nirvikalpa samadhi, formless absorption in which even that residual distinction disappears, each treated in this atlas as its own doctrine given the weight Advaita Vedanta and later yogic commentary places on the difference. Patanjali's own text further distinguishes samadhi with support, in which the mind still rests on an object, from samadhi without support, in which even that support is transcended, a schema commentators have mapped onto the savikalpa and nirvikalpa distinction with varying degrees of precision.

Because samadhi describes a state reached through disciplined practice rather than a doctrine believed on the basis of scripture or authority alone, textual accounts across traditions converge on describing its effects, including the practitioner's report of altered or absent sense of time, self and ordinary perception, while differing sharply on how the state is best interpreted metaphysically, as contact with the true Self, as absorption into an impersonal Brahman, or as a valuable but ultimately still conditioned state to be gone beyond.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Hinduism, Religions

Depicted In

Unlike an ordinary seated Buddha image, this statue's own historical and present-day name IS the doctrine word itself: it presents the state of meditative absorption directly as its whole subject rather than narrating any episode from the Buddha's life.

Source Wikipedia, "Samadhi Statue"Wikipedia contributors

Critiqued Here

Jodo Shinshu, Denominations

Meditative absorption is not rejected as a teaching in Jodo Shinshu, but Shinran holds it beyond the capacity of the ordinary being of this age and treats its pursuit as self-power. The tradition's practice is the saying of the name in gratitude, not attainment.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Positions on This Question

Collected absorption is held in Advaita, and the school's two grades of it, with and without distinction, are already in its own vocabulary.

Collected absorption is held in Dvaita as sustained meditation on God, never as the loss of the distinction between worshipper and worshipped.

Gelug, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Gelug school, taught as calm abiding paired with insight and treated at length in the lamrim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Jonang, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Jonang school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Kagyu, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Kagyu school, and the mahamudra instructions are given in terms of calm abiding and insight before they are given in their own terms.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Collected absorption is held in the Karma Kagyu school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Collected absorption is held in Kashmir Shaivism, and the tradition is known for holding that it can be entered from ordinary states rather than only from withdrawal.

Collected absorption is held in Lingayatism, practised on the linga the initiate wears.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Collected absorption is held in Madhyamaka.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Collected absorption is held in Mahayana, and the Mahayana sutras name samadhis of their own that have no counterpart in the earlier lists.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Collected absorption is held in the Nath tradition as the end of the hatha yoga sequence, reached through the body rather than around it.

Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)

Collected absorption is held in Nichiren Buddhism, and the school holds that chanting the daimoku accomplishes what meditative practice was for.

Nyingma, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Nyingma school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Collected absorption is held in the Pure Land schools, and the visualisation practices of the Contemplation Sutra are its Pure Land form, alongside and earlier than the recitation practice the tradition became identified with.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Rinzai, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Rinzai school, and koan work is described as concentration brought to a single point rather than as an alternative to it.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin
Sakya, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Sakya school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Samkhya, Denominations

Classical Samkhya teaches liberation by discriminative knowledge and does not itself prescribe a course of meditative absorption. The practice belongs to Yoga, the sister school that took over the Samkhya analysis and supplied the discipline it lacked.

Collected absorption is held across the Shaiva schools.

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood

Collected absorption is held across the Shakta traditions.

Shingon, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Shingon, and the school's ritual practice of body, speech and mind together is presented as its form.

Collected absorption is held in Shri Vidya. The practice by which it is approached is initiatory and closed, and is not described here.

Collected absorption is held in Smartism.

Soto, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in the Soto school, and Dogen's recommendation of seated meditation presents it as the practice of awakening rather than as a means to it.

Tendai, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Tendai, and the calming and contemplation practice inherited from Zhiyi is the backbone of training on Mount Hiei.

Concentration is the middle of the three divisions of the Theravada path, between virtue and wisdom, and the jhanas are its canonical measure.

Source The Foundations of BuddhismRupert Gethin
Tiantai, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Tiantai, and Zhiyi's manual of calming and contemplation is one of the most detailed treatments of meditative practice in Chinese Buddhism.

Collected absorption is held across the Tibetan schools, taught as calm abiding paired with insight.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Collected absorption is held across the Vaishnava schools as sustained loving recollection of God rather than as the dissolution of the worshipper.

Source An Introduction to HinduismGavin Flood

Collected absorption is held in Vajrayana, and the generation and completion stages are described in its terms.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Collected absorption is held in Vishishtadvaita as a form of sustained loving recollection rather than as the dissolution of distinction.

Zen, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Zen, and the school takes its name from the word.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin

Held Differently

Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as absorption in Krishna, reached through the chanting of the names rather than through seated withdrawal.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
ISKCON (Hare Krishna), Denominations

Collected absorption is held in ISKCON as absorption in Krishna reached through chanting rather than through seated withdrawal.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Sri Vaishnavism, Denominations

Collected absorption is held in Sri Vaishnavism as sustained loving recollection.

Related To

Jhana, Doctrines

The Buddhist absorptions beside the Indian term used across traditions.

One of the two grades of samadhi.

One of the two grades of samadhi.

Sources
1. The Foundations of Buddhism
Rupert Gethin, Oxford University Press, 1998View the Source
2. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary
Edwin F. Bryant, North Point Press, 2009
3. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume III: Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and His Pupils
Karl H. Potter (ed.), Motilal Banarsidass, 1981View the Source
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