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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 4 | Previous Next | |
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and available and trusting and surrendered.
BETTER THAN A HUNDRED YEARS OF MISCHIEF IS ONE DAY SPENT IN CONTEMPLATION. 'Contemplation' is not the right word; but that is a problem, how to translate Eastern insight into Western languages. Contemplation means thinking of one subject concentratedly. That is not what Buddha means when he uses the word DHYANA. Dhyana means a state of no-mind, a state of no-thought; it is just the opposite of contemplation. Contemplation cannot be the right word to translate it. But I can understand the problem, the difficulty of the translators -- there are no other words. Dhyana is one of those words which cannot be translated.
It was very intelligent of Chinese translators that they left the word unchanged. Dhyana became CH'AN in China; they never translated it. It took a little different form because dhyana is Sanskrit. Buddha used not Sanskrit but a local language of Bihar, Pali. In Pali dhyana is JHAN; in Chinese it became ch'an, left untranslated because Chinese translators came to understand that it cannot be translated; better to describe it rather than translate it. And so it happened in Japan: when it reached Japan, ch'an became Zen; first jhan and then ch'an and then Zen -- but it was left untranslated.
The best thing will be for Western languages also to leave a few words untranslated, because you don't have any equivalent, and whatsoever words you have, have their own connotations.
Dhyana is not contemplation; contemplation is the purest form of thinking. Dhyana is going beyond thought, beyond the purest even, coming to a state where all thought ceases. You are utterly conscious, but there is no content to your consciousness.
Buddha says: BETTER THAN A HUNDRED YEARS OF MISCHIEF IS ONE DAY SPENT IN CONTEMPLATION. Just one day is enough; if a person can remain in dhyana for twenty-four hours that's enough -- he will become a buddha. But it is immensely difficult to remain twenty-four hours in dhyana.
Mahavira has said: Even if one can remain for forty-eight minutes -- and my calculation is also exactly the same -- if one can remain in a state of no-mind continuously for forty-eight
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