MJCI * @! 90/79 The modern term meditation started as a Latin translation of the Greek word melétē.

MJCI * @! 90/79 … in the early Christian ascetic context [melétē] was mostly connected to recitation, taking as its object a large variety of texts of varying degree of sacredness (holy scripture, other sayings, and teachings, prayers, etc.). … active imagination (of the cross of Christ, one’s own death the final judgement, etc.] and other forms of close attention played an important role. He [Peter Rönnegård] traces these practices partly to Early Hebrew recitative meditation, but more directly to Greek philosophical schools. … meditation was conceived as a discursive and concentrative way of digesting and interiorizing a message, to overcome distractions and eventually to reach the final goal, whether that be liberty, happiness, virtue or, in Christianity, salvation.

MJCI * @! 91/80 Melétē and meletán were originally very general terms that could mean ‘caring for’, ‘attending to’, ‘practising’ or ‘using’ something. However, there are many examples in Christian ascetic texts of the use of meétē and meletán where there is no object indicated, that is, they describe the act of melétē without specifying what it was related to.

MJCI * @! 98/77 According to him [Frank Hieronymus (1970)], nowhere in archaic Greek literature does melétē indicate ‘training’ or ‘education’. The basic meaning is ‘to be engaged in something’, ‘to be busy doing something’. In Plato meletán is primarily used for theoretical and mental exercises in preparation for an activity, be it technical or philosophical. … it can denote philosophical reflections, for example, on life and death … A wise man should meletán day and night in order to live as a god among men (Epistula III.122, 135). /Note, that the Buddha would say that a man is like a god/deity if he followed the five precepts – no killing, no stealing, no adultery, no telling lies, no drinking alcohol. The Buddha used this in the context of a married couple – husband and wife. A woman can also be like a goddess if she follows the five precepts./

MJCI * @! 113/102 Basically … melétē or meditatio meant a repetitive practice, using images or short phrases, in order to engrave beneficial attitudes within oneself, aiming at an inward transformation. It was a practice clearly related to moral therapy as well as to memorization. This practice is found in different philosophical traditions, in particular Epicureanism and imperial Stoicism.

History of meditation and Buddhism

– PMBM 2 … the [sic] Therevada tradition, in which meditation was abandoned in the 10th century. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, a new Vipassana meditation practice developed, based on a contemporary reading of the ancient Therevada texts. This practice then spread widely in the West (McMahan, 2008; Sharf, 1995).

– PMBM 3 … the poverty and war dominating so many countries around the world at the time meant there were many who were more than willing to uproot to the USA. Buddhism was therefore introduced to the USA by Asian immigrants. Immigration from China first began in earnest around 1820, and the number of Chinese migrants increased rapidly with news of the 1849 California Gold Rush. The first Buddhist temple in America was then built in 1853 in San Francisco by the Sze Yap Company, a Sino-American fraternal society. Large-scale immigration from Japan began in the late 1880s, and from Korea in around 1903. The Japanese settlements were established initially in Hawaii, where the first temple was built in 1896. The first Japanese Buddhist temple in continental USA was built in San Francisco in 1899.

– PMBM 3 Shunryu Suzuki was also sent to San Francisco in the late 1950s to teach meditation, and soon attracted American students and “beatniks”. The growing group around him went on to form a network of highly influential Zen centres across the country—largely thanks to the innovation and creativity of the 60s San Francisco counter-cultural movement (Ford, 2006; Seager, 1999).

– PMBM 3 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, played an important part in this process [of Theravāda and Tibetan Buddhism spread to the West]. By this time, the lay Vipassana practice of meditation had also developed in many Theravāda countries, and from the 1970s onwards, a widespread Vipassana movement emerged in the West (McMahan, 2008).

The proper attitudes to Theravāda Buddhist meditation today

TBEM 7 The popularity of meditation in many modern forms of Buddhism is attributable to the fact that is has been disembeded from traditional contexts and is increasingly taught outside of monasteries among laypersons for medical and emotional reasons, rather than for religious purposes such as obtaining nirvana or fortunate rebirths. (McMahan (2008: 185), The Making of Buddhist Modernism)

TBEM 9 … when scholars have spoken about Theravāda forms of Buddhist modernism, they have focused on several different trends as examples of these: a focus on the original words of the Buddha, and the argument that these words reveal a rational philosophical form, devoid of superstition; an emphasis on the laity; an emphasis on meditation and the development of monastic forms for women.

The term Theravāda

TBEM 7 The term “Theravāda” is meaningful chiefly in comparative and historical frameworks, wherein one assesses Buddhism in Sri Lanka next to Buddhist traditions outside the island.

Scriptures and their significance

TBEM 2 … we can date the [Pali and vernacular] texts earlier than the extant manuscripts of them. But how early? I think we can go back only as far as what the English monk and scholar Ñāṇamoli called ‘the committee called Buddhaghosa,’ usually dated (though not without uncertainty) to the fourth or fifth centuries AD, and to his successor Dhammapāla (dated, also uncertainly, to the fifth or sixth centuries AD).