Samādhi

What is Samādhi?

Samādhi is the eighth and final limb of Patañjali's yoga§. It is the state of meditative absorption in which the distinction between meditator, act of meditation, and object of meditation dissolves. What remains is undivided awareness.

Etymology and the Yoga Sūtras

Samādhi derives from the Sanskrit sam-ā-dhā, meaning to put together. The image is of gathering what was scattered into unified placement. In the *Yoga Sūtras*§, attributed to Patañjali§ and compiled between roughly the 2nd century BCE and the 4th century CE, samādhi is reached when the mind has stilled its modifications (citta-vṛtti). What remains is clear, direct awareness. The object known and the knowing of it are no longer experienced as two separate things. The concept appears across Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions, but Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras give it its most systematic treatment.

The grades of samādhi

Patañjali§ distinguishes savikalpa samādhi from nirvikalpa samādhi. Savikalpa retains some residual subject-object structure. Nirvikalpa dissolves that structure entirely. Later Vedānta added a third grade: *sahaja samādhi*§. In sahaja, absorption is not a special state entered and exited. It is the practitioner's ordinary mode. Ramana Maharshi§ taught that any samādhi attained in formal practice that does not become sahaja in daily life is incomplete: a flash, not a recognition.

Samādhi versus related states

Samādhi is often confused with jhāna (Pāli) or *dhyāna*§ (Sanskrit), the deep concentration states that precede it. Dhyāna is the seventh limb of Patañjali's system, immediately before samādhi. Jhāna and dhyāna are sustained absorption in an object. Samādhi is the further step: the dissolution of the subject-object distinction itself. In Theravāda Buddhist analysis, the jhānas are absorption states that do not eliminate the observer. This is the doctrinal source of a real disagreement between Theravāda and Vedāntic teachers about what the goal of meditation actually is.

A second distinction: samādhi is not the same as *kaivalya*§. Kaivalya is the fruit. It is the permanent establishment of pure awareness, liberated from entanglement with prakṛti (nature). Samādhi is the vehicle. One can enter and exit samādhi. Kaivalya is not exited.