In recent years “meditation” has joined the list of those unfortunate words whose meaning have been damaged.
When a word is constantly used and is emotively charged by the importance of what is being communicated, it often becomes overcharged, and, paradoxically, its communicative value diminishes. It is weakened, and its meaning loses flavour and intensity. Many words have suffered this fate, above all those which define important existential concepts. Words such as „love”, „happiness”, „consciousness”, „understanding”, „feeling”, „spirit”, and „soul” have such a wide spectrum of interpretations that it is hard to use them without feeling the constant need to redefine them. It is almost as if the emotional charge and the need to express it lead to over-use and to the progressive distortion of the original meaning and values of the most important words.
In recent years „meditation” has joined the list of those unfortunate words whose meaning have been damaged, both because mistaken idealisations, and because of ideological preconceptions that have obscured there meaning and weighed them down…
When the word begins to be disorienting and to cause confusion instead of clarifying, it can be useful to look at its etymology. The term „meditation” derives from the Latin meditari which means „reflect to cure”, coming from the same root med from which „mode”, „measure”, and „medicine” derive. It is significant here that in antiquity, the magus, the priest or priestess, and the healer were often the same person. This etymological meaning of meditation reflects well the practice of Sumarah, wherein meditation is considered as way of being, an instrument of life and for life, and not as an end in itself. It is like a means of transport, and, like any means of transport, meditation is there to take us to where we want to go; once we get there, we get off…
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