Samādhi

Samādhi, “putting together” or “collecting”, is the last of the eight limbs of classical Yoga: the state in which the mind is so absorbed in its object that awareness of itself as a separate meditator falls away. The Yoga Sūtras distinguish absorption with support (samprajñāta), in which the mind still rests on an object, from absorption without support (asamprajñāta), in which every movement of the mind has ceased.

The word is shared by many Indian traditions. Buddhist texts list right concentration (samādhi) as the last factor of the eightfold path and describe a series of meditative absorptions (jhāna). Modern Hindu teachers distinguish savikalpa samādhi, absorption still holding a distinction, from nirvikalpa samādhi, absorption without any distinction at all; Ramakrishna’s and Ramana Maharshi’s accounts of their experience were often given in these terms.

The traditions disagree about the place of samādhi on the path. For classical Yoga it is the means of liberation. For Advaita it is a valuable aid, but a state that comes and goes, and so not liberation itself, which is the knowledge of what does not come and go.