Meditation is Yoga
In the Indian traditions and texts the term ‘yoga’ indicates the practice of meditational techniques.
One can meditate on different types of yoga. Meditation is a part of Yoga.
What most people consider yoga is actually ‘asana’.
Dhyana Yoga
The Mahabharata makes reference to Buddhist practitioners of the ‘yoga of meditation.’
The four Noble Truths were not originally part of the Buddhist doctrine of liberation, but were overlaid on to the earlier notion of prajna (wisdom) ‘by way of the Four Dhyanas / meditations.
Tantric meditation yoga affords complete control over one’s mentally constructed universe, and ultimately bestows liberation from the actual world, by means of a constantly maintained, creative inner vision.
8.3.4 Mahabharata 12.188.1-22. The yoga of meditation (dhyanayoga)
Bhrama said:
So now, Partha, I will explain to you the fourfold yoga of meditation, knowing which the great sages reach eternal perfection.
8.3.5 Mahabhrata 12.294.6-8. Meditation is the most powerful method of yoga
Vasistha said:
Now I shall tell you what you are asking about. Hear from me in secret how yoga should be performed, O great king.
Of the different ways in which yoga should be performed, meditation is the most powerful. And people who know the Vedas say that meditation is of two kinds:
Focus of the mind and breath-control.
Breath-control has attributes and focus of the mind is without attributes.
It is written in the Bhagavad Gita.
(18.52) Living apart, eating little, disciplined in speech, body and mind, always intent on the yoga of meditation (dhynayoga), taking refuge in dispassion, (18.53) giving up egoism, force, arrogance, lust, anger and grasping, unselfish, peaceful: [such a one] is fit for becoming Brahman.
