Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

Then such people may read a religious book or two on
meditation and so gradually their ideas of "meditation"
become broader, eventually including everything in this
one word. This is not precise, for many meanings
should be distinguished, not only from the point of
theory, but as a useful guide for one's own practice.
With every problem that arises, one should first settle
the meanings of the terms involved in it; when these are
exactly defined, many difficulties disappear. At least the
situation becomes easier to deal with, since then one has
certain handles, the defined terms, on which to hold.
I am sorry to say, however, that the Chinese language,
while it is able to express profound philosophy and may
be used in a very poetic manner, lacks scientific
precision. English, on the other hand, is much more
exact and definite in its terminology. Although Chinese
is very good for poetry but not for logic, we have to rely
on it and on Tibetan for sutra translations no longer
available in Sanskrit. Apart from these texts there are
schools of philosophy and practice which developed in
China, such as the Tian Tai and Chan. They have of
course taken many things from the Chinese Tripitaka
and although its contents were very carefully translated
from the Indian languages by boards of officials, each
with his own carefully defined function, still the nature
of the translations thus accomplished were limited by
the Chinese tongue. Therefore, we have to learn to
distinguish the precise meaning of a term, since under
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