Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

a. To hold the mind firmly on one object, and if it
wanders away, to establish it upon some central point in
the middle or lower part of the body (see Ch. VII, G).
(This definition of samatha is common also to
non-Buddhists.)
b. To control the mind so that whenever it wanders
away, it is put back upon one particular thought, the
object of one's meditation (which thought itself may
later be dropped).
c. Samatha on the entity of reality, meaning one
practices meditating on sunyata or on the lack of
self-nature in things.
The last definition bears a little criticism. When a
person first practices meditation, he or she cannot
immediately meditate upon reality. It is proper first to
practice samatha and then come to samapatti. Now, this
third meditation is a mixture, a samapatti meditation
under a samatha heading. In Zhi Yi's book, he has
written on this sort of "samatha":
"Again, it (meditation) can be done by recalling the true
nature of all objects of thought. We should recall that
every object of thought arises from causes and
conditions and therefore has no self-nature of its own."
(Dhyana for Beginners, VI, 1, (1), (a)).
This, we can see quite clearly, is really samapatti.
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