daverupa wrote:porpoise wrote:I came across "singleness of mind" recently - does that get near it?
That's cittassa ekaggatā;
here is a short discussion of its relationship to samadhi.
It's Ajahn Thanissaro's choice, which I find unsatisfactory, as it translate literally backwards as "ekatā". It nonetheless avoids an even more problematic translation: "one-pointedness".
It's rather longish to explain in detail with evidence here, but I've come to see that the widespread translation of "one-pointedness" is due to a misunderstanding of the "agga" in it. I believe the person who first translated it this way was under the influence of the Visuddhimagga idea of samādhi (though I've not come across anything in Visuddhimagga that gives such an idea for ekaggatā).
To make it really short, here's the conclusion of my research into this: The agga in ekaggatā is probably a contracted form of agāra, which can be most generally translated as "place". Thus, ekaggaṁ is one-placed (rather than one-pointed), as in not "all over the place", not scattered, but gathered, collected, composed. In idiomatic English, it's still.
So then ekaggatā is stillness. Cittassa ekaggatā means stillness of mind. When Dhammadinna Bhikkhuni answered Visakha's question with "cittassa ekaggatā ayaṁ samādhi", I understand it to mean "stillness of mind—this is samādhi (composure)".
Hope this is enough for now. Details are in a book I'm still writing. FYI it's now approaching 25000 words. I foresee that it should go beyond 35000 words. I don't want to spend my whole life connecting the dots, yet evidence seems to be all over the Suttas when I realise what to look for. Even as I was on retreat last month, connections pop up in my head, which I jotted down to be included.