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On Wed, 29 Oct 1997, Jeffrey Smith wrote: > Yossi, thank you. Thank you Jeffrey for you previous post. (Yossi)
Question: Are you aware, however, that Iyun/Hisbonenus is itself a recognized form of "meditation" (in the common sense of that term)--practiced by the Arizal, for one.
I was going to get to that. The term Hisbonenus is used as a "shem hamushal", a borrowed term, i.e. a coloquialism for Meditation. The actual name for Meditation should be Haamokas HaDaas - Concentrative Focusing of the Mind. Hisbonenus is root Binah and literally means "the process of making oneself understand. That is Studying. This has nothing to do with Meditation, which is a process of Daas - the strong connection of the entire attention span to a single focus.
The Kabbalists use the colloqialism rather than the proper name on purpose. The reason is that they want to get across that a Haamokas Hadaas is only valid when it is preceded by Hisbonenus and the meditation is on the various points of the Iyun. The meditation is just a vessel to hold the Hisbonenus. That is, we disagree with meditative systems that use a sound or form etc. as a focus as being a Vessel without contents.
Also, many people mistake what it was that the kabbalists meditated on. For instance the meditation on the Tetragramaton, People think it means they should imagine the letters YKVK (k=h) and just concentrate on that in a meditative manner. However OS, besides meaning letter also means sign. Like tying a string to your finger to remember something. The letters represent vast amounts of Iyun. This will be discussed later in the series.
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