Dhyana

Dhyāna comes from the root dhyai, 'to contemplate, meditate upon, or reflect deeply.' It names sustained contemplation — the mind resting on its object not in flashes but as a continuous current of attention, deeper and more settled than ordinary discursive thinking.

As the seventh limb, dhyāna is meditation: the unbroken flow of attention toward a single object that concentration has prepared. Where dhāraṇā repeatedly gathers a wandering mind, in dhyāna the attention no longer scatters — it streams steadily toward its focus, like oil poured in an unbroken thread.

Patañjali defines dhyāna in the third chapter of the Yoga Sūtras, at 3.2, as the continuous, one-pointed flow of the mind toward the object held in dhāraṇā. Together with dhāraṇā and samādhi it forms saṃyama, and it opens directly into samādhi, the eighth limb.

In practice, dhyāna is not something you can force; it arises when concentration deepens enough that returning the mind is no longer needed. The effortful catching-and-returning of dhāraṇā gives way to a quiet, absorbed steadiness in which time and self-consciousness begin to recede.

Dhyāna is often equated loosely with any 'meditation,' but in Patañjali's scheme it is a specific stage: the fruit of successful concentration, not the beginning of it. Nor is it blankness or absence of awareness — awareness is heightened and unwavering, simply undistracted.