Etymology
The Tibetan term for samatha is shyiné (Wylie: zhi-gnas). According to Jamgon Kongtrul, insight may be garnered by an exegesis of the etymology of śamatha and shyiné:
The Tibetan term is shyiné (shi-gnas) and the Sanskrit is Shamatha. In the case of the Tibetan, the first syllable, shi, and in the case of the Sanskrit, the first two syllables, shama, refer to "peace" and "pacification". The meaning of peace or pacification in this context is that normally our mind is like a whirlwind of agitation. The agitation is the agitation of thought. Our thoughts are principally an obsessive concern with past, conceptualization about the present, and especially an obsessive concern with the future. This means that usually our mind is not experiencing the present moment at all.The semantic field of shi and shama is "pacification", "the slowing or cooling down", "rest". The semantic field of né is "to abide or remain" and this is cognate or equivalent with the final syllable of the Sanskrit, thā.
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