[Avodah] kavanah in tefila - guzma

[garry]

On 7/6/2011 10:05 AM, micha at aishdas.org>  wrote:

> 1- Lemaaseh, today, kavanah is rare. When R' Matnaya thanked his head
> for knowing when to bow at Modim it was guzma (compared to us, see #2);
> today it's the norm.
This guzma proposition seems similar to the issues we were discussing 
about taking aggada as literally true.
Is there any basis to hold that  R. Matnaya (and R.Chiya and Shmuel) did 
not mean what they said
about their problems with kavana, other than our understanding that
"they were gedolim so they couldn't have meant what they said?"