Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s3.t13.8

c7.s3.t13.8

speech activities (vacīsaṅkhāro) e.g., reflection and deliberation (vitakkavicāra), and (iii) mental activities (cittasaṅkhāro), e.g., ideation and feeling (saññā ca vedanā ca)¹. The life (āyu) of the man engaged in meditation is not exhausted as also his internal heat (usmā), and his organs of sense remain in a placid condition, while in the deceased person there is no life (āyu) and no internal heat (usmā) and his sense-organs are defunct. In the Saññāvedayitanirodha, a saint cannot at will rise from it. Before entering into the samādhi, he fixes the time-limit after which he would revert to the ordinary state of consciousness and he does so at the fixed moment. This meditation in which the mind, the body, and the power of the speech completely cease to function may be likened to the condition of deep sleep (suṣupti) of a man. It is similar to the Upaniṣadic conception of "deep-sleep consciousness" in which there is no consciousness either of the objective world or of the self². The Pāli texts nowhere mention a blissful sensation enjoyed by the body apart from the mind. The feeling of ease enjoyed by an ascetic in the highest trance is generated within the body, and not by any contact with an external material thing³. The verses in the Thera- and Theri-gatha and the passages in the Mahāparinibbāna sutta describing the last trance of Buddha only express the ecstasy experienced by a perfected saint when he is in the highest trance. It is really the foretaste of what he is going to experience permanently. At the Arhat stage, i.e., on the attainment of the Sopādisesanibbānadhātu, he is assured of the fact that the supreme bliss in the inexpressible form of existence is going to be permanently his after the dissolution of his physical body.