Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s2.15

c11.s2.15

This condition, is one in which, freed from all desire and evil dispositions, the adept enjoys, as a result of isolation and concentration, a condition of zest and pleasure (*pīti-sukha*), while engaged in initial and sustained application, doubtless to the truths of the system. By the suppression of either form of application, he obtains inner peace, the concentration (*ekodibhava*)⁴ of thought (cetas) produced by deep reflection (samādhi), and characterized by zest and pleasure. The third stage is one in which zest with the activity which it implies disappears; the adept remains mindful and intent (satimān), but indifferent (upekkhaka), enjoying, however, pleasure; the interpretation of indifference here is not evidently hedonistic; the state is not one of neutral feeling, but intellectual; the adept looks with impartial tolerance on all mental states. Then, by the putting away of all pleasure and pain, by the destruction of elation or dejection, he attains the fourth state which is one of pure or complete self-possession and indifference (upekkhāsatiparisuddhi) without pleasure or pain. This last state is not altogether easy of interpretation, for the term, which may indicate the purity or completeness of self-possession and indifference, has also been interpreted as denoting the removal¹ of these qualities from the adept, which would result, therefore, in a condition somewhat akin to that produced by the last of the other type of Meditations. In favour of this interpretation can be cited the fact that otherwise the fourth Meditation appears to leave us with a condition which seems indistinguishable from the final intuition of the saint, which it is certainly not to be identified with,² as that is represented as following on the last Meditation; but this objection is not fatal, for intuition is more than self-possession and indifference, which may well be treated as leading up to it. If so, then this series of Meditations clearly leads to a different result spiritually than the first, as it starts with a different procedure, for, although artificial aids to mental concentration are used, the adept engages in mental reflection on Buddhist truths, and not in a mere effort to isolate thought.³ Perhaps this fact was regarded as making it inferior, for the other Meditations appear later to have been preferred to it. Like the former set, it is not doubtful that the Meditations are taken over from Brahmanic practice; there are traces of them in the Yoga and the *Mahābhārata*, and they are not claimed as original or as inventions in Buddhism.