Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s2.7

c11.s2.7

More abstruse are the Positions of Mastery (abhibhāyatanāni)⁵ which are essentially modes of contemplating external forms finite or boundless, and coloured blue, yellow, red, white, and appreciating their true impermanence, and thus presumably rendering vacant the mind. Akin to these exercises are the first three of the Stages of Deliverance (*vimokkha*)¹ which seem to be, first the contemplation by a man of his own material form, then of external form, and then the attainment of intentness. Then by passing beyond any conception of matter or idea of sensation, and suppressing the idea of multiformity, he attains the state of mind in which the only idea present is the infinity of space (*ākāsānañca*). On this follows a stage in which the infinity or unboundness of intellect (*viññāṇānañca*) is alone present. The next stage is reached when there is nothing at all present to the mind (*ākiñcaññāyatana*). Then is achieved the stage when neither the presence of ideas nor the absence of ideas is specifically present (*nevasaññānāsaññāyatana*). Finally is attained the state where there is suppression of both sensation and idea (*saññāvedayitanirodha*). The same idea reappears in a different form in the doctrine of the seven Resting Places for Consciousness (*viññāṇaṭhitiyo*) and the two Spheres.² The first of the resting places or stages is that of men, some gods and dwellers in hell; the second of the gods, differing in body but uniform in intelligence, of the Brahma-loka; the third of the gods uniform in body but not in intelligence; the fourth of the All lustrous gods uniform in both; the last three and the two Spheres cover the four stages beginning with the infinity of space, the two Spheres being the realms without idea and where is neither ideation nor yet non-ideation. The four or five rank as the Āruppajhānas, for their essence is that they assume that the adept has left all conception of matter far behind, and advances step by step in the sphere of pure consciousness, and finally the disappearance of any content whatever. We have here an interesting historical record, which explains to us the presence of the fifth form in the shape of the suppression of both idea and feeling; Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, two teachers of the Buddha, had carried their power of meditation to the extent of attaining the meditation of nothingness, and neither the presence nor the absence of ideas; it followed therefore that the Buddha must go further and invent a fifth meditation, in which everything disappears save the life and the warmth of the body; that is, in effect, a cataleptic condition in the fullest sense.¹ We must assume, therefore, that the Buddha approved this form of meditation. But the addition of four of the forms to the ordinary Four Meditations in order to make up eight Perfections or Accomplishments is clearly artificial, for the two forms of meditation differ in essence and cannot be made rationally complementary. They must have been favoured for different purposes and occasions, though with one end.