Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s7.17

c24.s7.17

It would be easy, but fruitless, to insist on the incoherence and confusion of the doctrine of the stages of progress, but there are some fundamental features of the stages which are worth mention; the process as it appears to Asaṅga ² is one in which the adept rises from the mere self to appreciate that absolute in which the ideas of self and other are wholly lost, with the loss of the distinction of self and object. The appreciation is in experience very different from the mere knowledge of the fact of vacuity, which is attained in the first or Joyous (muditā) stage; he realizes the emptiness of self, and of other things (dharma) also; he appreciates their common nature as merely ideal (dharmatā). In the second or Pure (vimalā) stage there is freedom from sin; thought freed from the infections or defilement engages in meditation (dhyāna)