Indian Philosophy v1.c15.63

v1.c15.63

*Page 473.*—The ideas of the Yoga system had a powerful hold on early Buddhism. Ālārakālāma and Uddaka, two teachers of Buddha, were adepts in the practice of Yoga. It is quite possible and very probable that Buddha borrowed his ideas of the discipline of mind from the Yoga system, as the use of the words citta (thought), nirodha (suppression) suggests. The Yoga makes ignorance the cause of misery and regards it as a kleśa or defilement which is at the root of all others. The four stages of samādhi or concentration may have been the original of the Buddhist view of the four ordinary meditations (Y.S.I., 17). The four brahmavihāras of friendship, sympathy with sorrow, sympathy with happiness and indifference have also their parallel in the Yoga system (Y.S.I., 33). It is not difficult to trace the chain of causation to the Yoga philosophy (iv. 11). See also Stcherbatsky: *The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa*, pp. 2 ff.