The History of Buddhist Thought c10.30

c10.30

The third and fourth rules illustrate two points of doctrine. Suicide is condemned without qualification. On Buddhistic and general Indian theory it could only result in another life still burdened with the consequences of the individual’s previous karma. But the Buddhist scholastics appear to have raised the question as to what happens in the case of a person who, by winning the goal of arahatship, has escaped from the chain of birth and death, and for whom there is no rebirth. What if at the moment of escape he commits suicide? It appears never to have been more than an academic question, but the problem is illustrated by several stories of monks who are said to have taken this means to escape falling from arahatship. These are discussed below. The fourth question speaks of superhuman (*uttarimanussa*) abilities.¹ They are superhuman only in the sense that they do not belong to the ordinary man, but have to be acquired by a long course of training, and they are the powers attained by means of the mystic practices of concentration (*samādhi*) known as yoga. These attainments are in the first place states of mind, in which the monk rises by stages so that he becomes gradually free from contact with the world of change. But they also bring with them supernormal physical powers (levitation, the power of projecting an image of oneself at a distance, clairvoyance, etc.), powers which were already claimed by pre-Buddhist adepts. Their mention here is important as early evidence for the view that yoga is an essential part of the primitive doctrine, as seen in the triple division of the disciple’s practice into morality, concentration, and full knowledge.