The History of Buddhist Thought c12.39

c12.39

¹ Strictly speaking the trance is the final state of which these are stages. Rhys Davids said “ there is no suggestion of trance, but rather an enhanced vitality ” (Pali Dict., s.v.), evidently taking trance for a state of coma. But the trances of meditation do not imply a decreased vitality. The inner experience becomes more intense as attention is withdrawn from outer things, and the person may appear unconscious. Once during a great thunderstorm, when two farmers and four oxen were struck, Buddha was walking in the open air, but was so absorbed that he neither saw nor heard anything of it. Yet he was “ conscious and awake ” all the time. Dīgha, ii, 131.