The History of Buddhist Thought c16.22

c16.22

The Buddhist conception of the individual, the person consisting of a material and immaterial part, is a quite definite theory, which at first appears without any polemics. It is expressed in different ways but all essentially the same. In the four contemplations, as we have seen (p. 53), the individual meditates on himself as compounded of body, sensations, mind, and thought. Another form of expression occurs in the system of the four trances (p. 47) when the stage of full knowledge begins and the individual begins to perceive everything as it really is. He first directs his attention to his body. “With mind concentrated, purified, cleansed, spotless, with the defilements gone, supple, ready to act, firm and impassable, he turns and directs his mind to knowledge and insight. He thus understands : this is my body, possessing form (material shape), originating from the four great elements, produced by a mother and father, a collection of milk and gruel, subject to rubbing, pounding, breaking, and dissolution ; and this is my consciousness, on this body it rests, to this it is bound.” Here the individual consists of body and consciousness. Either we have here a more rudimentary analysis or the sensations and thoughts are taken as implicit in consciousness.²