Chapter II - Good In Relation To The Universe Of Form

See Introduction.

The subject of these states of consciousness.

Vivicc' eva kamehi, vivicca akusalehi dhammehi. Lit., "having separated one's self, having become without, having departed from" (Asl. 164). That is to say — again according to the Cy. (ibid.) — from the objects of sensual desires, and from the desires themselves, respectively (vatthukama, kilesakama. Childers Dictionary, s.v. kamo). The former phrase (vivicc' eva kamehi) includes the whole psychological realm of sense-presentation (kayo, or the three skandhas of feeling, perception and sanskaras) ; the latter, dhammehi, referring to the realm of ideation (cittam) only.

The Cy. repudiates the idea that the emphatic enclitic eva, occurring only in the former of the two phrases, renders the latter less important, and quotes, in support, the opening words of the Cula-sihanada Discourse (M. i. 63).

Pathavikasinam. The first of the Karmasthana methods, or quasi-hypnotic devices for attaining to temporary rapt oblivion of the outer world. The percept of the circle of mould induces the vivid image (nimittam), and thereupon Jhana supervenes.

I.e., sustains the mood indefinitely. The Cy. quotes the Vibhanga as paraphrasing the term by the same expressions, "going on", etc., as are used to describe above (§ 19) the "faculty of vitality".

Savitakkam savicaram. Leaving the negative essential conditions of Jhana, we pass to the positive features (Asl. 166). The meditation progresses by means of these two in particular, as a tree does by its flowers and fruit. According to the Vibhanga, they reveal the deter- mined resolves of the individual student (puggaladhitthana). (Ihid.)

According to the Cy., the solitude is rather moral than physical, and means "born in the seclusion" which the student creates by thrusting from his heart the five hindrances (ibid.,- infra, § 1152). According as it is said in the Petaka (? Petakopadesa), concentration opposes sensual desire ; joy opposes malice ; conception, or the onset of intellect, opposes stolidity and torpor ; ease opposes excite- ment and worry ; discursive thought opposes perplexity or doubt (Asl. 165). See I), i. 73, where the hindrances are explicitly mentioned in connection with Jhana ; also the notes in Rhys Davids "Dialogues of the Buddha", I., p. 84.

I.e., joy of the fifth species, pharana-piti (Asl. 166), § 9; also compare the passage just referred to, D. i. 73. Seeabove, so imam eva kayam . . . abhisandeti . . . parip-pharati.

I.e., joy of the fifth species, pharana-piti (Asl. 166), § 9; also compare the passage just referred to, D. i. 73. Seeabove, so imam eva kayam . . . abhisandeti . . . parip-pharati.

These are said to be the four first — desire, etc. — of the nine named above, p. 5, n. 1 (Asl. 168).

So the Cy. (ibid.). In the text, therefore, the reader should have been referred, not to (147), but to (1). K. indicates the elision simply by a ... pe ... at the point corresponding to the comma before "or whatever . . ." in my translation, followed by "ime dhamma kusala".

I am inclined, however, to think that the detailed catechism as to the nature of the various dhammas, such as occurs at §§ 2-57, is not to be understood as included in the passage elided, either here or in the remaining Jhanas. K. does not repeat the . . . pe . . . cited above at the corresponding point in the three remaining Jhanas, where the Summary is not elided, but given. Nor does it give the . . . pe . . . which stands in the text, in §§ 163, 165, before Tasmim kho pana samaye. Similarly it omits the . . . pe . . . given in the text at the corre- sponding points in the formulae for the "five-fold Jhana", § 168 et seq.

Ajjhattam, i.e., according to the Cy. (169), attano jatam, attasantane nibbattarn; according to the Vibhanga, paccattam. It is not quite clear to me what is the special force of the term in just this Jhana, unless it be that the "earth-gazing" is not now continued — the individual becoming more rapt from external determinants of consciousness, more susceptible to purely subjective conditions.

Sampasadanam, tranquillizing, paraphrased in the Cy. (ibid.) by saddha, assurance or faith (above, § 12). It is a term for Jhana itself, blent as it is with the whole contemplative discipline, just as cloth steeped in purple is "purple"' — to adapt the commentator's simile to our idiom. The following word cetaso, 'of the mind,' may be taken either with this term, or with that next after it, ekodibhavam (ibicL).

In the text read ekodibhavam. Buddhaghosa's comments on this expression contain the original of the Thera Subhuti's quotation given in Childers. The substance of them is that the ceto (intellect, mind, heart), no longer overwhelmed or encumbered by vitakko and vicaro, rises up slowly pre-eminent (eko = settho or asahayo) in its meditative concentration, or samadhi, this term being synonymous with ekodibhavam (Samadhiss' etam adhivacanam). The discursive intellection of the First Jhana, troubling the ceto, as waves rendering water turgid, has in the Second Jhana sunk to rest. And this uplifting is said (the commentator emphasizes) of ceto, and not of an individual entity, nor of a living soul (na sattassa na jivassa). See Morris's note, J. P. T. S., 1885, p. 32.

Sammasankappo is here, its usual order of place, omitted. It involves vitakko; see § 7.

The reference in the text to § 157 cannot be right. The subject has not yet banished pleasurable emotion, and attained to the calm of disinterestedness ; nor is his state of mind * disconnected with knowledge.' The type of thought, as to its remaining components, is still the first, i.e., that of § 1.

(Cf. § 83. "Conception" and "discursive thought" are now suppressed.

(Cf. § 89. "Eight intention", as involving "conception", is now suppressed. The mind is no longer occupied with overt activities concerned with this life. See p. 46, n. 3.

Including, presumably, the "Emptiness" Section, as in the case of the First Jhana.

Pitiya ca viraga, "meaning either distaste for joy or the transcending of it". The ca indicates the progressive continuity from the preceding to the present Jhana (Asl. 171).

Upekkhako, or disinterested. He looks on from the standpoint of one who has arrived, says the Cy. (172). As we might say:

"E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem."

Buddhaghosa expatiates here on the ten kinds of upek- kha enumerated in Hardy, "Man. Buddhism", 505.

Sampajano. Intelligently aware of his own procedure.

Kayo, see Introduction ; supra, p. 43, n. 3.

See infra, § 1003, n. 6.

Omitted in the text, but not so in K. The context requires its insertion.

§ 157, to which the reader is referred in the text, is obviously wrong. § 1 would be nearer the mark.

"Ease" remains and "self-collectedness".

Cf. § 161 n. 2.

"Ease" and "ill", according to the Cy., are kayikam, or relating to the three skandhas of feeling, etc. — relating to sense-consciousness.  "Happiness' and "misery" (soman- assarn, domanassam) relate to the intellect, or ideational consciousness. "Happiness" is the last of these to be transcended ; the others have been expelled in the course of the previous stages of Jhana (Asl. 175, 176).

But all four are here enumerated, as if all were only in this Fourth Jhana transcended, in order to show more clearly, by the method of exhaustive elimination, what is the subtle and elusive nature of that third species of feeling termed "neutral" (adukkham-asukha), or "disinterested" (upekkha) — the zero point, or line, as we should say, of hedonic quantity. The Cy. then gives the simile of selecting heads of cattle by elimination of the rest of the herd, which Hardy cites {ibid., 177; East. Monachism, 270).

Upekkha-satiparisuddhim. According to the Vibhanga, the mindfulness that is made pure stands for all the other elements present in consciousness, which have also been brought into clear relief, as it were, by the calm medium of equanimity. The simile is then adduced, given also in Hardy (op. cit, 271), of the moon by day and by night. Upekkha is latent in consciousness in the other stages of Jhana, but rendered colourless by the radiance of intellectual and emotional exercise, as the crescent moon during the day, though present in the sky, is dimmed by the sun's splendour (Asl. 178).

Namely, "disinterestedness" and "self-collectedness" (Asl. 179). Else one would have looked to find ekangi- kam Jhanam.

The printed text omits satindriyam, though it is explicitly required by the context. K. gives it.

Jhana is usually alluded to in the Pitakas in the four- fold order. The fivefold division is obtained by the suc- cessive, instead of simultaneous, elimination of vitakko and vicaro. According to the Cy., it was optional to the teacher, after the example of the Buddha, to use either at his discretion, adapting himself to the particular mental state of his pupils, or having a view to the effectve flow of his discourse. A passage is quoted from the Pitakas — probably S. iv. 363 or A. i. 299, n. 2 {cf K V. 413 ; Mil. 337) — where samadhi is distinguished as

1. having vitakko and vicaro,
2. having only the latter,
3. having neither.

It has been seen that, before the several stages of Jhana could be attained to, the student had to purge and discipline himself in specific ways — elimination of all attention to mundane matters, elimination of discursive cogitation, and so on. The special stage of Jhana super- vened after each act of self-control and intensified ab- straction. In these processes there was an earlier and a subsequent stage called — at least in the later books — upacara and appana respectively. The effective cognition linking these two was an exercise of paiina which, in the text, is known as abhifina ("intuition"), probably the intuitive or subconscious fetch of the mind to compass the desired appana, or conception. Now, whether the preparatory abstraction was easy or difficult, and whether the constructive generalizing effort was sluggish or vigorous, depended on the moral temperament and the mental ability respectively of the individual student (Asl. 182-184).

See the double explanation in A. ii. 149-152, where the swift- ness or sluggishness of intuition in both accounts depends on the acuteness or flabbiness of the five faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom. The ease or difficulty in self-abstraction depends, in the first explana- tion, on whether the student is by nature passionate, malignant, dull, or the reverse of these three. In the second account progress is painful if he have filled his consciousness with the disciplinary concepts of the Foul Things {vide below, § 263), Disgust with the World, Im- permanence and Death ; easy if he simply work out the Four Jhanas.

On the varying import of abhinna (which occurs in no other connexion in the present work), see "Dialogues of the Buddha", i. 62. On upacara and appana, see "Yogavacara's Manual", p. xi. We shall probably learn more about the whole procedure when the Visuddhi Magga and the Vibhanga are edited.

Cf. § 1.

The same question is to be understood as repeated in each section.

That is to say, the percepts or concepts on which the student, in seeking to induce Jhana, fixes his attention are here classified as having the potentiality to induce a weak or a lofty mood of rapt contemplation. Buddhaghosa describes the former kind of object as having the shallow- ness of a mere basket or dish (Asl. 184). See also below, §§ 1019-1024.

Cf § 1.

In the following condensed passages the question and answer in the text respectively coincides with and com- mences like the precedent given in § 181.

In the text, § 185, after pathamam jhilnam read . . . pe . . . pan cam am jhanam. So K. Cf. § 180. Again, after avikkhepo hoti supply . . . pe . . .

In the text supply parittam before parittaram-manam.

The first artifice for the induction of Jhana having been that of earth-gazing (see above, passim). In the Sutta Pitaka — viz., in the Maha Sakuludayi-Sutta (M. ii., p. 14), and in the Jhana Yagga (A. i. 41) — ten kasinas are enumerated, those omitted in the Dhammasangani being the kasinas of intellection (v inn an a) and space (akasa).

The fact of the omission and the nature of the two omitted kasinas are commented on by Buddhaghosa (Asl. 186). He explains the omission of the former by its being identical with the second of the four Aruppajhanani given in §§ 265-268, and that of the latter through its ambiguity.

For either it amounts to the "yellow" kasina (sun -lit space), or it amounts to the first Aruppajhana (§ 265). The Ceylon tradition has ten kasinas also, but admits aloka (light) instead of vinnana. And it includes yet another quasi-kasina in the shape of a bhuta-kasina, or the four elements taken collectively, after each has been separately dwelt upon. See "Yogavacara's Manual, 1896", pp. 48-52.

Eight "stations" or "positions of mastery" are given in the Maha-parinibbana-Sutta (pp. 28, 29; see S. B. E. xi. 49, 50, and in A. iv. 305), but the formulae of the first four differ slightly from those in our text. The Cy. draws attention to this discrepancy (Asl. 189). In the Suttanta the esthetic aspect of the objects perceived is taken into account in all four stations, the specific difference replacing it in two of them being the conscious dwelling on some part of one's own bodily frame orriipaskandha.

In the Dhammasangani this consciousness is excluded from all the stations. To teach by way of its inclusion and exclusion is called "merely a jen d'esprit in the Master's discourse" (desana-vilasa-mattam eva). See following note.

Ajjhattam arupasaniii ( = na rupasanni). This rendering is in accordance with Buddhaghosa's comments (Asl. 188, 189, 191). The student, either because he has tried and failed, or because he did not wish to try, has not induced Jhana by way of fixing attention on his own hair or the rest. Cf. the Maha Eahulovada-Sutta (M. i. 62), where the individual's rupa-skandha is fully set forth with reference to the four elements, ajjhattika pathavid- hatu, etc., beginning with ' hair ' and the rest. Cj. § 248 n.

The external objects in question are contemplated on the kasina system (Asl. 188). And just as a man of vigorous digestion bolts a spoonful of rice, so the aspirant after sublime truth swiftly and easily transcends the initial act of external perception when the object is insignificant, and brings forth the desiderated concept (appana).

The judgments by which he registers the consciousness of in- tellectual mastery have reference, according to Buddhaghosa, to past experience of enlightenment, and indicate simply a recognition, or, in terms of syllogism, a minor premise identified. But he states that, in the Sinhalese commentary on the Nikayas, they are interpreted as implying a present access of new light, a fresh moral attainment, gained after the thinker transcends perceptual consciousness (ibid.).

The "objects of thought" are here the kasinas, essentially discerned to be "limited" or insignificant. Hence two, not four varieties ; and hence eight, not sixteen combinations. The term appamanain connoting merely a relative, not an absolute infinitude, there is only a difference of degree in the depth, purifying efficacy, or what not, of the Jhana attained to. The same illustrative figure is accordingly used, varied in degree. The gourmand, discontented with a small dish of rice, demands more and more. So the aspirant (now nanuttaro, not nanuttariko), aiming at perfect self-concentration, refuses to call that infinite which seems so (ibid.).

So K.

The general aesthetic designations of suvann arn and dubbanam are in the Cy. paraphrased by parisuddhaiii and its negative. Just as the limited nature of visible things was held to be an efficacious consideration for con- ceptual efforts, and the notion of 'infinite' helpful for dulness, so the beautiful and the ugly were prescribed for inimical conduct and for indulgence in passion respectively. The appropriateness of it all is said to be discussed in the Cariya-niddesa of the Visuddhi Magga (Asl. 189).

See note on §§ 211-213. Taken in order, Buddhaghosa's comment there reproduced applies to that part of the text. According to the context, it might better apply here, where the external forms or kasina-objects are now contemplated as "infinite". The reflection, however, appHes to either passage.

It is well known that it is as difiicult to determine the range of colour indicated by nil am as to decide the colour-value of the word ;, Like the latter term, nilam may originally have referred more to lustre than to tinge, meaning darkly lustrous, jetty, or nigrescent. Any way, it is not plausible to render the term by "blue" when one is referred to human hair or bile (pit tarn) as instances of it in the human body. See note 2 to § 248. In Jat. iii. 138 hair-dye or hair- wash is called niliyam — much, perhaps, as we speak of "blacking" or "russet polish" for shoes. This implies that the colour called nil am was, if not the usual, at least the desiderated colour of human hair.

If it were what we understand by a typical blue, the term would be applied to sky and sea, or the violet band of the rainbow, which is, I believe, never the case. Pos- sibly our own colour -parallels in these respects are a modern development. Cf. Havelock Ellis in Contemporary Revieiv, vol. Ixix., p. 727. Modern Hindu colour-terms are, I am told, largely of Persian origin.

Nilanidassanam, indicating, according to the Cy. (190), a uniform sheet of blue without break. The colours in this and following sections may reside in a flower, a piece of cloth, or some other basis.

The remaining three English colour-names may match the Pali terms as loosely as in the previous case. Cf. S. B. E. xi., loc, cit. In the Sutta there translated in- stances of the colours are given, and, curiously enough, "white" is illustrated, not by milk, or the distant Himalaya snows, but by the morning star.

Followed by four more of the Eight Deliverances in the next chapter, §§ 265-268. The eighth alone is not given in the present work. See Maha Parinibbana Sutta, p. 30 ; A. iv. 306. According to the Cy. (190), the term "deliverance" (vimokkham, or adhimuccanam) is used to denote the being set free from "adverse conditions" and their seductive fascinations, so that the attention is sus- tained with all the detachment and confidence that the child feels who is borne on his father's hip, his little limbs dangling, their clutch unneeded.

Rupi. Judging by the Cy. (190), this is equivalent to ajjhattam rupasanni — that is, to the opposite of the term "unconscious of any part of his corporeal self", the attitude prescribed in the Stations of Mastery, supra, § 204 et seq. The parikammam selected is "one's own hair and the rest". If a nila-parikammam is sought, attention is fixed on the hair or bile (pit tarn) or the pupil of the eye. If the induction is to be by way of yellow, fat or skin may be taken ; if red, flesh, blood, or the tongue, or the palms of the hands or feet, etc. ; if white, the teeth, nails, or white of the eye. At the same time "he sees external bodily forms in the nila or other kasina ivith the Jhana-vision" (jhanacakkhuna passati).

How this dual effort of intense attention was effected I do not pretend to understand, but Buddhaghosa more than once refers us for a more detailed account to the Yisuddhi Magga.

 That is to say, says the Cy. (191), not the conscious acquirement of the concept (a p pan a), but the consciousness of the perfection or purity of colour or lustre in the par- ticular kasina is here meant. (The reading should, of course, be subhan ti.) And this gesthetic consciousness is declared by Buddhaghosa to quicken the sense of emanci- pation from morally adverse conditions analogously to that perception of moral beauty which may be felt in the Sublime Abodes of the following sections. According to the Pati- sambhida-magga, here quoted, when, on pervading the whole world with heart of love, pity, etc., all feeling of aversion from living beings is rooted out, the student is struck with the glory of the idea, and works his deliverance.

On these four great exercises, see Ehys Davids, S. B. E. xi. 201, n. ; and, on their emancipating efficacy, M. i. 38. Buddhaghosa again refers the reader to his Visuddhi Magga for a more detailed commentary (vide chap, ix., and cf. Hardy, ^Eastern Monachism,' p. 243 et seq.). The four are set out here only under the * Suddhika ' formulae — that is, under heads (a) and (b). But (c), or the Modes of Progress, as well as (d) and (e), are understood to follow in each case (Asl. 192). The object of thought (a ram- ma nam) in this connexion will be 'limited' if the student dwells in love, etc., on but a restricted number of beings ; ' infinite ' if his heart embrace vast numbers.

The commentator has not a little to say in the present work, however, on the nature and mutual relations of the ' Abodes ' (pp. 193-195). First, the characteristics of each are fully set forth, together with their false manifestation (vipatti). Clinging (sinehasambhavo) is the vipatti of love, the essential mark of which is the carrying on of beneficent conduct, etc. Tears and the like are less truly characteristic of pity than is the bearing and relieving the woes of others. Laughter and the like are less genuine expressions of sympathy (mudita, which is strictly ( Mitfreude) than is appreciation of what others have achieved. And there is a condition of dis- interestedness (upekkha) which is prompted by ignorance, and not by that insight into the karma of mankind which can avail to calm the passions.

He next designates the four antisocial attitudes which are to be extirpated by these ethical disciplines, taken in order — ill-will (vyapado), cruelty (vihesa), aversion (arati), and passion (rago) — and shows how each virtue has also a second vice opposed to it. This he terms its near enemy, as being less directly assailed by it than its ethical opposite, the latter resembling an enemy who has to lurk afar in the jungle and the hills. Love and vengeful conduct cannot coexist. To prevail in this respect, let love be de- veloped fearlessly. But where love and its object have too much in common, love is threatened by lust. On this side let love be guarded well. Again, the near enemy to pity, more insidious than cruelty, is the self-pity pining for what one has not got or has lost — a low, profane melancholy. And the corresponding worldly happiness in what one has, or in consequence of obliviousness as to what one has lost, lies in wait to stifle appreciation of the good fortune of others. Lastly, there is the unintelligent indifference of the worldling who has not triumphed over limitations nor mastered cause and effect, being unable to transcend external things.

The remainder of his remarks are occupied with the necessary ethical sequence in the four Abodes, and the importance of observing method in their cultivation, and finally with their other technical appellation of Ap pa- manna, or Infinitudes. In this connexion he repeats the touching illustration given in Hardy (pp. cit, 249) of the mother and her four children. Her desire for the growth of the infant is as Metta; for the recovery of the sick child as Karuna; for the maintenance of the gifts dis- played by the youth as Mudita; while her care not to hinder the career of her grown-up son is as Upekkha.

It may be remarked, by the way, that when Hardy, with a foreigner's want of mudita, calumniates the Buddhist mendicant (p. 250) as one who thinks about the virtues of solidarity without practising them, he quite forgets that these exercises are but preparations of the will for that ministering to the intellectual needs of others to which the recluse's life was largely devoted, and the importance of which the Western, in his zeal for material forms of charity, does not even now appreciate at its real value. And Buddhism did not believe in giving the rein to good impulses unregulated by intellectual control.

Love necessarily involves happiness (somanassam = cetasikam sukham, § 10, n.), hence it cannot be cultivated by way of the Fourth — or, under (b), Fifth — Jhana.

Omitting the Fifth Jhana. See preceding note.

The formula of the First Jhana is understood to be repeated in the case of each of the ten Asubhas, but of the First only. For, in the words of the Cy. (p. 199), 'just as on a swiftly-flowing river a boat can only be steadied by the power of the rudder, so from the weakness (dubba- latta) of the idea (in this case) the mind can only be steadied in its abstraction by the power of conceptual activity (vitakko).' And this activity is dispensed with after the First Jhana.

For a more detailed account of this peculiar form of moral discipline, the reader is again referred to the Visuddhi Magga (chap. vi.). Hardy ("East. Mon."), who quotes largely from the Sinhalese commentary on the Visuddhi Magga, may also be consulted (p. 247 et seq.). In the Satipatthana Sutta (D. 22. Cf. Warren, "Buddhism in Translation", p. 353 et seq, ; and M.I. 58) a system of nine Asubha- meditations is set out in terms somewhat different. In S. V. (pp. 129-131) five of the Asubhas, beginning with "the skeleton" meditation, are prescribed in connexion with the sambhojjhangas of mindfulness and disinterestedness.

And the same five are given in the Jhana Vagga of A. i. 42 (cf. A. iii. 323). The ten here given are said in the Cy. (pp. 197-199) to be prescribed for such as were proved to be passionately affected by the beauty of the body — of the figure, skin, odour, firmness or continuity, plumpness, limbs and extremities, symmetry, adornment, identifying self with the body, or complacency in the possession of it (?kaye mamattam; cf. S. N. 951), and teeth respectively. A dead body is not essential to this kind of mind-culture, the Cy. citing the cases of those Theras who obtained the requisite Jhana by the glimpse of a person's teeth, or by the sight of a rajah on his elephant. The essential procedure lay in getting a clear and courageous grasp of the transience of any living organism.