Back to the library

A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics of the Fourth Century B.C - Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids, 1900 - Complete Book

English

And Buddhism did not believe in giving the rein to good impulses unregulated by intellectual control. 5—2 ■68 that is unbiassed and watchful dwelleth at ease ' — and so, by earth-gazing, enters into and abides in the Third Jhana, which is accompanied by Love^ — then, etc, [Continue as in the foregoing^] (h) Fivefold Jhana. [254-257] Repeat question and answers in §§ 167, 168, 170, 172, adding in each answer, as in the foregoing section, ' and which is accompanied by Love.'^ 2. Pity (k a r u n a). [258, 259] Repeat question and answers in the preceding sections (a) and (h), hut substituting in each case * and which is accompanied by Pity ' for the clause on Love. 3. Sympathy (mudita). [260, 261] Repeat question and anstvers in the preceding two sections, hut substituting in each case ' and which is accompanied by Sympathy ' for the clause on Pity. 4. Disinterestedness (upekkha). [262] When, that he may attain to the heavens of Form, he cultivates the way thereto, and, by the putting away of ease and by the putting away of ill, by the passing away of the happiness and of the misery he was wont to feel, he thus, by earth -gazing, enters into and abides in the Fourth Jhana (the fourth rapt meditation) of that utter purity of mindfulness which comes of disinterestedness, where no ease is felt nor any ill, and which is accompanied by Dis- interestedness— then the contact, etc. [Continue as in § 165.] ^ Love necessarily involves happiness (somanassam = cetasikam sukham, § 10, n.), hence it cannot be cultivated by way of the Fourth — or, under (Z>), Fifth — Jhana. ^ Omitting the Fifth Jhana. See preceding note. 69 The Four Jhanas of the Sublime Abodes may be de- veloped in Sixteen Combinations. '' [V. The Jhana of Foul Things (a s u b h a-j h a n a m.)] [263] Which are the states that are good ? When, that he may attain to the heavens of Form, he cultivates the way thereto, and so, aloof from sensuous appetites, aloof from evil ideas, enters into and abides in the First Jhana, wherein, etc. . . . and which is accom- panied by the idea of a bloated corpse^ . . . \or] [264] of a discoloured corpse ... [or] of a festering corpse ... [or] of a corpse with cracked skin ... \or\ of a corpse gnawn and mangled ... [or] of a corpse cut to pieces ... [or] of a corpse mutilated and cut in pieces . . . [or] of a bloody corpse ... [or] of a corpse infested with worms ... [or] of a skeleton ... then the contact . . . the balance which arises — these . . . are states that are good.^ ^ 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 Satipat- thana Sutta (D. 22. Cf. Warren, ' Buddhism in Transla- 70 The Jhana of Foul Things may be developed in Sixteen Combinations. [Here ends the Chapter on] Good in relation to the Universe of Form. tion,' 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 (c/. 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. [Chapter III. Good in relation to the Universe of the Formless (ariipavacara-kusala m). The Four Jhanas connected with Formless Existence (c a 1 1 a r i a r u p a j j h a n a n i).^ 1. The Sphere of Unbounded Space (akasananca- y at an am).] [265] "Which are the states that are good? ^ These often appear in the Nikayas as the fourth to the seventh of the Eight Vimokhas or Deliverances {cf. §§ 248- 250 ; Maha Par. Sutta, p. 30 ; A. iv. 306). Though treated of in the Visuddhi Magga (chap, iii.), Buddhaghosa only makes comparison with the account of them given in the Vibhanga. In S. iii. 237, and frequently in the Majjhima, they occur in immediate sequence to the four Jhanas without any collective title, and not as concomitants of the Fourth Jhana. There, too, the formulae also have this slight variation from those in the present work, that the conscious attainment of each stage of abstraction is expressed by a brief proposition of identification, e.g., ananto akaso ti . . . n'atthi kind ti (It is boundless space! . . . There is nothing whatever !). The Cy. explains this by a curious quibble which is incidentally of interest (p. 204). It was the wish of the Buddha to carry out, as in previous pro- cedure so in this, the study of the Four Objects of Thought [arammanani; see above, jp^issim, under {d)\. And the first of these is that one's object is 'limited.' But if the student, in attaining to an undifferentiated consciousness of unbounded space, realize its nature by the, so to speak, exclamatory thought, 'It is boundless!' he cannot logically proceed to consider it as limited. If I interpret Buddha- 72 When, that he may attain to the Formless heavens, he cultivates the way thereto, and so, by passing wholly beyond all consciousness of form, by the dying out of the consciousness of sensory reaction,^ by turning the attention from any consciousness of the manifold,^ he enters into and abides in that rapt meditation which is accompanied by the consciousness of a sphere of unbounded space — ghosa aright, an interesting significance is hereby added to these parenthetical exclamations, which are not unfrequent in Buddhist philosophy. They seem to imply an act of conscious recognition. ^ The student is to withdraw all interest in and attention to the world of rupa, to cease so entirely to differentiate the ;plenu7n of external phenomena (including his own form) which impinge on his senses, that sensations cease, or resolve themselves into a homogeneous sense of extended vacuum. Patigho, rendered by sensory reaction, is ex- plained to be sight-perception, sound-perception, smell, taste, and touch-perception. ' Thought is (here) not sustained by way of the five doors ' (Asl. 201, 202). Hardest of all was it to abstract all attention from sounds. Alara Kalama, one of Gotama's teachers, and proficient in these rapt states, at least so far as the sixth Vimokha (M. i. 164), was credited with the power of becoming so absorbed that he failed to see or hear hundreds of carts passing near him (Asl. 202). On the psycho-physiological use of patigho, see the theory of sense in the book on form, infra, § 597 e^ seq. ^ Nanattasannanam amanasikara. On the latter term, see above, p. 5, n. 1. Nanattam is of rare occur- rence in the Nikayas ; but see M. i. 3, where, in a series of concepts, it follows ' unity ' and precedes * the whole ' (Neumann renders by Vielheit); also S. iv. 113, 114, where it is explained to refer to the various kinds of sensa- tion, the corresponding viiiiiana, and the resulting feeling. In the Vibhanga, quoted by Buddhaghosa (p. 202), it is explained to mean cognition of the mutual diversity or dissimilarity (aiinamannam asadisa) of nature in the eight kinds of good thoughts, the twelve bad thoughts (below, § 365), as well as in those ideas of good and bad results which are taken next to these.