{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/dob/dob-10in.htm","path":"bud/dob/dob-10in.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/dob/dob-10in.htm","text":"As this Sutta is almost word for word the same as the S\u00e2ma\u00f1\u00f1a-phala, the question arises why it was considered advisable to include it in our collection as a separate Sutta. The chief difference is that the states of mind enumerated in the S\u00e2ma\u00f1\u00f1a-phala as fruits of the life of a recluse are here divided under the three heads of S\u00eela, Sam\u00e2dhi, and Pa\u00f1\u00f1\u00e2 (Conduct, Concentration, and Intelligence).\nSam\u00e2dhi has not yet been found in any Indian book older than the Pitakas. And, as in them, it is used exclusively of a mental state, never in a concrete sense, its meaning is not easy to fix exactly. It is not the same as Gh\u00e2na, which is a pre-Buddhistic term applied to four special forms of meditation, culminating in self-induced ecstasy. Sam\u00e2dhi on the other hand is a constant habit, or faculty, of mind. The oldest Sanskrit text in which it occurs is the Maitr\u00ee Upanishad; and it probably has there the same meaning as it has in the Pitakas.\nIn our prescnt Sutta--and the principal reason for its existence as a separate Sutta is that it points out just this--it is pointed out that Sam\u00e2dhi includes, it is true, the Gh\u00e2nas, but also other, and very different things. These are the habit of guarding the doors of one's senses; constant mindfulness and self-possession; and the faculty of being content with little. From the negative point of view it is said to include emancipation from ill-temper, inertness of mind and body, worry, and perplexity; from the positive point of view it is said to include a constant state of joy and peace.\nWilson's Sanskrit Dictionary (1819) gives the meaning 'devout meditation'; and the rendering 'meditation' has been used for it in subsequent works in English by Western scholars. It is quite clear that this would be a very inadequate and misleading rendering in our Sutta. But exigencies of space preclude the discussion here, either of the meaning, or of the very interesting and suggestive history of the word in India.\nHow far was the word (literally 'allocation') invented or adopted by the Buddhists, or by their immediate spiritual forerunners, to express 'self-concentration' with implied coordination, harmonisation, of the mental faculties--an idea they wanted, in the statement of their most essential and ethical doctrines, to be used in preference to the more limited, more physical, notion of Gh\u00e2na? (It is Sam\u00e2dhi, and not Gh\u00e2na, that we find in the Four Truths, in the Noble Path, and in the thirty-seven constituent parts of Arahatship.) How far, through the constant association of the two ideas, did the larger, as ethical feeling died away, become swallowed up by the smaller? At what date, in what circles, and under what reservations, did the word Sam\u00e2dhi come to mean nothing more than meditation? The history of the two ideas, Sam\u00e2dhi and Gh\u00e2na, has constant analogies with the history of the two similarly related ideas of T\u00e2pasa and Bhikshu, and, like it, is of the first importance in following the evolution of philosophical and religious thought in India.\nI have made some detailed contributions to the discussion of such questions in my 'Yog\u00e2vacara Manual' (P\u00e2li Text Society, 1896, pp. xiv-xxviii); and must confine myself, here, to referring to those pages.","title":"Introduction to the Subha Sutta","type":"page"}