INTRODUCTION TO THE  STUDY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

SEMINAR NINE

TEXT IX The Establishment of Recollection[1]

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Lord was living in the Kuru country at a town named Kammåsadhamma. There he addressed the monks thus: “Monks.” – “Venerable sir,” they replied. The Lord said this: “Monks, this is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of Nirvana – namely, the four establishments of recollection.

“What are the four? Here, monks, a monk abides contemplating[2] the body as a body, ardent, fully aware, immersed in recollection, and putting away covetousness and grief for the world. Then he abides contemplating feelings as feelings … mind as mind … objects of mind as objects of mind.[3]

1. “And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating the body as a body? here a monk, gone to the forest or to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut, sits down; having folded his legs crosswise, he set his body erect, and established recollection in front of him.[4] So recollecting all the time, he breathes in and he breathes out. Breathing in long, he comprehends:[5] “ I breathe in long”; or breathing out long, he comprehends: “I breathe out long”. Breathing in short, he comprehends: “I breathe in short”. … He trains himself thus: “I shall breathe in, experiencing the whole body of breath.” [6] He trains himself thus: “I shall breath out (or in, long or short, etc.) tranquilizing the bodily formations.”[7] Just as a skilled turner, … when making a long turn comprehends: “I make a long turn,” or when making a short turn, comprehends: “I make a short turn”; so too, breathing in long, a monk comprehends: “I breathe in long” … and trains thus: “I shall breathe in long, tranquilizing the bodily formations.”

“In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally … or externally, or both internally and externally.[8] Or else he abides contemplating in the body its arising factors … or its vanishing factors, both its arising and vanishing factors.[9] Or else recollecting that “there is a body,” he simply established in himself the awareness of body, necessary for bare knowledge of what there is. And so a monk abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world, when he contemplates the body as a body.

“Again, monks, when walking, a monk comprehends: “I am walking”; when standing, he comprehends: “I am standing”; when sitting – “I am sitting”; when lying down – “I am lying down,” that is, he comprehends respectively however his body is disposed. …

“Again, monks, a monk is one who acts in full comprehension when going forward and returning, when looking ahead and looking away, when flexing and extending his limbs … when wearing his robes … and carrying his bowl … when eating, drinking, urinating, defecating, when falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent. …

“Again, monks, a monk reviews the same body up from the soles of the feet and down from the top of the hair, bounded by skin, as full of many kinds of impurity, thus: “In this body there are head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines … feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, gnease, spittle, snot … and urine. In this way he contemplates the body as a body.

“Again, monks, a monk reviews this same body, however it is placed, however disposed, as consisting of elements thus: “In this body there are the earth element, tha water element, the fire element, and the air element.[10] …

“Again, monks, as though a monk were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, or three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter, a monk compares his own body with it thus: “This body is of the same nature, it will be like that corpse, it is not exempt from that fate. …

“Again, as though a monk were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, a skeleton with flesh and blood … a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood … or disconnected bones skattered all around – here a hand-bone, there a jaw-bone … there the skull – a monk compares his own body with this thus: “(My) body is of the same nature, it will be like that …” That is how a monk abides contemplating the body as a body.

2. “And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating feelings as feelings?[11] Here, when he feels a pleasant feeling, a monk comprehends: “ I feel a pleasant feeling,” when he feels a painful feeling, he understands: “I feel a painful feeling”; when he feels neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, he comprehends: “I feel a neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling.” When feeling a worldly pleasant feeling, he comprehends: “I feel a worldly pleasant feeling”; when feeling an unworldly pleasant feeling, he comprehends: “I feel unworldly pleasant feeling”. …
3. “And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating mind as mind?[12] Here a monk comprehends mind affected by lust as mind affected by lust, amd mind unaffected by lust as mind unaffected by lust. Likewise he comprehends mind as affected or unaffected by hate and delusion, and also mind contracted or distracted, exalted and unexalted. He also comprehends concentrated mind as concentrated mind, and unconcentrated mind as unconcentrated. The same with liberated mind and unliberated mind.[13]

“And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating objects of mind as objects of mind? Here a monk contemplates objects of mind in connection with the five hindrances.[14] They are: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. Here, there being sensual desire, a monk comprehends: “There is sensual desire in me”; or there being no sensual desire in him, he comprehends: “There is no sensual desire in me”; and he also understands how there comes to be the arising of unarisen sensual desire, and how there comes to be abandoning of arisen sensual desire, and how there comes to be the future non-arising of abandoned sensual desire. That is how a monk abides in contemplating objects of mind in connection with the five hindrances.

“Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating objects of mind as objects of mind in connection with the five aggregates of individual existence, affected by clinging.[15] Here he comprehends: “Such is (material) form, such its origin, such its appearance, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origin, such its appearance, such its disappearance; such is perception …; such are formations …; such is consciousness …; that is how amonk abides contemplating objects of mind as objects of mind in connection with the five aggregates of individual existence affected by clinging.

4. “Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating objects of mind as objects of mind in connection with the six internal and external bases.[16] Here a monk comprehends the wye, he comprehends forms, and he comprehends the fetter that arises dependent on both;[17] and he also comprehends how there comes to be the arising of the unarisen fetter, and how there comes to be the abandoning of the arisen fetter, and how there comes to be the future non-arising of the abandoned fetter. In the same way a monk understands the ear … and sounds … the nose and odours … the tongue and flavours, the body and tangibles, the mind and objects of mind.

“Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating objects of mind in connection with the seven limbs of enlightenment[18]… Here, there being a limb of recollection, a monk comprehends: “There is the limb of recollection in me”; or there being no limb of recollection, he comprehends: “There is no limb of recollection in me”; and he also comprehends how there comes to be the arising of the unarisen recollection, and how the arisen recollection comes to fulfilment by development. In the same way does a monk comprehend other six factors of enlightenment: the investigation of states (or dharmas),[19] the energy,[20] the meditation (dhyåna),[21] the concentration (samådhi), the tranquility, the equanimity. …

“Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating objects of mind as objects of mind in connection with the Four Noble Truths. Here a monk comprehends it as it (actually) is: “This is suffering”, “This is the origin of suffering”, “This is the cessation of suffering”, “This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering.”

“Monks, if any one should develop there four foundations of recollection in such a way for seven years, one of two fruits could be expected for him: either final knowledge,[22] or if there is a trace of clinging left, the non-return.[23] …

That is what the Lord said. The monks were satisfied and delighted in the Lord’s words.

SEMINAR IX: Recollection, sati, as “when”; time of Buddhist yoga

The principle of establishing sati is very simple: when contenmplating the object A (B, C, etc.) and comprehending oneself as A (B, C etc.), one is establishing recollection, sati.

But what is sati? Or, more exactly, what, in this sutta, is denoted by the word sati? This puts us face to face with the central dilemma of Buddhist terminology: either there had been in the background (Buddhist or non-Buddhist) of the so called “early historical Buddhism” some unnamed things waiting to be named by the first Buddhist masters, or there had been in the same background certain words, later adapted by these masters to denote specifically Buddhist things unknown to that background. Mainly it is the latter that we are dealing with in these seminars. Furthermore, not only were those words used terminologically, as denotations for Buddhist notions and concepts, but most importantly, they themselves became special things endowed with their own symbolic meaning not contingent on what they previously or presently are denoting. [We must note, in this connection, that sati is one of the least translatable  Buddhist terms. Although its sanskritic etymology invites for associations with “memory” and “remembrance”, the word, in its conceptual content, far outstrips the sum total of all abstract and concrete senses in which it figures in the texts of both vehicles. That is why sati finds itself as variously rendered as “mindulness”, “self-possession”, “concentrated attentiveness”, and “recollection”. Here I decided in favor of the last for the reason that it combines “memory” as one of the main functions of mind with “recollecting” as a particular case of “remembrance”.]

According ti Buddhagosa’s re-definition, sati is a kind of super-memory the essence of which is that while practizing sati, recollecting, one is being present in any object of one’s past thought. Thus we are plunging ourselves one again into the problem of time. But which time, the time of what, more exactly speaking? To answer this question we have to investigate the Buddhagosa’s dictum word by word: (1) “While” here is present time of sati, reducible, theoretically, to “this very moment” of recollecting. Such a time, always present and always momentary, will be regarded as the time of yoga in general, Ty; (2) “one” here is one’s consciousness, in the literal sense of the last, that is, in the sense of that which is conscious of its object; (3) “Past thought” here is past only on the strength of being opposed to the present of the time of recollection. Moreover, it even may be conjectured that the very event of a past thought is, as it were, “being generated” by the event of recollection. Then again, supposedly, the time which separates the event of recollection from the event of a past thought, Tp, is in principle indefinite, from zero to infinity. And in terms of external time, Te (or “time in general”) as we conceive of it, the event of past thought may have taken place as simultaneously with, as after the event of recollection which generates it; (4) “One is present in any object of … past thought” means that, since any event (or emergence) of thought consists of thought itself, object or objects of thought, and one who is thinking, and since sati, recollection is directed par excellence to one who is thinking – this very “one who is recollecting” finds oneself in any object which he recollects (or generates together with past thought), and the time of his “finding himself”, that is the time of yoga, Ty coincides with the time of past thought Tp.

It may be supposed that it is on the basis of sati, recollection the idea of the time of yoga was realized, and only as a result of this realization the idea of time in general might have taken place.

Sati, in this text, is a special, non-spontaneous, and consciously induced state of mind in which one’s all mental activity is concentrated on the effort to fix awareness on its object. From this follows that in the state of sati all mental modalities and functions find themselves reduced to awareness or subordinated to it. That is why recollection, in distinction from other Buddhist and non-Buddhist yogas, is par excellence the yoga of awareness, in which the whole mind is transformed into awareness.

Now on the basis of our tentative working definition of sati we could single out the following moments:

• “Special”, “non-spontaneous”, and “consciously induced” in our definition suggest that neither sati, nor the factors that have induced it are to be found among modalities and functions of the “normal”, spontaneously working human mind. The factors – contemplation, anupassanå, and comprehension, sampajanna, themselves independent kinds of Buddhist yoga – provide sati with its objects to which it directs itself, which it recollects as they are. With them sati forms a composite whole which will, therefore, include, according to this sutta, the objects of contemplation and comprehension (divided into four main classes – “body”, “feelings”, “mind”, and “objects of mind”) which have become objects of sati itself, and specific objects of sati.
• From “induced” in our definition follows that sati is always a resulting state, that is a state of mind which is the final effect of the factors that have induced it and which is unthinkable either as existing prior to their action, or as remaining in existence after they have ceased to be effective. As a resulting state, sati is momentary both regarding its own duration and regarding the interval between the action of its factors and its appearance as their effect. As a momentary resulting state, sati, is simple and non-composite action directed only to the present of its objects. For the last are provided by contemplation and comprehension as always “already established” in a certain order (“order” here means their succesion in which they are to be contemplated and comprehended). The most significant cicumstance here is that the present of those objects merges with the present of their being comprehended and contemplated. Moreover, the present state of objects of sati is not only synchronous with the present moment of sati, but is secondary to and derivative from, this moment. Or it may be said that objects of sati, “as they are”, have no time other than the time when sati is directed to them. The past and future objects of sati can be deemed only as objects of some future sati.

Now, if we ask ourselves, whether it would be possible to consider sati, though a state of mind, a phenomenon of human psychology, the answer will be definitely “no”. The thing is that mind in any psychology, modern, pre-modern, or still foreseeable in future, is observed, investigated, and thought of as a fortiori temporal and existing in external time. Macrocosmically, as a whole observed at the present moment, mind is considered to have been the final result of human evolution. Microcosmically, mind is seen as the result of individual mental development. All processes and functions of the individual mind taken together or each of them separately singled out, are presented to us invariably as distributed in time and possessing of their own temporal regime and finite duration. The mind deprived pf its temporal dimension is a totally impossible psychological proposition.

• And finally, returning to what was said above about sati as a symbolic word and thing, we shall (??) in sati with one of the strangest phenomena in Buddhist yoga. For indeed, when we come upon the passage in this sutta, “when he established recollection in fron of him” – note, not the object of recollection but recollection itself – this clearly suggests that sati here is a concrete eidetic image on which one’s awareness is singly focussed. In this somewhat esoteric sense sati is the simple, non-composite objectification of recollection as a state of mind and as a mental action. In this passage on recollects recollection prior to recollecting his breathing that has already been established as the object of his recollection. So in this passage recollection ceases to be only a special state of mind and becomes the universal device of transforming all that has already been contemplated and comprehended as it is (including contemplation and comprehension themselves) into one fact of absolute and complete awareness. Awareness itself, however, is not a special state of mind in Buddhist yoga and becomes such a state only when fixed and focused in recollection through contemplation and comprehension. So recollection, sati, contemplation, anupassanå, and comprehension, sampajanna form the first triad of Buddhist yoga (the second will be meditation, dhyåna, concentration, samådhi, and one-pointedness of thought, cittakagatå, see below in seminar X).
• It would be interesting to note that the four establishments (P. patthåna) of sati if considered as one whole complex, will seem to be very similar in structure and processual order to the ancient Indian sacrificial ritual (yajna). It is in sati, more than in any other kind or variety of Buddhist yoga, that the ethos of the Vedic sacrifice would find itself so expressly reproduced (“ethos” here is understood as the unity of structure, that is, the spatial configuration of elements in a ritual, and the temporal order of execution of these elements). So, from the point of view of ethos, sati could be regarded as the central ritual of Buddhist yoga. It may be said that Buddhist yoga is a very peculiar case of ritualized mind (thinking, consciousness, etc.) rather than a case of “mentalized ritual”.

Now it is time to ask: what is relation of sati to knowledge? The epistemological formula of Buddhist philosophy – “to know A is to know A as B” – is exposed in the sutta in relation to sati with utmost clarity and precision, and concretized in the following four cases:

Case (1)

To know A is to know that “there is A” (or that “there is no A”).

Example:

“Or else the recollection that there is a body is established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge.”

Case (2)

To know is to know A as A, that is to know A as it is.

Example:

“In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body.”

Case (3)

To know A is to know A as B.

Example:

“All dharmas are mental” (Dhammapada I,1)

Case (4)

To know A which, in this case, is the recollecting meditator, as B.

Example:

“…When walking, a monk comprehends: “I am walking”; when sitting, he comprehends: “I am sitting”; when eating, drinking … urinating, defecating, he comprehends: “I am eating, drinking, etc.” The same with sleeping, talking, etc.”

“As” is the universal epistemological modificator here, because not only does it change the object A into the object B (or into A again but “differently known”), but it also converts the knowledge of A into a contemplation (recollection, comprehension, etc.) of A, thereby transforming A from an object of knowledge into an object of yoga. Evolving “A as A” into “A as it is” (yathå bhütam) has made A as we ordinarily know it “some B” cognizable and realisable only in the state of sati. In this sutta – one of the philosophically most important suttas of the Pali canon – objects of the four groups (“body”, “feelings”, “mind”, and “objects of mind”, the last comprising all thinkable phenomena) are preseneted as already “processed” through sati and thereby become as they are, that is, stripped of all their temporary conditions and contextual circumstances of their perception. In other words, all objects are presented naked in their pure “objectness”.

To make as it is-ness (yathåbhütatå) of the contemplated object more complete , two complementary aspects are introduced. The first, which could be called “quasi-spatial” is that an object can be contemplated either internally, or externally (or both internally and externally). “Internally” means that the contemplated object pertains to the body or mind of the contemplator, “externally” means that the contemplated object belongs to another person or sentient being. The second aspect which is, as it were, “quasi-temporal” is that an object is to be contemplated either as arising, or as vanishing, either as already arisen, or as not yet arisen, either as to be arisen, or as not to be arisen. The second aspect is, in fact, an application of a general Buddhist axiom that any object at any given moment finds itself either in the state of becoming or in the state of vanishing. The same holds true also as regards the whole universe.

The first complementary aspect may be seen as an application of a very old Buddhist presupposition that mind (or thought, or consciousness) is the object of a special kind and that criteria of “mind-ness” will be different in the case of one’s own mind and in the case of the mind of another or mind in general (about later developments of that presupposition, see below in seminar XIX). In this sutta, however, these two complementary aspects are presented as two possible positions of contemplation regarding the same object. More than that, contemplation itself may, then, be presented as yogic exercise in alternating positions in relation to an object of contemplation.

Recollection, contemplation, and comprehension form a yogic framework which encompasses – together with such essential microcosmic objects as body, the five aggregates, skandhas of individual existence, and the six sense-bases – all thinkable objects (objects of mind) macrocosmic and cosmic, and also such transcendental, acosmic objects as the four noble truths and the seven limbs of awakening. Moreover, as we have already seen it in this sutta, the yogic operations are themselves objects of yogic operations. Thus sati, recollection does recollect sati, and not only as itself, but also as sati in general and in yogic contexts other than that formed by this recollecting sati. So sati recollects sati as one of the seven limbs of awakening, or one of the eight parts of the eightfold noble path. This is, however, only one of the instances when one and the same phenomenon or state of mind, dharma figures in quite a few different places, that is, in different yogic contexts, sometimes even in the same Buddhist text.

And, finally, two general considerations concerning the concept of sati. Firstly, this concept clearly reflects the pristine Buddhist idea that one’s whole complex of psycho-somatic subjectivity – “my mind”, “my body”, “my feelings”, etc. – is, in fact, that is as it is, the complex of external objects. However, – and this indeed is philosophically the crux of the problem – objects do not exist by themselves, they are that which has to be objectified first. That is, probably, how the very idea of “pure object” came into being in the early historical Buddhism. And it is only through recollection, sati, that the objectification of all that is subjective can be achieved. This objectification is described in the sutta as threefold, passing through three steps of contemplation:

(α) The first step. The body (that is, the body of contemplating monk) is contemplated as a body (that is, it does not matter whose body, or nobody’s body); or the body as an object.

(β) The second step. The body is contemplated as a foul, repulsive object, for instance, as a bag with an opening at both ends, full of many kinds of impurities, such as blood, phlegm, bile, feces, urine, etc. Or the body is contemplated as a dead body, swollen corpse, mangled, rotten corpse, a skeleton, etc.

(γ) The third step. The body is contemplated as a neutral object, for example, as a bag full of various sorts of grain, rice, beans, peas, millet, etc.

It may be conjectured, in connection with objectification, that the idea of “pure object”, though not axiomatized in Buddhist philosophy, finds itself, in this sutta at any rate, in juxtaposition to the general Buddhist conception of object as object of feeling in the first place. An object, according to this conception, is that which is experienced by feelings as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. Then the idea of object is reduced to this tripple experiencing, from which follows that objects do not possess of their own inherent qualities determining the experiencing. The neutral object (on the third step of objectification) can, by the same token, be reduced to the neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feeling.

This Buddhist “work with objects” is particularly interesting philosophically first of all because it shifts the focus of reflection from transcendental subject (“I”, “self”) to the transcendental object which, in the last account is dharma, the central concept of the whole Buddhist philosophy. It can also be conjectured that the idea of pure, transcendental object came about through sati to fill the gap, or a “philosophical vacuum” formed by the elimination of åtman and converted into a playground for yogic experimentation with mind and consciousness.

The second general consideration concerning sati. In sati one’s (contemplator’s) focused awareness of oneself is, in the final analysis, the immediate, momentary reflex of one’s consciousness to one’s consciousness. It may even be said ,then, that, from the point of view of sati, one is but one’s consciousness, and that only through recollection one as it were “returns” to oneself as to consciousness at the moment of recollection. This makes sati the only yogic counterpart of consciousness in the manner quite analogous to that in which knowledge of åtman in the Upanishads became the counterpart or sometimes even substitute of åtman itself. This alone singles out sati from all other kinds of Buddhist yoga (as well as of Indian yoga in general) and makes it a unique phenomenon of its own kind.

[1] Majjhima Nikåja (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha), translated by Bhikkhu Nånamoli, edited and revised by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, Boston Mass., pp. 145-155. “Recollection” in this (the title??) sutta (also text I, n. 33) is considered as a most effective part of Buddhist yoga.

[2] “Contemplation” (P. annupåssanå) is the technical term denoting contemplation in general, and, at the same time, a special, abstract variety of contemplation, the contemplating of all things, dharmas in their impermanence, insubstantiality, and unsatisfactoriness.

[3] “Objects” (P. årammana, Skr. ålambana) of mind. In the final analysis all objects are objects of mind, but in a more specific sense, that is, in distinction from objects of senses, objects of mind are called “dharma-objects” (P. dhammåramana). Here “to contemplate the object A as A,” means to single it out from all other objects and isolate it from all possible associations and identifications.

[4] “In front of him”: that is, placing in his imagination the object of recollection before his eyes. This is one of the inner postures of ancient Indian yogis.

[5] “Comprehension” (P. sampajanna) is a yogi’s complete awareness of all his actions, bodily movements and functions, and mental states.

[6] “Experiencing” (P. patisamvedi) the whole body of breath means being aware of the yogi’s each in-and-out breath from its beginning to its end.

[7] “Bodily formations” (P. kåjasankhåras) here denote all spontaneous changes in one’s body [also text I, n. 25 (4)]. In-and-out breathing is one of them. The practice of contemplating the breathing has a strong effect on tranquilization of all bodily formations.

[8] “Internally” and “externally” means, respectively, in one’s own body and in the body of another. It should be noted that one contemplates feeling, mind, and objects of mind in another; this contemplation must involve also the reasoning. One other explanation of “internal” and “external” is given in text II, n. 3.

[9] “Arising factors” (P. samudayadhammå) are the general conditions of the arising of every body, such as ignorance, craving, action, and food. The vanishing factors (P. vayadhammå) are the cessation of conditions or arising, and the momentary dissolution of all material constituents in the body.

[10] About “material elements” (P. and Skr. mahåbhüta) see text II, n. 3. On the whole, the body thus contemplated corresponds to the first aggregate of individual existence, rüpa [see in text I, n. 25, (1)].

[11] “Feeling” is the experiencing a sense object or an object of mind as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. This is a reverse phenomenological definition: feeling is here reduced to the three inherent properties of objects, not the other way around.

[12] Here it is necessary to remember that mind and an object of mind are two different objects of contemplation. For mind is contemplated as effecting its own changes and bringing about its own modalities. So, for instance, it may contemplate itself. Whereas objects of mind (with exception of mind as an object of mind) find themselves in a rather passive position as regards contemplation. In other words: mind thinks, an object of mind is being thought of.

[13] “Liberated mind” here is the technical term denoting a mind temporarily and partly freed from defilements through contemplation and meditation.

[14] “Five hindrances” (P. pancanîvåranå) are main inner obstacles to recollection, contemplation, and concentration of consciousness. Most importantly, “inner” means “not related to the senses and sense-objects, but coming out of mind itself.” Mainly theses hindrances arise through wrong direction of thought, its inability to be properly concentrated on the proper object, and its unwise ways of reflecting. That is why the hindrances can be partly avoided by study, investigation, and inquiry. But fully eradicated they can be only by a super-intense meditation.

[15] The five skandhas or aggregates of individual existence (see text I, n. 25) are, by definition, always affected by clinging, and are regarded thereby as the five aggregates of clinging (P. pancupadånakkhandå).

[16] See in text IV, n. 11. The “internal bases” are the six sense faculties, the “external bases” are their respective objects.

[17] “Fetter” (P. and Skr. samyojana) here is the metaphor for any dependence on sensual factors and any reaction to sensual stimuli.

[18] “Limb” (P. and Skr. anga) – a part or a constituent element, arising either simultaneously with other parts or unfolding in sequence.

[19] “Investigation of states” (P. dhammavicaya) means a thorough examination of the dharmas subsequent to their being recollected by the meditator.

[20] “Energy” (P. viriya, Skr. vîrya) is a general term denoting the intensity and effectiveness of an action or an effort.

[21] “Meditation” (P. jhåna, Skr. dhyåna) is used here as the generic term denoting the Buddhist yoga, and at the same time, as a special state of mind induced by meditation.

[22] “Final knowledge” (P. annå, Skr. åjnå) is the arhat’s knowledge of his own attainment of arhatship.

[23] “Non-return” (P. and Skr. anågåmîtå) is the state of one who, having achieved the Enlightenment, will be reborn in a higher world where he attains the final Nirvana without ever returning to the human state.