6 MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. 



the divine, or at any rate promotes a keener insight into 

 spiritual things, is doubtless as common in Europe as in Asia ; 

 but the most austere observer of Lent in European countries 

 would be hopelessly outdone by devotees whose extraordinary 

 powers of abstinence may be witnessed in every part of India. 



If we now turn to the second great method of attaining 

 mystic union with the Divine Essence, namely, by profound 

 abstract thought, we may observe that it, too, was everywhere 

 prevalent in Buddha's time. 



Indeed, one of the names given by Indian philosophers to 

 the One Universal Spirit is Cit, " Thought." By that name 

 of course, is meant pure abstract thought, or the faculty 

 of thought separated from every concrete object. Hence, 

 in its highest state the eternal infinite Spirit, by its very 

 nature, thinks of nothing. It is the simple thought faculty, 

 wholly unconnected with any object, about which it thinks. 

 In point of fact, the moment it begins to exercise this 

 faculty, it necessai'ily abandons for a time its condition of 

 absolute oneness, abstraction and isolation, to associate itself 

 with something inferior, which is not itself. 



It follows, therefore, that intense concentration of the mind 

 on the One Universal Spirit amounts to fixing the thought on 

 a mere abstract Essence, which reciprocates no thought in 

 return, and is not conscious of being thought about by its 

 worshipper. 



In harmony with this theory, we find that the definition of 

 Yoga, in the second aphorism of the Yoga-sutra, is, " the 

 suppression (nirodha) of the functions or modifications (vritti) 

 of the thinking principle (citta)." So that, in reality, the 

 union of the human mind with the infinite Principle of 

 thought amounts to such complete mental absorption, that 

 thought itself becomes lost in pure thought. 



In the Sahuntald (vii. 1 75) there is a description of an ascetic 

 engaged in this form of Yoga, whose condition of fixed medi- 

 tation and immovable impassiveness had lasted so long that 

 ants had thrown up a mound as high as his waist, and birds 

 had built their nests in the long clotted tresses of his tangled 

 hair. 



Not very dissimilar phenomena may be witnessed even in 

 the present day. I, myself, not many years ago, saw at 

 Allahabad a devotee who had maintained a sitting, contem- 

 plative posture with his feet folded under his body, in one 

 place near the fort for twenty years. 



During the Mutiny cannon thundered over his head, and 

 bullets hissed all around him, but nothing apparently dis- 

 turbed his attitude of profound meditation. 



