MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. By 
the divine, or at any rate promotes a keener insight into 
spiritual things, is doubtless as common in Hurope as in Asia ; 
but the most austere observer of Lent in Huropean 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 Hssence, 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 necessarily 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-sitra, is, ‘ the 
suppression (nirodha) of the functions or modifications (vritt1) 
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. 
Inthe Sakuntald (vii. 175) 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. 
VOL. XXIII. C 
