A solid translation of varnished gold also has the goods. Samatha Buddhist meditation notes a progressive series of "absorptions" that we wed and shed as we awaken. If not wetness, they do convey slipping into water. Here the meditator is described as follows:
1st Absorption: "He dwells concentrated, happy and blissful, exercising applied and sustained thought." But then upon emerging from this state, he realizes that there remains too much clinging to bliss and presence of thought. Too much proximity to anything born of mind and the senses. So the meditator dives back in and enters the 2nd absorption, "which has internal confidence and singleness of mind, without applied thought, without sustained thought, with happiness and bliss born of concentration." But here again, nice as it is, this state is polluted by proximity to thought and reflexive clinging to what we interpret to be happiness. Do you detect a "neti, neti" trend? With our next move into the 3rd absorption, happiness fades into "equanimous, mindful and fully aware" absorption, replete with "bodily bliss." No wonder so many people stop along the way, never to continue. This is a process of abandonment, of jnana's "not this, not this" wherever transience is recognized. Thus too the 4th absorption, "which has neither pain nor pleasure, and has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity". As each absorption succeeds the former in austerity, the progressive discarding of factors becomes more and more abstract, or finer and finer.
Let's take a break:
I am all of it and none of it
Because all of it abides
Enshrouded in none of it
The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th absorptions dissolve any material or mental residue into boundless space, then boundless consciousness, then nothingness. The 8th accesses a state beyond perception and beyond non-perception, and ultimately a state negating cessation itself arrives, what Ramakrishna referred to as burning up the stick with which you stirred the ashes. Enjoy yourself in samadhi.
But don't neglect the Sri Hippie Speedball 10th absorption in which you are sucked up your own anus. Then, and ony then, is the cycle complete.
1st Absorption: "He dwells concentrated, happy and blissful, exercising applied and sustained thought." But then upon emerging from this state, he realizes that there remains too much clinging to bliss and presence of thought. Too much proximity to anything born of mind and the senses. So the meditator dives back in and enters the 2nd absorption, "which has internal confidence and singleness of mind, without applied thought, without sustained thought, with happiness and bliss born of concentration." But here again, nice as it is, this state is polluted by proximity to thought and reflexive clinging to what we interpret to be happiness. Do you detect a "neti, neti" trend? With our next move into the 3rd absorption, happiness fades into "equanimous, mindful and fully aware" absorption, replete with "bodily bliss." No wonder so many people stop along the way, never to continue. This is a process of abandonment, of jnana's "not this, not this" wherever transience is recognized. Thus too the 4th absorption, "which has neither pain nor pleasure, and has purity of mindfulness due to equanimity". As each absorption succeeds the former in austerity, the progressive discarding of factors becomes more and more abstract, or finer and finer.
Let's take a break:
I am all of it and none of it
Because all of it abides
Enshrouded in none of it
The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th absorptions dissolve any material or mental residue into boundless space, then boundless consciousness, then nothingness. The 8th accesses a state beyond perception and beyond non-perception, and ultimately a state negating cessation itself arrives, what Ramakrishna referred to as burning up the stick with which you stirred the ashes. Enjoy yourself in samadhi.
But don't neglect the Sri Hippie Speedball 10th absorption in which you are sucked up your own anus. Then, and ony then, is the cycle complete.
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