The practice of tranquillizing the mind by regulating the breathing is recommended repeatedly in Suttas which seem ancient and authentic; for instance, in the instruction given by the Buddha to his son Rahula[692].  On the other hand, his account of his fruitless self-mortification shows that the exercise even in its extreme forms is not sufficient to secure enlightenment.  It appears to be a method of collecting and concentrating the mind, not necessarily hypnotic.  All Indian precepts and directions for mental training attach far more importance to concentration of thought and the power of applying the mind at will to one subject exclusively than is usual in Europe.

Buddhaghosa at the beginning of his discussion of adhicitta enumerates forty subjects of meditation namely, “the ten Kasinas, ten impurities, ten reflections, four sublime states (Brahma-vihara), the four formless states, one perception and one analysis[693].”  The Kasinas have been already described.  The ten impurities are a similar means of inducing meditation.  The monk fixes his attention on a corpse in some horrible stage of decay and thus concentrates his mind on the impermanence of all things.  The ten recollections are a less gloomy exercise but similar in principle, as the attention is fixed on some religious subject such as the Buddha, his law, his order, etc.

The Brahma-viharas[694] are states of emotional meditation which lead to rebirth in the heavens of Brahma.  They are attained by letting love or some other good emotion dominate the mind, and by “pervading the whole world” with it.  This language about pervading the world with kindly emotion is common in Buddhist books though alien to European idiom.  The mind must harbour no uncharitable thought and then its benevolence becomes a psychic force which spreads in all directions, just as the sound of a trumpet can be heard in all four quarters.

These Brahma-viharas are sometimes represented as coming after the four Jhanas[695], sometimes as replacing them[696].  But the object of the two exercises is not the same, for the Brahma-viharas aim at rebirth in a better world.  They are based on the theory common to Buddhism and Hinduism that the predominant thoughts of a man’s life, and especially his thoughts when near death, determine the character of his next existence.

The trances known as the four formless states are analogous to the Brahma-viharas, their object being to ensure rebirth not in the heaven of Brahma but in one of the heavens known as Formless Worlds where the inhabitants have no material form[697].  They are sometimes combined with other states into a series of eight, known as the eight deliverances[698].  The more advanced of these stages seem to be hypnotic and even cataleptic.  In the first formless state the monk who is meditating rises above all idea of form and multiplicity and reaches the sphere in which the infinity of space is the only idea present to his