The Best Highs in Life are Free
(A paraphrase from a book about Buddhism)
trance - the first of eight levels
Detached from sense-desires, detached from unwholesome states, he dwells in the attainment of
the first level, which is accompanied by applied and discursive thinking, born of attachment, rapturous
and joyful. "Rapturous" has the property of being pleased: it consists in a swelling up
of body and mind, or it pervades body and mind with a thrill; it manifests itself by exultation. Rapture is of five
kinds: Slight rapture, momentary rapture, overflowing rapture, transporting rapture, and all-pervading rapture.
Among these (1) the slight rapture is just able to make the hairs of the body stand on end. (2) The momentary
rapture is like the repeated production of lightening from moment to moment. (3) Just as waves overflow
the shore and then break, so the overflowing rapture repeatedly floods the body and then breaks. (4) The
transporting rapture is powerful, and can lift up the body, to the extent of causing actual levitation.
(5) Finally, when all-pervading rapture takes place, the entire body is completely surcharged with it, like
a fully blown bladder, or like a mountain cavern suddenly filled with a mighty flood of water.
And as this fivefold rapture becomes pregnant and matures, it brings about the two kinds of tranquillity,
the tranquillity of mental activities (feelings, perceptions, and impulses) and the tranquillity of
consciousness itself. As tranquillity becomes pregnant and matures, it brings about the two kinds of
joy - joy of body, and joy of mind. As joy becomes pregnant and matures, it brings about the threefold
concentration - momentary concentration, access concentration, and ecstatic concentration. And
among the five kinds of rapture the all-pervading rapture is meant here. As the root of ecstatic
concentration it keeps on growing until it unites with samadhi (cosmic bliss).
"Joy" has the property of feeling well; it leads to the expansion of the mental states associated with it,
and manifests itself by helping it along. Although rapture and joy are often found together, they differ
in that rapture is the satisfaction from obtaining the desired object, while joy is the enjoyment of that
which has been obtained. Wherever there is rapture, there is joy also. But where there is joy, there
is not necessarily rapture also. Like some weary man in a desert, who sees a wood or water. or hears of
them - so is rapture; joy is when he enters into the shade of the wood or when he drinks the water.
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