Almost synchronous with this exposition of Buddhistic Yoga is the Brahmanic Yoga of Patanjali, our third division. Here, however, the end sought is the isolation of the soul from the bonds of the sense through sloughing off the aspects common to matter, till the soul reaches a pure condition in which it can establish a relation of immediate perception or intuition of truth, of things as they are. Patanjali lived

between three and five hundred A. D. He refutes idealism and his system is an extension of dualistic teaching; it gives the means of attaining to the Yoga-state of full self-expression. The mind by concentration learns how to resist fluctuations vṛtti, till it attains dispassionateness. This concentration, samâdhi, is obtained by certain exercises, such as breathings and postures, and gives insight or intuition. Quite as important in the method are the sentiments to be cultivated, friendliness, happiness, compassion, etc. The balanced state of mind finally attained then brightens with conscious knowledge. Positive aids to Yoga are (a) abstention from injury, from falsehood, theft, incontinence and rapacity (acceptance of gifts), five in all; (b) five observances, cleanliness, contentment, self-castigation, study, and devotion to the Iśvara or Lord-soul; (c) postures, described at length; (d) regulation of breath; (e) withdrawal of the senses, which leads to mastery of the organs of sense; and (f) fixed attention.

The result of the late state of samâdhi is that one attains to objectless meditation or pure ecstasy, which frees the spirit from ignorance, especially from the delusion that spirit has any identity with matter. Now three things are noticeable here. First that the Yoga is a sober psychological study which, however, immediately resolves itself into magic (mastery of matter); second, that it admits devotion to the timeless Lord-soul (not divinity), as equally valid with its own system; and, third, that it makes isolation or separation of soul from matter depend on ecstatic trance-induced intuition.

As to the first point, abstention from theft makes all jewels come to one; by binding the mind to one object, one fuses the knower with the known and obtains intuitive knowledge of times (past births, etc.); and concentrated insight controls as well as understands objects (language of birds, course of stars). So the Brahmanic Yogin (like the Buddhist) can become invisible and perform tricks of pure magic. Such is the content of the Vibhûti-pada (third book). As to the second point, what is elsewhere of prime importance, the favor of the Lord-soul is here negligently admitted as one of the five observances but is in itself productive of the rapturous intuition gained by the formal system. The third point alone makes it possible or rather imperative that the Yoga should be explained as a mystic system, according to which the whole life is oriented with reference to one idea until there is an emotional transformation corresponding to this focussed state, a transformation equivalent to absolute dispassionateness. This state of Kaivalya (isolation) is the culmination of the system; in it the self as energy of intellect rests grounded upon itself (without relation to the aspects of matter), eternally freed from the effects of Karma. But this mysticism is in no sense an intuition of God (there is no God), only of truth in regard to the soul.

The Mahâyâna, in distinction from the Hîna, was a combination of early Buddhistic and late Brahmanic philosophy. It makes a fourth form of mysticism. in our list because, though based on Yoga, it has a different goal from that of Yoga and of the Hînayâna. It appears well set forth in Asanga's Mahâyâna Sûtrâlamkâra, which explains the Mahâyâna not in nihilistic terms, as in the Mâdhyamika School of Nâgârjuna but according to the Yogâcâra School. It was about the time of the Christian era, when religion turned from solitude to the world that Buddhism expanded

Edited by Sylvain Lévi, Paris, text, 1907; introduction and translation, 1911.

into that greater philosophy which may have been affected by the Manichæan and gnostic influence then stealing eastward, that Asanga taught. He lived in Ghandhara, in the West. The idea of the trinity which as Lévi (p. 18) says, “semble aussi trahir des influences étrangères," arises suddenly at this time. Early Buddhism no longer satisfied a church which had outgrown the cloister. Iran, near where Asanga was born, was agitated by a religious revolution (the restoration of Zoroastrianism) affected by Jewish and Christian thought, so that it is not impossible that the ideas of Asanga were affected by these and by the Logoi to which his Dharmas correspond. Be that as it may, his work in its vision, ecstasy, and magic is essentially Indic."

In this system the discipline is based on a mystic union like that of love. To the six organs (sense-organs and manas) Asanga adds Ālaya-vijñâna, the fundamental affirmation of existence as the base of thought: sum ergo cogito. Pure being can rid itself of the latent effect of actions by attaining to cessation of difference when the universal consciousness takes the place of self-consciousness (the Ego no longer being "other" than the whole). Truth realized in the intellect (Bodhi, as agent) leads to communion with the Buddha. Buddha here is the real, neither being nor not-being. Containing all, the real does not reveal itself; it excludes duality; it gives greater bliss than Nirvâna (as cessation). To reach Bodhi is to become a Bodhisat and this is accomplished by the passage through ten bhûmis or stages from Faith to Buddha as preliminary and final experiences. With the first stage one acquires the knowledge of the ideas or ideal phenomena; in the second, one becomes spotless and

7 Compare Senart, Rev. Hist. Relig. 1900, Nov. Dec., on the relation with the Yoga; also his Origines Bouddhiques Musée Guimet, 1907, and for the bhûmis his Mahâvastu (1882), vol. i, Introduction, p. xxvii f. The Mahâvastu Bhûmis (possibly seven at first, ib. xxxv) are rather ethical stages, lacking the illumination found in Asanga's list.

is in perpetual ecstatic thought, dhyâna, solely occupied with samâdhi (as mystic union); in the third, the mystic may reënter the world without danger (of losing what he has gained); in the fourth, he exercises the Wings of Illumination (Bodhipaksha), virtues and powers; thus in the fifth stage he appears supernaturally wise, conceives the ideal as the universal, etc., and in the sixth comes face to face with reality (Nirvâna as the sum of existence); then in the seventh stage he starts on the way to becoming a Bodhisat, having only the latent impressions left from Karma. In the eighth, freed from personality, he loses even these latent effects and becomes illuminated without his own thought. In the ninth and tenth stages, respectively, he achieves the stage of the Good Spirit and that of the absolutely illumined Buddha.

The Mahâyâna (Mâdhyamika) is found as a mystic philosophy also in Japan. Kobo Daishi there taught that man is essentially one with the Supreme (as Buddha) and even in this life may attain to the Buddha-state. This belief is based on the theory of Kongokai or Diamond World (of ideas) existing in universal thought, to which the world of phenomena is parallel. In the world of ideas the Great Sun, Dainichi, is Vairocana, the All, from whom emanate Bodhisattvas, from whom again emanate lesser beings, leading to phenomena. Shakyamuni, Amitâbha, Akshobhya, and Ratnasambhava stand round the central Vairocana like planets, each with its satellites; or as the center of an eightpetal lotus, Amitâbha, Mitteya, Manjusri, Avalokiteshvara, etc. Man, as an emanation from him, is one with the sun of life and of truth, Vairocana. Ideas are the source of things; so if one has the correct idea, one can control the thing. Hence Shingon, True Word, as name of this sect of the ninth century, which is a mixture of idealism and thaumaturgy, for the True soon becomes the Magic Word, which may even ease the sufferings of the dead. In the Zen sect, truth is communicated by spiritual telepathy rather

than by book-learning; its chief characteristic is meditative abstraction, not a new idea but made the special mark of the sect by Eisai (twelfth century), though the sect was introduced into China by the first Patriarch, Bodhidharma, in the sixth century. Its aim is not so much to escape from rebirth as to escape the limitation of the empirical self by means of union with the Greater Self. As in Yoga, the practice is auto-hypnotic; one remains fixed and staring till one becomes conscious of oneness with all reality, losing all consciousness of self, an ecstatic state in which one passes beyond distinctions of good and evil, wise and foolish, and attains insight through quietism. The minute directions as to the means of attainment, postures, etc., are those of the Yoga; one sits with crossed legs, the right hand on the left foot, palm up, etc.

In the thirteenth century Nichiren converted the relapsed Buddhism of his day into what he regarded as primitive Buddhism. With his missionary efforts we are not here concerned. He himself was a thorough mystic, who taught that the kingdom of God and God are within. One should strive for the realization of the kingdom of the Lord, who is the soul of every man. The three-fold mystery consists in the Supreme Being, Honzon, the Holy See, Kaidan, and the Sacred Title, Daimoku. This last is enlightenment, Sambhogo-kâya, in distinction from the Dharma-kâya or Mandala (Supreme Being), and from the actual manifestation, Nirmâna-kâya, the realization of Buddha's mercy organized in the place of the church universal or Holy See, as Buddha in reality is another name for the orderly cosmos. Nichiren believed himself to be the reincarnation of an ancient saint and his method also was that of the Yogin: "I sit on the mat of meditation and in vision I see every truth." The final aim, however, is complete realization of the Supreme Being in man's own soul.

Thus these Mahâyânists, both Hindu and Japanese, seek