..續本文上一頁elating thrill bordering on ecstasy, crowning the yogin”s previous endeavors and inspiring further effort.

　　This experience marks the arising of rapture. The distinguishing feature of rapture is a strong interest and delight directed to the object of attention. Its function is to give refreshment to the body and mind. It can assume both wholesome and unwholesome forms, depending on whether it is motivated by attachment or detachment with respect to its object, but on occasions of meditative consciousness it is always wholesome. The commentaries distinguish five degrees of rapture, which make their appearance in the successive stages of mental unification. [18] "Minor rapture," the lowest on the scale, is said to be able to raise the hairs of the body. "Momentary rapture," the next degree of development, rushes through the body with an intensity likened to streaks of lightning flashing forth in the sky at different moments. "Showering rapture," the third degree, breaks over the body again and again with considerable force, like the waves on the seashore breaking upon the beach. "Uplifting rapture" is so-called because it is credited with the ability to cause the body to levitate, and the Visuddhimagga cites several cases where this literally occurs. And "pervading rapture," the highest on the scale, is said to completely fill the whole body as a huge inundation fills a rock cavern. Since the commentary to our Sutta defines joy (pamojja), the prior link in our sequence, as weak rapture, we may assume this to signify the delightful interest preceding the deliberate development of meditation, that is, in the stages when faith in the Dhamma was just acquired and the purification of moral discipline commenced. The five degrees of rapture presented here would then pertain exclusively to the rapture found in meditative consciousness. And since the last degree of rapture only gains ascendancy with the attainment of full absorption, which does not come until later, it seems that the degrees of rapture which are distinctive of the present stage of progress are the four beginning with minor rapture and reaching their peak with uplifting rapture.

　　Tranquility (Passaddhi)

　　"Rapture is the supporting condition for tranquility": While the appearance of rapture indicates a definite advance in the work of concentration, its coarser modes still contain an element of exuberance which is in constant danger of slipping out of control and spilling over into unwholesome states of mind dominated by restlessness and agitation. For rapture involves an intense delight in the object coupled with an anticipation of even greater delight to come. The experience of present delight can often be accompanied by an underlying worry that this pleasure will disappear, while the expectation of further delight can stimulate a subtle grasping at the future. Both states, the anxiety and the grasping, bring along an excitation inimical to the centering of the mind in one-pointed calm. For this reason, as the yogin progresses in his practice a point is reached where the ecstatic exultation sparked off by rapture becomes felt as an obstruction to the development of mental unification, a corruption of the training which must be pacified and stilled.

　　Rapture itself will remain as a factor of meditative development up to the third absorption, but to permit further progress its detrimental tendencies have to be sublimated. Through continued application to the practice rapture becomes more refined, shedding the heated zest of its initial forms. With its refinement it increasingly evokes along with itself another quality called "tranquility" (passaddhi). Tranquility is characterized by the quieting down of mental disturbances. It removes agitation and restlessness, imparting to…

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