Page 137 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

within a purely psychological context there is nothing whatever

you can do, but if you are operating within a religious or spiritual
— in this case a Buddhist — context, there is one final thing you

can do. We are told by the great masters of the spiritual life that
if all these methods fail, and if however hard you try you cannot
get rid of the Hindrances, then the only thing left to do is to Go

for Refuge to the Buddha, together with your failure, and just let
the matter rest there.

(c) Developing Unarisen Skillful Mental States
This is not just 'thinking good thoughts' in the ordinary sense. It

means the development of a higher state of consciousness and
being-. the transformation of the quality of one's whole personal

existence. This trans formation is possible with the help of
meditation — not meditation by itself, but meditation as
practised within the total context of the spiritual life. In

Buddhism meditation is technically called 'bhavana', which
literally means 'making to become' or 'development'. The real

aim of meditation is not just the concentration of the mind: that
is just preliminary. The real aim of meditation is to transform
consciousness — to make you a higher type of being than you

were before you began practising it.

Progress in meditation — progress in the attainment of higher
states of being — is marked, or measured, by the attainment of
what we call the dhyanas (Pali: jhanas). There are four of these

dhyanas, or higher states of being and consciousness, each one
more advanced than the one preceding it, and of course they are

very difficult to describe. In Buddhist literature, especially in the
Abhidharma, we have analyses of them, i.e. accounts of what

137