Page 177 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

for a long time but had never really realized or had any insight

into — something you had read about in books, and thought you
knew very well. When you have this flash of insight into that

truth, that reality, you realize that, before, you did not know it at
all — not one little bit. It is not that you understood it partially or
fairly well: not that at all. When you really 'see', in an actual flash

of insight, then you realize that when you knew it only from
books or from hearsay you did not really know it at all.

All the experiences I have described are samapatti type
experiences and, as we have seen, there is an immense variety of

them. No one person experiences them all, but all those who
tread the path of concentration and meditation experience some

of them at least.

(c) Samadhi

We now come to samadhi proper: the state of being established
in Reality, or of being Enlightened. There are many ways of

looking at this state. Often it is described in negative terms, for
instance in terms of the destruction of the asravas. The word
asrava (Pali: asava) means a poisonous flux, a bias, a

lopsidedness in our nature. The asrava are three in number.
First, there is the kamasrava (Pali: kamasava), the bias towards,

or the poisonous flux of, the desire or craving for sense
experience for its own sake, on its own level. Secondly, there is
bhavasrava (Pali: bhavasava), or the bias towards, or poisonous

flux of, conditioned existence — in other words, the attachment
to or desire for any mode of existence short of Enlightenment

itself. Thirdly, there is avidyasrava (Pali: avijjasava), the bias
towards, or poisonous flux of, ignorance, in the sense of spiritual

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