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CHAPTER X
THE IMMATERIAL STATES
(Áruppa-niddesa)
[(1) THE BASE CONSISTING OF BOUNDLESS SPACE]
1.
[326] Now, as to the four immaterial states mentioned next to the divine
abidings (III.105), one who wants firstly to develop the base consisting of
boundless space sees in gross physical matter danger through the wielding of
sticks, etc., because of the words: “‘It is in virtue of matter that wielding of sticks,
wielding of knives, quarrels, brawls and disputes takes place; but that does not
exist at all in the immaterial state,’ and in this expectation he enters upon the
way to dispassion for only material things, for the fading and cessation of only
those” (M I 410); and he sees danger in it too through the thousand afflictions
beginning with eye disease. So, in order to surmount that, he enters upon the
fourth jhāna in any one of the nine kasiṇas beginning with the earth kasiṇa and
omitting the limited-space kasiṇa.
2. Now, although he has already surmounted gross physical matter by means
of the fourth jhāna of the fine-material sphere, nevertheless he still wants also to
surmount the kasiṇa materiality since it is the counterpart of the former. How
does he do this?
3. Suppose a timid man is pursued by a snake in a forest and flees from it as
fast as he can, then if he sees in the place he has fled to a palm leaf with a streak
painted on it or a creeper or a rope or a crack in the ground, he is fearful, anxious
and will not even look at it. Suppose again a man is living in the same village as
a hostile man who ill-uses him and on being threatened by him with a flogging
and the burning down of his house, he goes away to live in another village, then
if he meets another man there of similar appearance, voice and manner, he is
fearful, anxious and will not even look at him.
4. Here is the application of the similes. The time when the bhikkhu has the
gross physical matter as his object is like the time when the men were respectively
threatened by the snake and by the enemy. [327] The time when the bhikkhu
surmounts the gross physical matter by means of the fourth jhāna of the fine-
material sphere is like the first man’s fleeing as fast as he can and the other
man’s going away to another village. The bhikkhu’s observing that even the
matter of the kasiṇa is the counterpart of that gross physical matter and his
wanting to surmount that also is like the first man’s seeing in the place he had