re
a conscious flame, such might be its own ideal.

The eighth and last section of the path is samma-samadhi, right
concentration or rapture. Mental concentration is essential to samadhi,
which is the opposite of those wandering desires often blamed as seeking
for pleasure here and there. But samadhi is more than mere concentration
or even meditation and may be rendered by rapture or ecstasy, though
like so many technical Buddhist terms it does not correspond exactly to
any European word. It takes in Buddhism the place occupied in other
religions by prayer--prayer, that is, in the sense of ecstatic communion
with the divine being. The sermon[485] which the Buddha preached to King
Ajatasattu on the fruits of the life of a recluse gives an eloquent
account of the joys of samadhi. He describes how a monk[486] seats
himself in the shade of a tree or in some mountain glen and then
"keeping his body erect and his intelligence alert and intent" purifies
his mind from all lust, ill-temper, sloth, fretfulness and perplexity.
When these are gone, he is like a man freed from jail or debt, gladness
rises in his heart and he passes successively through four stages of
meditation[487]. Then his whole mind and even his body is permeated with
a feeling of purity and peace. He concentrates his thoughts and is able
to apply them to such great matters as he may select. He may revel in
the enjoyment of supernatural powers, for we cannot deny that the oldest
documents which we possess credit the sage with miraculous gifts, though
they attach little importance to them, or he may follow the train of
thought which led the Buddha himself to enlightenment. He thinks of his
previous births and remembers them as clearly as a man who has been a
long walk remembers at the end of the day the villages through which he
has passed. He thinks of the birth and deaths of other beings and sees
them as plainly as a man on the top of a house sees the people moving in
the streets below. He realizes the full significance of the four truths
and he understands the origin and cessation of the three great evils,
love of pleasure, love of existence and ignorance. And when he thus sees
and knows, his heart is set free. "And in him thus set free there arises
the knowledge of his freedom and he knows that rebirth has been
destroyed, the higher life has been led, what had to be done has been
done. He has no more to do with this life. Just as if in a mountain
fastness the