185. Q. What as to controversies?
A. In numerous discourses he denounced this habit as most pernicious. He prescribed penances for Bhikkhus who waste time and weaken their higher intuitions in wrangling over theories and metaphysical subtleties.
186. Q. Are charms, incantations, the observance of lucky hours and devil-dancing a part of Buddhism?
A. They are positively repugnant to its fundamental principles. They are the surviving relics of fetishism and pantheistic and other foreign religions. In the Brāhmajāta Sutta the Buddha has categorically described these and other superstitions as Pagan, mean and spurious.[[6]]
187. Q. What striking contrasts are there between Buddhism and what may be properly called "religions"?
A. Among others, these: It teaches the highest goodness without a creating God; a continuity of life without adhering to the superstitious and selfish doctrine of an eternal, metaphysical soul-substance that goes out of the body; a happiness without an objective heaven; a method of salvation without a vicarious Saviour; redemption by oneself as the Redeemer, and without rites, prayers, penances, priests or intercessory saints; and a summum bonum, i.e., Nirvāna, attainable in this life and in this world by leading a pure, unselfish life of wisdom and of compassion to all beings.
188. Q. Specify the two main divisions of "meditation," i.e., of the process by which one extinguishes passion and attains knowledge?
A. Samatha and Vidarsama: (1) the attenuation of passion by leading the holy life and by continued effort to subdue the senses; (2) the attainment of supernormal wisdom by reflection: each of which embraces twenty aspects, but I need not here specify them.
189. Q. What are the four paths or stages of advancement that one may attain to?
A. (1) Sottāpatti—the beginning or entering into which follows after one's clear perception of the "Four Noble Truths"; (2) Sakardāgāmi—the path of one who has so subjugated lust, hatred and delusion that he need only return once to this world; (3) Anāgami—the path of those who have so far conquered self that they need not return to this world; (4) Arhat—the path of the holy and worthy Arhat, who is not only free from the necessity of reincarnation, but has capacitated himself to enjoy perfect wisdom, boundless pity for the ignorant and suffering, and measureless love for all beings.