The sixth requisite—fixing the principle of thought—comprises the act of directing the thinking faculty (ćitta) towards various parts of the body, for example, towards the heart, or towards the crown of the head, or concentrating the will-force on the region between the two eyebrows, or even fixing the eyes intently on the tip of the nose. (Compare Bhagavad-gītā VI. 13.)
The seventh and eighth requisites—viz. internal self-contemplation and intense self-concentration—are held (when conjoined with the sixth) to be most important as leading to the acquisition of certain supernatural powers, of which the following are most commonly enumerated:—(1) Animan, ‘the faculty of reducing the body to the size of an atom;’ (2) Mahiman, or Gariman, ‘increasing the size or weight at will;’ (3) Laghiman, ‘making the body light at will;’ (4)Prāpti, ‘reaching or touching any object or spot, however apparently distant;’ (5) Prākāmya, ‘unlimited exercise of will;’ (6) Īṡitva, ‘gaining absolute power over one’s self and others;’ (7) Vaṡitā, ‘bringing the elements into subjection;’ (8) Kāmāvasāyitā, ‘the power of suppressing all desires.’
A Yogī who has acquired these powers can rise aloft to the skies, fly through space, pass through the key-hole of a door, pierce the mysteries of planets and stars, cause storms and earthquakes, understand the language of animals, ascertain what occurs in any part of the world, or of the universe, recollect the events of his own previous lives, prolong his present life, see into the past and future, discern the thoughts of others, assume any form he likes, disappear, reappear, and even enter into another man’s body and make it his own.
Such were some of the extravagant ideas which grew with the growth of the Yoga system, and were incorporated into the later developments of Buddhism.
We learn from Mr. Sarat Chandra Dās that in the monastery of Galdan in Tibet there is at this moment a college specially devoted to the teaching of Esoteric and Mystical Buddhism; while magic and sorcery are taught in the monasteries founded by Padma-sambhava (see pp. [272], [274], [441]).
Of course it was only natural that, with the association of Buddhism with the later Yoga and Ṡaivism, the Buddha himself should have become a centre for the growth of supernatural and mystical ideas.
Hence the Buddha is fabled by his followers to have ascended to the Trayastriṉṡa heaven of Indra, walked on water, stepped from one mountain to another, and left impressions of his feet on the solid rock. Although in the Dhamma-pada it is twice declared (254, 255), ‘There is no path through the air.’
Perhaps the climax was reached when the later doctrine made every Buddha possess a threefold existence or three bodies, much in the same way as in Hindūism three bodies are assigned to every being.
The first of the Buddha’s bodies is the Dharma-kāya, ‘body of the Law,’ supposed to be a kind of ethereal essence of a highly sublimated nature and co-extensive with space. This essence was believed to be eternal, and after the Buddha’s death, was represented by the Law or Doctrine (Dharma) he taught. The idea seems to have been invented as an analogue to Brahman, or the Universal spiritual Essence of Brāhmanism[109].
The second body is the Sambhoga-kāya, ‘body of conscious bliss,’ which is of a less ethereal and more material nature than the last. Its Brāhmanical analogue appears to be the intermediate body (belonging to departed spirits) called Bhoga-deha, which is of an ethereal character, though composed of sufficiently gross (sthūla) material particles to be capable of experiencing happiness or misery.