The sixth heaven, and the highest of the Deva-lokas, is the abode of the Para-nirmita-vaṡa-varti-devāḥ, ‘beings who constantly enjoy pleasures provided for them by others.’ These beings are also called Māras, and are ‘lords of sensuous desires.’ When the theory of races of gods was invented, it led to the figment of millions of Māras ruled over by a chief Māra, who tempts men to indulge their passions (pp. [28], [33], [41]), and is always on the watch to enter the citadel of the body by the gates of eye, ear, etc. (see [note, p. 129]). One of Māra’s names is Kāma, ‘desire.’ He is superior to all the gods of the worlds of sense, even to Ṡakra or Indra. In every Ćakravāla or Universe of worlds there is a Māra. He is sometimes called the Buddhist Satan, but this is misleading. He is rather a superior god, whose power consists in exciting sensual or carnal desires.
So far, then, the heavens are all worlds of sense,—like the earth and the lower regions,—and are spheres inhabited by beings who have sexual feelings and live active lives. But at this point in the ascent upwards all sensuality ceases, and we are introduced to beings who enjoy a higher condition of existence in which there is no distinction of sex, and all sensuous desires and objects have lost their hold over the frame—a condition supposed to be induced by the exercise of mystical abstract meditation (Dhyāna, Pāli Jhāna).
The importance of Dhyāna or intense abstract meditation in the Buddhist system has been pointed out before ([p. 32]). It is the chief religious exercise in which a true follower of Buddha can engage, and although it is divided into four stages, the man who exercises himself perfectly in any one of the four, becomes so sublimated and refined that he cannot be re-born in any of the sensuous heavens, or in any region lower than the Brahmā worlds.
The first stage of Dhyāna consists in fixing (Dhāraṇā) the mind and at the same time exercising the thinking faculties on some object, in such a way that a state of ecstatic joy and serenity is attained.
The second consists in concentrating the mind or soul so intensely on itself that the thinking faculties cease to act and only ecstatic joy and serenity remain.
In the third, nothing remains but perfect serenity.
The fourth is a trance-like condition of utter indifference and torpor, in which there is neither any exercise of thought, nor any conscious joy or serenity, but the whole being is released from the fetters of sense and soars to a transcendental condition, characterized by latent energy and a power of working miracles ([p. 133]).
These four stages of abstract meditation must not be confused with the four earnest reflections and the five contemplations (pp. [49], [127]), which are not so abstract and require more earthly objects on which to be exercised.
The fourth and last Dhyāna is also called Samādhi, and properly means such a perfect concentration of the soul’s faculties, that the soul becomes merged in itself. It is often used to denote an ecstatic condition, scarcely to be distinguished from trance or hypnotism or catalepsy. Those devotees in India who practise it are buried, not burnt, and their tombs are called Samādhs.
To return now to Buddhist Cosmology, the theory of later Buddhism is that he who has practised the first Dhyāna will rise at death to one of the three tiers of heavens connected with that first Dhyāna, i.e. to the first and lowest of the four groups of worlds of true form (rūpa), in which all sexual distinctions are obliterated.