drawing occasionally from the turbulence of worldliness and of devoting some time to a quiet inspection of one's own consciousness. When this habit is thoroughly established, a man can keep serenity of mind and cheerfulness of disposition even in the midst of his whirlwind-like course of daily life. Dhyana is then a discipline in tranquillization. It aims at giving to a mind the time for deliberation and saving it from. running wild; it directs the vain and vulgar to the path of earnestness and reality; it makes us feel interest in higher things which are above the senses; it discovers the presence in us of a spiritual faculty which bridges the chasm between the finite and the infinite; and it finally delivers us from the bondage and torture of ignorance, safely leading us to the other shore of Nirvana.
Dhyana is sometimes made a synonym for camatha and samadhi and samapatti. Camatha is tranquillity and practically the same as dhyana, though the latter is much more frequently in use than the former. Samapatti literally is "put together evenly" or "balanced," and means the equilibrium of consciousness in which takes place neither wakefulness nor apathy, but in which the mind is calmly concentrated on the thought under consideration. Samadhi is a perfect absorption, voluntary or involuntary, of thought into the object of contemplation. A mind is sometimes said to be in a state of
samadhi when it identifies itself with the ultimate reason of existence and is only conscious of the unification. In this case, dhyana is the method or process that brings us finally to samadhi.
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Now, the benefits arising from the exercise of dhyana are more than one, and are not only practical but moral and spiritual. Nobody will deny the most practical advantage gained through presence of mind, moderation of temper, control of feelings, and mastery of oneself. A passion may be so violent at the time of its agitation that it will fairly consume itself to utter destruction, but a cool-headed man knows well how to give it the necessary psychological time of rest and deliberation and thus to save himself from plunging headlong into the Charybdis of emotion. And this cool-headedness, though in some measure due to heredity, is attainable through the exercise of dhyana.
Intellectually, dhyana will keep the head clear and transparent and, whenever necessary, make it concentrate itself on the subject at issue. Logical accuracy depends greatly on the dispassionateness of the arguing mind, and scientific investigation gains much from the steadiness of the observing eye. Whatever be a man's intellectual development, he has surely nothing to lose, but a great deal to gain, by training himself in the habit of tranquillization.
In these days of industrial and commercial