Problems Bared, Essays on Buddhism

96
our mental pressure, in the hope to find a solution to a problem, or
to obtain a perfectly clear picture of the point at issue.
Applied to the spiritual field, things are not much different. All
religions have developed their own spiritual exercises, which is indeed
the very name given to a specific method of concentration,
spread out over thirty days by the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius
of Loyola. This name might also be given to the forty types of
concentration in Buddhism, which are at great length explained by
Buddhaghosa in his Visuddhimagga. In Hinduism, several forms of
yoga employ different methods of discipline, varying between physical
self-restraint or haṭha-yoga, the path of devotion or bhakti-yoga
and mental concentration or rāja-yoga.
All are forms of concentration, which I wish to group under
the name of mind-. culture or its Pāḷi name: bhāvanā. This word
bhāvanā is derived from the word bhava, bhāveti, becoming, or causing
to become, to grow, i.e., to cultivate.
This cultivation of the mind, or mind-culture, is a method, in the
practice of which concrete ideas and images are presented and introduced
in order to fix the mind. The object-matter of this fixation
is not important, but it should be chosen according to the inclinations,
the abilities, the mental dispositions of the subject who practises
concentration. There are those who are more emotional than
intellectual, and for them the devotional aspect will have greater
appeal.
Devotion involves a dedication of oneself to a person, a purpose
or an ideal, with loyalty, with surrender, with worship. This culture
of devotion is found in bhakti-yoga among the worshippers of
Vishnu and his various incarnations as Rama or Krishna; it is also
found among the devotees of Shiva, where devotion takes the aspect
of austerity and penance; and among the Christians where it is expressed
in divine worship and veneration of the saints. The divine
power or Shakti becomes the object of devotion in a female form,
the Mother. In later developed forms of Mahayana Buddhism this