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PURE CONCENTRATION OF SHIFTING
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वितर्कः श्रुतम्
1 83 Vitarkaḥ śrutam
(43) 43. Vitarka is scriptural knowledge.
Detailed or special examination and reasoning is 'vitarka'. It means scriptural knowledge. What is shifting (vicāra)?
वीचारोऽर्थव्यञ्जनयोगसंक्रान्तिः
Vicāro(a)rthavyañjanayogasamkrāntiḥ (44) 44. Vicāra is shifting with regard to objects, words and activities.
The subject of meditation is the object. It is either substance or mode. V yañjanam' is word, Activity (yoga) is the action of the body, mind or speech-organ. 'Samkrānti' is shifting from one thing to another.
Object-shifting is passing from substance to modes and from modes to substance. Word-shifting is passing from one scriptural term to another and from that to another. Activityshifting is changing from bodily activity to some other activity and from that activity to bodily activity. This kind of change is called shifting. When there is alternation how can it be called meditation? The reply is that even thought-stream is meditation. The virtuous and the pure concentration, each of which is of four kinds, have been described generally and particularly. These are worthy to be meditated upon by the ascetic, who has practised several observances such as control and so on to purify the mind, in order to free himself from transmigration. The ascetic meditates on the material (objective atom) or thought (subjective atom) and with his knowledge of the scriptures shifts to objects or verbal symbols or to activities of the body or the speech-organ. He shifts his thought soverally from one to another. And just as a person of poor strength and enthusiasm cuts a tree for a long time with an unsteady hand and a dull axe, so also the ascetic tries to suppress or destroy the deluding karmas, and he embraces the first type of pure concentration, namely the separate, scriptural, shifting, concentration.
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