Balance of mind is called Yoga.
Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against it.
Another point of Buddhist teaching adopted from previous belief was the practice of ecstatic meditation. In the very earliest times of the most remote animism we find the belief that a person, rapt from all sense of the outside world, possessed by a spirit, acquired from that state a degree of sanctity, was supposed to have a degree of insight, denied to ordinary mortals. In India from the soma frenzy in the _Vedas_, through the mystic reveries of the _Upanishads_, and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga, allied beliefs and practices had never lost their importance and their charm. It is clear from the _Dialogues_, and other of the most ancient Buddhist records,[24] that the belief was in full force when Buddhism arose, and that the practice was followed by the Buddha's teachers. It was quite impossible for him to ignore the question; and the practice was admitted as a part of the training of the Buddhist Bhikshu. But it was not the highest or the most important part, and might be omitted altogether. The states of Rapture are called Conditions of Bliss, and they are regarded as useful for the help they give towards the removal of the mental obstacles to the attainment of Arahatship.[25] Of the thirty-seven constituent parts of Arahatship they enter into one group of four. To seek for Arahatship in the practice of the ecstasy alone is considered a deadly heresy.[26] So these practices are both pleasant in themselves, and useful as one of the means to the end proposed. But they are not the end, and the end can be reached without them. The most ancient form these exercises took is recorded in the often recurring paragraphs translated in Rhys Davids' _Dialogues of the Buddha_ (i. 84-92). More modern, and much more elaborate, forms are given in the _Yog[=a]vacaras Manual of Indian Mysticism as practised by Buddhists_, edited by Rhys Davids from a unique MS. for the P[=a]li Text Society in 1896. In the Introduction to this last work the various phases of the question are discussed at length. Entry: A
The _tithi_ is divided into two _karanas_; each _karana_ being the time in which the moon increases her distance from the sun by six degrees. But this is a detail of astrological rather than chronological interest. So, also, are two other details to which a prominent place is given in the lunar calendars; to yoga, or time in which the joint motion in longitude, the sum of the motions of the sun and the moon, is increased by 13 degrees 20 minutes; and the _nakshatra_, the position of the moon as referred to the ecliptic by means of the stars and groups of stars which have been mentioned above under the lunar month. Entry: A
Of Saiva mendicant and ascetic orders, the members of which are considered more or less followers of Sankara Acharya, the following may be mentioned: (1) _Dandis_, or staff-bearers, who carry a wand with a piece of red cloth, containing the sacred cord, attached to it, and also wear one or more pieces of cloth of the same colour. They worship Siva in his form of Bhairava, the "terrible." A sub-section of this order are the Dandi Dasnamis, or Dandi of ten names, so called from their assuming one of the names of Sankara's four disciples, and six of their pupils. (2) _Yogis_ (or popularly, Jogis), i.e. adherents of the Yoga philosophy and the system of ascetic practices enjoined by it with the view of mental abstraction and the supposed attainment of superhuman powers--practices which, when not merely pretended, but rigidly carried out, are only too apt to produce vacuity of mind and wild fits of frenzy. In these degenerate days their supernatural powers consist chiefly in conjuring, sooth-saying, and feats of jugglery, by which they seldom fail in imposing upon a credulous public. (3) _Sannyasis_, devotees who "renounce" earthly concerns, an order not confined either to the Brahmanical caste or to the Saiva persuasion. Those of the latter are in the habit of smearing their bodies with ashes, and wearing a tiger-skin and a necklace or rosary of _rudraksha_ berries (Elaeocarpus Ganitrus, lit. "Rudra's eye"), sacred to Siva, and allowing their hair to grow till it becomes matted and filthy. (4) _Parama-hamsas_, i.e. "supreme geese (or swans)," a term applied to the world-soul with which they claim to be identical. This is the highest order of asceticism, members of which are supposed to be solely engaged in meditating on the Brahma, and to be "equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want." Some of them go about naked, but the majority are clad like the Dandis. (5) _Aghora Panthis_, a vile and disreputable class of mendicants, now rarely met with. Their filthy habits and disgusting practices of gross promiscuous feeding, even to the extent of eating offal and dead men's flesh, look almost like a direct repudiation of the strict Brahmanical code of ceremonial purity and cleanliness, and of the rules regulating the matter and manner of eating and drinking; and they certainly make them objects of loathing and terror wherever they are seen. Entry: HINDUISM
ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES.--Bhadrabahu's _Kalpa Sutra_, the recognized and popular manual of the Svetambara Jains, edited with English introduction by Professor Jacobi (Leipzig, 1879); Hemacandra's "Yoga S'astram," edited by Windisch, in the _Zeitschrift der deutschen morg. Ges._ for 1874; "Zwei Jaina Stotra," edited in the _Indische Studien_, vol. xv.; _Ein Fragment der Bhagavati_, by Professor Weber; _Mémoires de l'Académie de Berlin_ (1866); _Nirayavaliya Sutta_, edited by Dr Warren, with Dutch introduction (Amsterdam, 1879); _Over de godsdienstige en wijsgeerige Begrippen der Jainas_, by Dr Warren (his doctor-dissertation, Zwolle, 1875); _Beiträge zur Grammatik des Jaina-prakrit_, by Dr Edward Müller (Berlin, 1876); Colebrooke's _Essays_, vol. ii. Mr J. Burgess has an exhaustive account of the Jain Cave Temples (none older than the 7th century) in Fergusson and Burgess's _Cave Temples in India_ (London, 1880). Entry: ADDITIONAL