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It is succeeded by the state in which neither any idea nor the absence of any idea is specially present to the mind . This was the goal of Uddaka Râmaputta, his second teacher, and is illustrated by the simile of a bowl which has been smeared with oil inside. That is to say, consciousness is reduced to a minimum.
At any rate he applied himself diligently to acquire what knowledge could be learned from contemporary teachers of religion. We have an account put into his own mouth of his experiences as the pupil of Alâra Kâlâma and Uddaka Râmaputta but it gives few details of his studies. They were therefore doing exactly what the Buddha himself did later on a larger scale and with more conspicuous success.
Such methods had at first only a slight philosophic substratum and were independent of Sânkhya doctrines, though these, being a speculative elaboration of the same fundamental principles, naturally commended themselves to those who practised Yoga. The two teachers of the Buddha, Âlâra and Uddaka, were Yogis, and held that beatitude or emancipation consisted in the attainment of certain trances.
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