Reading guide
A direct question, a direct answer
Confirmed by direct reading, Ānanda's own question is unusually pointed for this saṃyutta: not a general teaching request, but whether the Buddha himself has “personal experience” of traveling bodily — and the Buddha answers plainly, “I do, Ānanda,” both for the mind-made body and for “this body made up of the four principal states.”
Submerging body in mind, and mind in body
Confirmed by direct reading, the Buddha's own technical account describes “submerging his body in his mind and his mind in his body,” meditating “after sinking into a perception of bliss and lightness in the body” — at which point the body itself becomes “lighter, softer, more workable, and more radiant.”
The vagga's own namesake simile
Confirmed by direct reading, the discourse's own central image gives this vagga its name: “suppose there was an iron ball that had been heated all day” — it too becomes “lighter, softer, more workable, and more radiant,” the same four qualities named for the meditator's own body.
A second simile: cotton-wool on the wind
Confirmed by direct reading, the discourse adds a second image for the body's own rising into the air: “a light tuft of cotton-wool or kapok. Taken up by the wind, it would easily rise up from the ground” — explaining, through two contrasting similes, both the body's changed quality (the iron ball) and its actual motion (the cotton-wool).
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Then Venerable Ānanda went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and said to him: “Sir, do you have personal experience of having gone to the realm of divinity by psychic power with a mind-made body?” “I do, Ānanda.” “But do you have personal experience of having gone to the realm of divinity by psychic power with this body made up of the four principal states?” “I do, Ānanda.”
§2“It’s incredible and amazing that the Buddha is at least able to go to the realm of divinity by psychic power with a mind-made body! And that he has personal experience of going to the realm of divinity by psychic power with this body made up of the four principal states!” “Ānanda, the Realized Ones are incredible and have incredible qualities. They’re amazing and have amazing qualities.
§3Sometimes the Realized One submerges his body in his mind and his mind in his body. He meditates after sinking into a perception of bliss and lightness in the body. At that time his body becomes lighter, softer, more workable, and more radiant.
§4Suppose there was an iron ball that had been heated all day. It’d become lighter, softer, more workable, and more radiant. In the same way, sometimes the Realized One submerges his body in his mind and his mind in his body. He meditates after sinking into a perception of bliss and lightness in the body. At that time his body becomes lighter, softer, more workable, and more radiant.
§5Sometimes the Realized One submerges his body in his mind and his mind in his body. He meditates after sinking into a perception of bliss and lightness in the body. At that time his body easily rises up from the ground into the air. He wields the many kinds of psychic power: multiplying himself and becoming one again … controlling the body as far as the realm of divinity.
§6Suppose there was a light tuft of cotton-wool or kapok. Taken up by the wind, it would easily rise up from the ground into the air. In the same way, sometimes the Realized One submerges his body in his mind and his mind in his body. He meditates after sinking into a perception of bliss and lightness in the body. At that time his body easily rises up from the ground into the air. He wields the many kinds of psychic power: multiplying himself and becoming one again … controlling the body as far as the realm of divinity.”
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