In the fourth or the last jhana both the sukha (happiness) and the dukkha (misery) vanish away and all the roots of attachment and antipathies are destroyed.  This state is characterized by supreme and absolute indifference (upekkha) which was slowly growing in all the various stages of the jhanas.  The characteristics of this jhana are therefore upekkha and ekaggata.  With the mastery of this jhana comes final perfection and total extinction of the citta called cetovimutti, and the sage becomes thereby an arhat [Footnote ref 2].  There is no further production of the khandhas, no rebirth, and there is the absolute cessation of all sorrows and sufferings—­Nibbana.

Kamma.

In the Katha (II. 6) Yama says that “a fool who is blinded with the infatuation of riches does not believe in a future life; he thinks that only this life exists and not any other, and thus he comes again and again within my grasp.”  In the Digha Nikaya also we read how Payasi was trying to give his reasons in support of his belief that “Neither is there any other world, nor are there beings, reborn otherwise than from parents, nor is there fruit or result of deeds well done or ill done [Footnote ref 3].”  Some of his arguments were that neither the vicious nor the virtuous return to tell us that they suffered or enjoyed happiness in the other world, that if the virtuous had a better life in store, and if they believed in it, they would certainly commit suicide in order to get it at the earliest opportunity, that in spite of taking the best precautions we do not find at the time of the death of any person that his soul goes out, or that his body weighs less on account of the departure of his soul, and so on.  Kassapa refutes his arguments with apt illustrations.  But in spite of a few agnostics of

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[Footnote 1:  Visuddhimagga, p. 163.]

[Footnote 2:  Majjhima Nikaya, I.p. 296, and Visuddhimagga, pp. 167-168.]

[Footnote 3:  Dialogues of the Buddha, II. p. 349; D.  N. II. pp. 317 ff.]

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Payasi’s type, we have every reason to believe that the doctrine of rebirth in other worlds and in this was often spoken of in the Upani@sads and taken as an accepted fact by the Buddha.  In the Milinda Panha, we find Nagasena saying “it is through a difference in their karma that men are not all alike, but some long lived, some short lived, some healthy and some sickly, some handsome and some ugly, some powerful and some weak, some rich and some poor, some of high degree and some of low degree, some wise and some foolish [Footnote ref 1].”  We have seen in the third chapter that the same soil of views was enunciated by the Upani@sad sages.