the method to be followed by a monk who tries for the first time to recollect previous births.  After taking his midday meal he should choose a quiet place and sitting down pass through the four Jhanas in succession.  On rising from the fourth trance he should consider the event which last took place, namely his sitting down; and then in retrograde order all that he did the day and night before and so backwards month after month and year after year.  A clever monk (so says Buddhaghosa) is able at the first trial to pass beyond the moment of his conception in the present existence and to take as the object of his thought his individuality at the moment of his last death.  But since the individuality of the previous existence ceased and another one came into being, therefore that point of time is like thick darkness.  Buddhaghosa goes on to explain, if I apprehend his meaning rightly, that the proper recollection of previous births involves the element of form and the mind sharpened by the practice of the four trances does not merely reproduce feelings and impressions but knows the name and events of the previous existence, whereas ordinary persons are apt to reproduce feelings and impressions without having any clear idea of the past existence as a whole.  This, I believe, corresponds with the experience of modern Buddhists.  It is beyond doubt that those who attempt to carry their memory back in the way described are convinced that they remember existences before the present life.  As a rule it takes from a fortnight to a month to obtain such a remembrance clearly, and every day the aspirant to a knowledge of previous births must carry his memory further and further back, dwelling less and less on the details of recent events.  When he reaches the time of his birth, he feels as if there were a curtain of black darkness before him, but if the attention is concentrated, this curtain is rent and the end of the previous life is recovered behind it.  The process is painful for it involves the recollection of death and the even greater pains of birth and many have not courage to go beyond this point.  It is not uncommon in Ceylon, Burma, Siam and probably in all parts of the Far East, to find people who are persuaded they can remember previous births in this way, but I have never met anyone who professed to recall more than two or three.  There is no room in these modest modern visions for the long vistas of previous lives seen by the earlier Buddhists.

Meditation also plays a considerable part in the Buddhism of the Far East under the name of Ch’an or Zen of which we shall have something to say when we treat of China and Japan.