63. DEFINITIONS OF THE POWERS

Speaking of textbooks, and now that I have gotten both the standard and nonstandard warnings and disclaimers out of the way, we might as well get down to defining what we are talking about regarding the powers. We can start with the standard lists in some of the earliest extant texts of the Pali canon (such as that found in sutta DN 2, Samaññaphala or “Fruits of the Contemplative Life”). They include:

It is an oddly short list, given the wide range of what people may experience and cultivate, and given the vast range of powers described in the early canonical material. The Visuddhimagga (V, 28–39 or so) adds:

This also is a pretty short list. I will add to these the following very abbreviated list of some of the more common things that people can get into:

Those of you with strong concentration and more experiences with the siddhis will be laughing at how short this list is. Interestingly, these lists don't even cover all the powers that the Buddha and some of his followers exhibit in the old texts, and if you read the stories of the Buddha and his followers and wrote down all the magickal actions they perform, the list would be much longer.

Then there is the dark side to the powers, which brings us to the question of ethics.