As thus the aim of the dhyana exercises is to prepare the mind for the realisation of the paramasacca which destroys and liberates, and as the truth is realisable only by the awakening of the parama-paññā which is the knowledge (_ñāṇa_) that puts an end to all misery (_sabbadukkha_), the Buddha never fails to duly impress the importance of paññā on the minds of his disciples, for instance, in his general disciplinary scheme given to them under the three headings: śīla (morality), jhāna (meditation), and paññā (intuitive knowledge). Whatever supersensual pleasures one may experience in the jhāna exercises, the Buddha considered them to be far short of the ultimate goal of Buddhist life, every one of such pleasures had to be abandoned as it would entangle the mind and interrupt its ascending course to the awakening of paññā. It was through this awakening alone that the consciousness of emancipation or going back to one’s original spiritual abode could be attained. And by emancipation the Buddha meant to be free from all forms of attachment, both sensual (_rūpaṁ_) and intellectual (_viññānaṁ_). So says he in the Majjhima Nikāya, 138: Let not thy mind be disturbed by external objects, nor let it go astray among thy own ideas. Be free from attachments, and fear not. This is the way to overcome the sufferings of birth and death. As long as there is the slightest trace of attachment anywhere, outwardly or inwardly, there remains the substratum of selfhood, and this is sure to create a new force of karma and involve us in the eternal cycle of birth-and-death. This attachment is a form of obsession or illusion or imagination. Nine of such self-conceited illusions are mentioned in the Nikāyas, all of which come out of the wrong speculations of selfhood and naturally lead to attachment in one way or another. They are the ideas that “I am,” “I am that,” “I shall be,” “I shall not be,” “I shall have form,” “I shall be without form,” “I shall have thought,” “I shall be without thought,” “I shall neither have thought nor be without thought.”[f67] We have to get rid of all these _maññitams_, arrogant, self-asserting conceptions, in order to reach the final goal of Buddhist life. For when they are eliminated, we cease to worry, to harbour hatred, to be belabouring, and to be seized with fears,—which is tranquillisation (_santi_), and Nirvana, and the seeing into the reality and truth of things. When paññā is awakened in us, morality is abandoned, meditation left behind, and there remains only an enlightened state of consciousness in which spirit moveth as it listeth.