nirodha-samapatti also known as samjnavedayita-nirodha (Sanskrit, ‘attainment of cessation’), a term used by Indian Buddhists to denote a state produced by meditation in which no mental events of any kind occur. What ceases in nirodha-samapatti is all the operations of the mind; all that remains is the mindless body. Some Buddhists took this state to have salvific significance, and so likened it to Nirvana. But its principal philosophical interest lies in the puzzle it produced for Buddhist theorists: What causal account can be given that will make sense of the reemergence of mental events from a continuum in which none exist, given the pan-Buddhist assumption that all existents are momentary? P.J.G.