rapture, enthusiasm (rendered also by joy, happiness); interest it is one of the mental factors or concomitants (cetasika) and belongs to the group of mental formations (sankhāra-kkhandha). As, in sutta texts, it is often linked in a compound word. with 'gladness' (pāmojja) or 'happiness' (sukha), some Western translations have wrongly taken it as a synonym of these two terms. Pīti, however, is not a feeling or a sensation, and hence does not belong to the feeling-group (vedanā-kkhandha), but may be described psychologically as 'joyful interest'. As such it may be associated with wholesome as well as with unwholesome and neutral states of consciousness.

A high degree of rapture is characteristic of certain stages in meditative concentration, in insight practice (vipassanā) as well as in the first two absorptions (jhāna, q.v.). In the latter it appears as one of the factors of absorption (jhānanga; s. jhāna) and is strongest in the 2nd absorption.

Five degrees of intensity in meditative rapture are described in Vis.M. IV. 94ff.

It is one of the factors of enlightenment (bojjhanga, q.v.).