Ten Stages of Meditation

Upasaka Culadasa February 2012 1
THE TEN STAGES OF MEDITATION

"Mindfulness of in-and-out breathing, when developed and pursued, is of
great fruit, of great benefit. Mindfulness of in-and-out breathing, when
developed and pursued, brings the four applications of mindfulness to their
culmination. The four applications of mindfulness, when developed and
pursued, bring the seven factors for awakening to their culmination. The
seven factors for awakening, when developed and pursued, bring clear
knowing and release to their culmination.

"Now how is mindfulness of in-and-out breathing developed & pursued so as
to be of great fruit, of great benefit?
The Anapanasatti Sutta

Who hasn't found themselves planning, daydreaming, or just zoning out while sitting on
the meditation cushion? Some well-intentioned practitioners may even go through the motions
of sitting for years without getting anywhere. This happens when people lack a clear idea about
the nature of meditation: simply put, it is a skill. And like any skill, there are straightforward
goals and instructions. Also, it takes practice to get better. This is an overview of those goals
and instructions. They are easy to understand and work with even if sometimes they involve a
fair amount of detail. Yet, the road to improvement doesn't have to be a long one. You can
achieve success in months, or in a few years at most. You'll find the rewards of meditation are
closer than you think.

Traditional Roadmaps for Meditation
This presentation is the result of discovering how few long-time practitioners have ever
experienced any of the more exalted states of meditation, much less the profound realizations
that it offers. Meditators in general are reticent to discuss the details of their practice experience.
So it wasnt until I began to have conversations within the context of a teacher-student
relationship that I became aware of the extent of this problem. Essentially what I learned was
that even after many years of trying, people were making very little progress. The sincerity of
their aspirations and the amount of time they had spent practicing were definitely not the
problem. What they lacked was a clear understanding of exactly which skills they needed to
cultivate, in what order, and how to go about doing it. Put another way, they needed a clear map
of the process that describes the whole journey step-by-step: what needs to be accomplished at
each stage and how to do it; what things are better left until a later stage; and what pitfalls should
be avoided.
It isn't that these kinds of roadmaps don't exist, because they certainly do, but they are
largely inaccessible to most meditators. Some 2,500 years ago, the Buddha presented meditation
training as a sequence of developmental stages, in a series of verses known as the Anapanasati
Sutta. Each verse describes one step in a progressive method for training the mind. Yet, these
verses are short on practical details, and so cryptic that they're incomprehensible to any but the
most experienced meditators. Perhaps there wasn't any need for the Buddha to go into specifics,
since there were so many others at the time who could interpret his words and provide clear
instructions.
Around 800 years later, Asanga identified nine distinct stages in the process of
developing concentration.
1
Four centuries after Asanga, Kamalasila, who later taught in Tibet,
elaborated on these stages of training in his Stages of Meditation (Bhavanakrama). Yet another
invaluable source of information is the Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), compiled by the
great Theravadin commentator Buddhaghosa in the 5th century. As all these masters realized,
teaching meditation by stages is an easy and effective way to help someone achieve the highest
goals of the practice. Unfortunately, these and many other excellent maps of meditation progress
lie buried in the "commentarial" literatures of different Buddhist traditions. The volume and
diversity of these commentaries is so vast that even the great masters of one tradition rarely
know what is available in other traditions. It's no wonder that the average Western meditator
isn't aware of them.
Part of the problem is that many of these works haven't been translated into European
languages. Few people other than Buddhist scholars are able to study and translate these dense
texts, full of obscure terminology and complicated language from a very different time and
culture. In the future, we can expect to see more and better translations. Another difficulty is the
closely related issue of interpretation. Since Buddhist scholars are rarely serious meditators,
their translations are subject to distortions that come from knowing too little about the subject
matter being translated. Traditional meditation teachings can only be correctly understood if you
have personally experienced the kind of mental states being described. Purely theoretical
attempts at interpretation always fall short.
Also, as you might expect, these old but very precise roadmaps of the practice have been
greatly obscured by the passage of time. I remember when I first encountered Asanga's nine
stages of meditation. A lama in the Tibetan tradition was doing a presentation on them. I was
already very familiar with how meditation training unfolds, both from my own experience and
from the guidance of my teachers. I was immediately struck by two things. First, I was
impressed how accurate and brilliant was Asanga's summary of the training process. Second, I
realized how confused and distorted this particular lama's understanding of the material was. I

1
The nine states one progresses through before attaining shamatha are described in Asangas Grounds of Hearers
(Sravakabhumi), Compendium of Knowledge (Abhidharmasamuchchaya), and Ornament for the Mahayana Sutras
(Mahayana-sutralamkara).

doubt that anyone could have improved his or her meditation practice from hearing that
presentation. Nor was this an isolated incident. Similar experiences have shown me that,
although the texts themselves have been carefully preserved, they are not always well understood
by their preservers.
Meditation is still quite new in the West, and there is much yet to be learned. However,
once its secrets are unlocked and the hows and whys are better understood, it will be easier to
achieve the true goals of meditation. With a clearer understanding, Westerners can then bring
their own unique cultural talents, including science and technology, to the teaching and practice
of meditation. We will eventually make meditation our own in the West, and hopefully use it to
help ourselves become a wiser and more humane society and advance human progress beyond its
current biological and cultural limitations. On an evermore crowded and over-burdened planet,
this may be our only hope for the future. The cumulative experience of thousands of years is at
our disposal. It only needs to be made available in a way that can be readily understood and
applied. This is a small attempt at doing just that.

A Modern Roadmap for Meditation
What follows is the product of several decades of personal meditation practice. To make
sense of my own meditation experiences, and whenever I needed guidance about where my
practice should go next, I turned not only to my teachers, but also to the Pali Suttas and the
commentaries of several different traditions. Over and over again, these traditional sources
provided an appropriate context to fit the pieces together and find the information I needed. I
have used my own experience with these sources to "reverse engineer" traditional meditation
instructions in a modern form. I then integrated that understanding with what modern
psychology and cognitive neuroscience have to offer.
The result is what you find in these pages. The structure of this presentation comes
directly from traditional teachings. But the substance of the meditation instruction that fleshes
out this framework is not an intellectual interpretation of ancient texts. It is a modern synthesis
based on first-hand experience and expanded on through the shared experiences of many other
dedicated practitioners. Also, this is an amalgam of teachings from different traditions. While it
is entirely consistent with all of them, it does not reflect any one tradition in particular. I believe
that this is one of its great advantages. As Buddhism and its associated practices diversified over
two and a half millennia, each tradition has evolved its own special contributions. The Indo-
Tibetan Mahayana meditation teachings fill in gaps in the traditional Theravadan teachings, and
vice versa. The fundamental techniques presented here apply to every kind of meditation
practice.
Keep in mind that all of the source teachings were intended for monastics living in
supportive communities of meditators. There wasn't much need to provide basic instructions,
practical details, or to give examples. This isn't the case for modern lay practitioners. Most are
practicing with little guidance and often on their own. Therefore, while closely following these
original teachings, I provide much more detail and give examples. I have also added an extra
Stage "Establishing a Practice" to Asanga's nine stages to help people with jobs, families, and
other responsibilities navigate the challenge of finding the time for meditation in their busy lives.
These and other minor differences in this presentation reflect the differences between practicing
as a householder rather than as a monastic.
As much as possible, I have used modern English to describe the Ten Stages. This is
partly to make it more accessible, but also because Pali and Sanskrit labels conjure up different
meanings for different people. Because English and European languages often lack words for
the concepts described by traditional meditation terminology, it has become common practice to
use Pali or Sanskrit words in English meditation texts. The problem is that the meanings of these
terms have changed with time and geography. It's not uncommon for the same words to mean
different things to teachers even within the same tradition, and the differences in meaning
between traditions that have developed far apart from each other are especially great. Even the
most basic meditation terminology is subject to confusing and often conflicting interpretations
and translations. Too often this results in people talking to each other using the same words but
with different meanings, which can make meditation discussions quite baffling.
On the other hand, the need for some kind of technical vocabulary is unavoidable. So,
rather than inventing new words to replace them, I will use words like samadhi, sati, vipassana,
and samatha. But when I do, I will always explain exactly what they mean in plain English. I am
also going to use words you already know, but I will employ them in a more precise, specific,
and useful way. Some of these "technical terms" are influenced by psychology and the cognitive
sciences. This kind of language may seem unfamiliar at first, but taking a little extra time to
learn the meaning of these terms will be immensely helpful. It gives us a precise language to
describe the practice and understand subtle experiences and states of mind.

The Ten Stages and Four Milestone Achievements

The entire process of training the mind unfolds through Ten Stages. Each Stage has its
own distinct characteristics, challenges to overcome, and specific techniques for working
through those challenges. The Stages mark gradual improvements in your abilities. As you
make progress, there will also be Four Milestone Achievements, discussed below. These mark
especially significant points of transition in your practice when you finally master important
skills, taking your meditations to a whole new level. In other words, the Ten Stages can also be
divided into four distinct parts.
The Stages and Milestones, considered together, form a broad map to help you figure out
where you are and how best to continue. Yet, because each person is unique, the route your
spiritual journey takes will always be at least slightly different from that of somebody else. For
this reason, we will also talk about how the process unfolds, how fast or slow you may
experience progress, and about what kind of attitude to have. The point isn't to force your
experience to match something you have read. You instead want to use this as a guide for
working with and understanding your own experiences no matter what form they take.
The more clearly you understand the Stages in cultivating attention and awareness and
why the happen in the order that they do the quicker and more enjoyably you will walk the path
toward happiness and freedom.

The Four Milestone Achievements
Your progress through the Ten Stages will be marked by four particularly significant
achievements. They are Milestones that divide all the Stages into four distinct parts: the Stages
of a novice (One through Three), of a skilled meditator (Four through Six), the transition Stage
(Seven), and the Stages of an adept (Eight through Ten). It is helpful to think of each Stage in
terms of the Milestone that lies ahead.

Milestone One: Continuous Attention to the Meditation Object
The first Milestone is continuous attention to the meditation object, which you achieve at
the end of Stage Three. Before this, you are considered a beginner a person who meditates,
rather than a skilled meditator. But when you reach this Milestone, you are no longer a novice
prone to forgetting the breath, a wandering mind, or dozing off. By mastering Stages One
through Three, you have acquired the basic, first level skills on the way to stability of attention.
You can now do something that no ordinary, untrained person can. You will build on this initial
skill set
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over the course of the next three Stages to become a truly skilled meditator.

Milestone Two: Sustained Single-Pointed Attention
Once you have mastered Stages Four through Six, you have completed the development
of the abilities that make you a Skilled Meditator, the second Milestone. You have achieved the

2
In traditional descriptions, this marks the beginning of what is called parikamma samadhi in Pali. Samadhi is often
translated as concentration, in reference to the unique concentration developed in meditation, but literally means a
"gathering together" of the mind. Parikamma means initial, first or "preliminary". There is no samadhi before
the preliminary samadhi of Stage 4.

two major objectives of meditative training: stable attention and mindfulness. You have also
completely mastered single-pointed attention, which means you can focus on the meditation
object to the exclusion of everything else; your attention no longer alternates back and forth from
the breath to distractions in the background. Also, your scope of attention is stable; dullness has
completely disappeared; and mindfulness takes the form of a powerful metacognitive
introspective awareness that is, you are now aware of the state of your mind in every moment,
even as you focus on the breath.

Milestone Three: Effortless Stability of Attention
The third Milestone is effortlessness also known as mental pliancy or the compliant
mind and is achieved at the end of Stage Seven. By this point, diverse mental processes have
been unified and the mind no longer struggles against itself. Instead, the mind functions as a
coherent, harmonious whole, directing its full power toward a single purpose. Because your
mind is unified, your meditations are effortless; no part of the mind is resistant or preoccupied
with something else. Stage Seven is a transition process through which you go from being a
Skilled Meditator to an Adept Meditator.
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Milestone Four: Persistence of the Mental Qualities of an Adept
When you have mastered Stage Ten, the many positive mental qualities that you
experience during meditation are strongly present even between meditation sessions. This means
that your life becomes imbued with effortless stability of attention, mindfulness, joy, tranquility,
and equanimity.
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This is the fourth and final Milestone and marks the culmination of the training
of an Adept Meditator.

The Milestones and Mindfulness
I have talked about these Milestones in terms of your stability of attention. Yet, it's
important to mention that you will also be developing other, related skills at the same time. Only
by strengthening and refining peripheral awareness together with the skill of stable attention will
your mindfulness grow stronger. In other words, you don't just want to train your faculty of

3
This is the beginning of the samadhi called upacara, usually translated as access, which reaches its peak of
development in Stage 10. Access refers to the fact that both jhana (absorption) and vipassana (insight) are readily
accessed from upacara samadhi.

4
These five qualities of the Adept meditator constitute five of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, or satta
sambojjha!g" in Pali, that were described by the Buddha: effortless stability of attention (samadhi); mindfulness
(sati); joy or rapture (p#ti); tranquility (passadhi); and Equanimity (upekkha). The two remaining sambojjha!g" are
the investigation of phenomena (dhamma vicaya) and diligence (viriya), both of which are exercised throughout the
practice of the ten stages.

attention to the exclusion of everything else. You need all the skills that contribute to
mindfulness in order to complete the later Stages and achieve the ultimate goal of the practice
Insight into the true nature of reality.

The Ten Stages Of Meditative Training
Each of the Ten Stages on the path to becoming an Adept Meditator is defined in terms of
certain skills that you have to master. Only when you have mastered the skills of a particular
Stage will you be able to move on to master the next Stage. This is because your abilities as a
meditator gradually build on each other. Just as you have to learn to walk before you can learn
to run, you must move through the Stages in order, without skipping any of them. To make
progress, you should correctly determine your current Stage, work diligently with the techniques
you are given, and only move on when you have achieved mastery. Taking shortcuts just creates
problems.
Below, I offer a general sketch of all Ten Stages. This map will help you orient yourself.
I describe each Stage's distinct characteristics, goals, challenges, and the techniques for
achieving those goals and working through those challenges.

Stage One: Establishing a Practice
"Here, monks, a monk goes to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty
place, sits down, folds his legs crosswise, keeps his body erect, and brings
mindfulness to the fore. With mindfulness, he breathes in, with mindfulness
he breathes out.

The goal for this Stage is to develop a consistent and diligent meditation practice.
Consistent means you set a clear daily schedule for when you're going to meditate and stick to it,
except when there are circumstances beyond your control. Diligence means that, instead of
spending your time on the cushion planning or daydreaming, you actually engage whole-
heartedly in the practice. The mind can generate all kinds of clever rationalizations for doing
anything but meditating, so being diligent is especially important.
Not surprisingly, the major obstacles you'll experience at this Stage are resistance and
procrastination. But there are other obstacles, too: fatigue, feelings of impatience or boredom,
disappointment about how fast you're progressing, doubt about the practice or your abilities, and
a lack of motivation. The key to overcoming these problems is to learn to generate a strong
motivation. You can do this by reviewing your reasons for meditating, creating a practice
routine, setting specific practice goals, and cultivating discipline and diligence.
You have mastered Stage One when you never miss a daily practice session or indulge in
procrastinating or other activities to pass the time while waiting for the practice period to end.

Stage Two: Interrupted Attention and Overcoming Mind-Wandering
Stage Two involves the simple practice of keeping your attention on the breath. This is
easier said than done! You quickly discover the restless nature of the untrained mind. A restless
mind produces all kinds of distractions, which make you forget that you're supposed to be
paying attention to the meditation object. Forgetting in turn leads to mind-wandering. Thus,
the entire sequence proceeds from distraction to forgetting to mind-wandering. During Stage
Two, your attention to the breath is often interrupted by forgetting, and the periods of mind-
wandering you experience are relatively long. For seconds, minutes, or sometimes even the
entire session, the meandering mind indulges in all sorts of thoughts and fantasies.
It's important to realize that forgetting and mind-wandering are two distinct events. At
this Stage, your main job is to reduce the amount of mind-wandering (the last part of the
sequence). For now, don't worry about forgetting. Instead, you will learn to make use of
spontaneous introspective awareness to catch yourself when you're in the middle of mind-
wandering. Whenever this happens, take a moment to appreciate this awakening and your
capacity for introspective awareness, which is what allowed you to catch your wandering mind
in the first place. This kind of positive reinforcement encourages introspective awareness to
arise more often so the periods of mind-wandering get shorter. Then, once you have returned to
the breath, you will practice techniques for engaging with the breath sensations more closely.
These exercises help you sustain attention on the meditation object longer.
You have mastered Stage Two when you can sustain attention on the meditation object
for minutes, while most periods of mind-wandering only last for a few seconds.

Stage Three: Extended Attention and Overcoming Forgetting
Stages Two and Three are very similar to each other, but in Stage Three, you spend much
more time focused on the breath, and much less time having forgotten about it. At the start of
this Stage, your attention is more stable. Even though there's still mind-wandering, it doesn't last
as long and will happen for shorter and shorter periods until it stops altogether. The biggest
challenge you have to overcome during this Stage is forgetting. The second obstacle you will
probably experience is sleepiness.
You work through these challenges by intentionally invoking introspective attention to
check in on the mind rather than waiting for introspective awareness to arise spontaneously.
By using intentional introspective attention, you become familiar with how forgetting happens
and learn to recognize the situations in which it usually occurs. You can then take preventative
action to stop forgetting before it leads to mind-wandering. Likewise, introspective attention
will help you recognize the onset of sleepiness so you can take action before you doze off.
During this Stage, you will also increase the power of your mindfulness. You will
practice maintaining peripheral awareness while you focus even more closely on the breath at the
same time. As your perception of the breath sensations grows more vivid, you can engage more
fully with the fine details, and be able to sustain your attention on the meditation object for
increasingly long periods of time.
You have mastered Stage Three when you rarely forget the breath or fall asleep.

Stage Four: Continuous Attention and Overcoming Gross Distraction and Strong Dullness
"Breathing in a long breath, he knows he breathes in a long breath, breathing
out a long breath, he knows he breathes out a long breath.

Breathing in a short breath, he knows he breathes in a short breath,
breathing out a short breath, he knows he breathes out a short breath.

At the beginning of Stage Four, you can stay focused on the breath more or less
continuously. This skill marks the first of the four Milestone Achievements. However, attention
still shifts back and forth between the breath and various distractions. That is, you never forget
the meditation object, but still haven't achieved single-pointed attention (i.e., paying attention to
the meditation object and to nothing else).
Whenever a distraction becomes the primary focus of your attention, it pushes the
meditation object into the background, but not out of awareness. This is called gross distraction.
The more agitated your mind, the more potential distractions there are, and the more often you
will experience gross distraction. But when the mind grows calm, there tends to be another
problem: strong dullness. To deal with both of these challenges, you shift from using
introspective attention to developing continuous introspective awareness to alert you to their
presence. You will still experience subtle forms of distraction and dullness, but that's all right.
For now, you can tolerate them they will even help you.
The gross distractions you will overcome during this Stage can take several forms. You
will probably have a fair amount of pain and discomfort. Also, as your attention grows more
stable and the mind calmer, material will rise up from your unconscious. You will have
powerful intellectual insights, visions, and emotionally charged memories all of which can
become distractions. You will learn to deal with all of these potential distractions without
indulging in the extraordinary experiences or trying to get away from the painful ones. By being
diligent, you can avoid both these pitfalls.
You have mastered Stage Four when gross distractions no longer displace the breath, and
when strong dullness stops causing the sensations of the breath to fade and take on dream-like
distortions.

Stage Five: Overcoming Subtle Dullness and Increasing Mindfulness
At the start of this Stage, you have overcome gross distractions and strong dullness.
Now, your two goals are to increase the power of your mindfulness and to overcome the
tendency to slip into subtle dullness. Subtle dullness makes the sensations of the breath less
vivid and intense and causes your peripheral awareness to fade. But this type of dullness also
has certain pleasant qualities and is easy to ignore.
Because subtle dullness creates feelings of comfort and gives you the impression that
your attention is very stable, it can lead you to over-estimate your abilities and move on to the
next Stage. But skipping Stage Five would be a considerable mistake, leading to concentration
with dullness. Your practice will come to a dead end, and you will experience only a shallow
facsimile of the later Stages. But to truly become an Adept Meditator, having access to states of
profound joy, calm, and Insight, you have to work through this and be careful not to misjudge
where you are. You will find that the rewards are worth infinitely more than the pleasurable,
fuzzy feeling you get from subtle dullness.
To overcome subtle dullness, you must increase the power of your mindfulness, meaning
you will have clearer attention and awareness. You will develop two skills to do this. First, you
will cultivate a strong and continuous introspective awareness to watch for varying degrees of
dullness, so that you can correct for it. Second, you will practice a new body-scanning
technique. This will make your conscious awareness stronger and sharpen up your perceptual
faculties.
You have mastered Stage Five when you can sustain or even increase the power of your
mindfulness during a meditation session.

Stage Six: Subduing Subtle Distraction
"Experiencing the whole body while breathing in, he trains himself.
Experiencing the whole body while breathing out, he trains himself.

You begin Stage Six with fairly stable attention, but it still shifts back and forth between
the meditation object and competing thoughts and sensations in the background. It's only
because you have close, sustained attention to the meditation object that these subtle distractions
don't displace it. But you are now ready to bring your faculty of attention to a whole new level.
Your focus will no longer alternate, subtle distractions will die away, and you will have
exclusive attention to the meditation object. This is also called single-pointed attention; your
focus is unwaveringly stable because you have learned to exclude all possible distractions and
focus on one single object. This is the goal for Stage Six. "Single-pointedness," contrary to how
it may sound, doesn't actually mean that the size of what you're focusing on is small. You can
attend just as single-pointedly to the sensations of the whole body as you can to sensations at the
tip of the nose.
To subdue subtle distractions and cultivate exclusive attention, you focus your attention
on the sensations in one specific area. That is, you have a clearly defined scope of attention.
Then, you ignore everything outside that scope of attention. Ignoring distractions makes them
eventually fade from your awareness. You will also use a method called "experiencing the
whole body with the breath." Mental self-talk, as well as non-verbal thought processes, gradually
die away although they are still present "beneath the surface." When that happens, the
meditation object becomes relatively non-conceptual. These developments mark an important
change in the way that your mind processes information. Usually, we automatically overlay
whatever we experience with conceptual interpretations. In Stage Six, you start to do that less
and less. At the same time, you will develop a much more refined and selective metacognitive
introspective awareness
5
an awareness of the mind itself.
You have mastered Stage Six once subtle distractions have almost completely
disappeared. Thoughts, bodily sensations, and ambient sounds rarely intrude, and only very
briefly. The end of Stage Six also marks the second major Milestone Achievement in the
progress of Samatha: you now have unwavering single-pointed attention together with vivid
mindfulness.

Stage Seven: Single-Pointed Attention and Unifying the Mind
Calming the body formations while breathing in, he trains himself. Calming
the body formations while breathing out, he trains himself.

You now have strong control over the scope of your attention and can investigate any
object with however broad or narrow a focus you choose. But you have to stay vigilant and
make a continuous effort to keep subtle distractions and subtle dullness at bay. Your main goal
for this Stage is to achieve effortless single-pointed attention and mindfulness.
Two very different obstacles prevent your meditations from being effortless. The first
problem is that, for now, distractions and dullness will return if you stop exerting an effort. You
must make the effort to sustain single-pointed attention and mindfulness for long periods of time,

5
Satisampajjana in Pali.

and it's only by doing so that they eventually become automatic. But once this happens, you
won't need to keep making an effort. Simply put, you have to keep exerting yourself until it's no
longer necessary.
But having made an effort for so long, it has become a habit. This is the second obstacle:
putting forth an effort after it's no longer required. The first step is recognizing that you can in
fact sustain the object of meditation effortlessly. This happens through a combination of lucky
accident, introspective awareness, and purposely relaxing your effort from time to time as a test.
Once you know that effort and vigilance are no longer necessary, then you can start to work on
letting go of the need to be in control.
Other problems you will face during this Stage are boredom, restlessness, and doubt.
These will arise due to long, tedious dry periods during which you won't notice any change in the
quality of your meditations. Also, bizarre sensations and bodily movements will often interrupt
the dry periods, distracting you from the practice. Patience and diligence are the key to dealing
with these challenges.
You have mastered Stage Seven when, even though you let go of all effort, the mind still
maintains an unprecedented degree of stability and clarity. This Stage concludes with the
unification of mind, when all potential distractions and dullness disappear. This effortless
stability of attention and mindfulness mark the third Milestone Achievement, which is also
known as the compliant mind.

Stage Eight: Mental Pliancy and Pacifying the Senses
Experiencing joy while breathing in, he trains himself. Experiencing joy while
breathing out, he trains himself.

Experiencing pleasure while breathing in, he trains himself. Experiencing
pleasure while breathing out, he trains himself.

You begin Stage Eight as an Adept Meditator with a compliant mind. In other words,
you have a unique mental pliancy that comes with an impressive set of abilities: effortlessly
stable single-pointed attention together with clear, intense, and powerful mindfulness.
6
When

6
In the Buddhist Suttas the compliant mind is described as malleable and wieldy. Malleable refers to attention that
rests stably wherever directed, together with a quality of awareness that stays bright and sharp without sinking into
dullness. Wieldiness of mind indicates an ability to freely shift attention from one object to another without losing
stability. It also means the ability to hold a simple, open state of observation, noticing but not getting caught by
whatever happens to enter the field of awareness.

you direct that mindfulness inward, using it to examine the activities and states of your mind
(i.e., metacognitive awareness), then the compliant mind is also called the superior mind
7
.
The goal for this Stage is the complete pacification of the senses. This means that the
physical senses, as well as the mind sense
8
temporarily grow quiet while you meditate. One
result of this is that you no longer experience physical pain and discomfort when sitting for a
long time. This is called physical pliancy. It should be noted that pacification of the senses isn't
a kind of trance. You will observe that thoughts, sensations, and disruptive mental states still
intrude, rarely but occasionally, into conscious awareness. This clearly shows that all six senses
still function normally, even though they're pacified.
Complete pacification happens quite naturally as long as you keep practicing effortless
sustained attention and introspective awareness. As the process of pacification of the senses and
physical pliancy proceeds, you will experience a variety of unusual sensations and strong inner
currents of energy. These will happen with increasing frequency. The primary challenge of this
Stage is not to be distracted or distressed by these extraordinary experiences. Simply let them
be. They will gradually mature in time into more pleasant sensations that support rather than
disturb your meditation.
You have mastered Stage Eight when the eyes perceive only an inner light, the ears
perceive only an inner sound, the body is suffused with a sense of pleasure and comfort, and
your mental state is one of joy. With mental and physical pliancy, you can sit for hours without
dullness, distraction, or physical discomfort.

Stage Nine: Mental and Physical Pliancy and Meditative Joy
Experiencing joy and happiness as mental formations while breathing in, he
trains himself. Experiencing joy and happiness as mental formations while
breathing out, he trains himself.

Calming the mental formations while breathing in, he trains himself. Calming
the mental formations while breathing out, he trains himself.

In this Stage, mental and physical pliancy are accompanied by meditative joy a unique
state of mind that brings great happiness and physical pleasure. Meditative joy is often
accompanied by an altered perception of the body and seeing an inner light. The intensity of the
joy is sometimes so strong that it perturbs the mind, distracting you and disrupting your practice.
Anticipating and desiring this mental state can also become an obstacle to consistently achieving

7
Mahaggatam citta in Pali.

8
Mano-ayatana in Pali.

mental and physical pliancy. You may also be side-tracked by mistaking these experiences for
more exalted spiritual attainments.
Becoming familiar with meditative joy and its accompaniments through continued
practice ultimately surmounts these obstacles. As you grow more accustomed to mental and
physical pliancy and meditative joy, this initial excitement will fade away, to be replaced by
tranquility and equanimity.
You have mastered Stage Nine when you can consistently invoke mental and physical
pliancy, accompanied by profound tranquility and equanimity.

Stage Ten: Tranquility and Equanimity
Experiencing the mind while breathing in, he trains himself. Experiencing the
mind while breathing out, he trains himself.

Delighting the mind glad while breathing in, he trains himself. Delighting the
mind while breathing out, he trains himself.

Making the mind tranquil and fresh while breathing in, he trains himself.
Making the mind tranquil and fresh while breathing out, he trains himself.

Liberating the mind while breathing in, he trains himself. Liberating the mind
while breathing out, he trains himself.

The final Stage has the qualities that you achieved in Stage Nine: mental and physical
pliancy combined with almost imperturbable calm, joy and happiness, and profound equanimity.
At first these qualities immediately fade after the meditation has ended. But as you continue to
practice, they will persist longer and longer between meditation sessions. Eventually they
become the normal condition of the mind. Because the powerful focus, mindfulness, joy,
tranquility and equanimity never disappear entirely, whenever you sit on the cushion, you
quickly regain a fully-developed meditative state without having to pass through the intermediate
Stages.
9
Once Stage Ten is mastered, the mind is described as unsurpassable.
10

9
Unfortunately, mastering Stage 10 does not include permanent freedom from the mental afflictions of desire and
aversion and the suffering they engender, although they are held temporarily in abeyance by the fruits of this
practice. Suffering and the causes of suffering re-emerge with any prolonged interruption in practice, and also due to
the corrosive effects of time on the body and mind.

10
Anuttaram citta in Pali. The unsurpassable mind has immediate access to the deepest form of meditative
absorption (jhana), and is the most fully developed form of upacara samadhi, or access concentration. With the
persistence of all these factors between meditation sessions, the applications of mindfulness (Satipatthana in Pali,
cf. Mahasatipatthana Sutta, DN 22) can be practiced in daily life with incomparable effectiveness. This
unsurpassable mind is the ideal mental condition for quickly achieving profound Insight into the true nature of
reality and a liberation that is not subject to passing away.

Mastering Stage Ten marks the last Milestone Achievement the consummation of the
meditation practice of an Adept.

How The Process Unfolds

Even though the Stages are presented as a linear path of progress, the practice doesn't
actually unfold in such a straightforward manner. For example, a beginning meditator will of
course be working on Stages One and Two at the same time striving to establish a regular
practice while simultaneously working on mind-wandering. As her practice progresses, she will
also find herself navigating several Stages at the same time, moving back and forth between
them over weeks, days, or even during a single session. Consider a meditator at Stage Three.
She will still forget the meditation object and experience brief periods of mind-wandering. Yet,
she may have occasional sittings where she doesn't lose focus on the meditation object at all
(Stage Four). Other times, she may be so agitated that mind-wandering dominates the entire
sitting (Stage Two). This is perfectly normal. You can expect to have days when you seem to
have jumped to a more advanced Stage, as well as days where you seem to have gone backward.
In either case, the important thing is to practice according to whatever is happening in
your meditation in the present. For instance, even if you have been practicing at Stage Five for a
long time, if you happen to have a day where you're experiencing significant gross distraction
(Stage Four), there's no point in trying to overcome subtle dullness. Dont get ahead of what is
actually happening. On the other hand, once you have overcome the obstacles for a given Stage
even temporarily, then you can work with the obstacles for the next Stage. For instance, when
Stage Four practitioners have periods without dullness or distraction, they should practice the
techniques for Stages Five and Six.
You will also notice that many of the techniques are similar in several different Stages.
A meditator at Stage Three uses introspective attention to overcome forgetting in the same way
that a meditator at Stage Four practices introspective awareness to overcome gross distractions.
A meditator at Stage Five uses very similar methods to subdue subtle dullness that a Stage Six
meditator uses to achieve single-pointedness. To summarize: you use similar techniques in many
of the Stages, but the goals for each Stage are always different.
The earlier Stages take longer to master. Yet, because the Stages build on each other and
the methods overlap, you start making faster and faster progress. Advancing from Stage Three
to Four might take a long time, but progressing from Stage Four to Five happens more quickly
since the skills you develop in one Stage are used in the next. The secret to rapid progress is
working with the specific goals appropriate to your current skill level. If you're on Stage Three,
dealing with forgetting and mind-wandering, then being concerned about single-pointed attention
(Stage Six) will only slow your progress and make you frustrated. Likewise, if you're still
experiencing gross distractions (Stage Four) but try to tackle subtle dullness (Stage Five), you'll
be depriving yourself of the subtle dullness that can be helpful in subduing those distractions.
It's like learning to skate: you have to learn the basics before you can start doing triple-axels.
It's common to have occasional or even frequent meditation experiences that correspond
to more advanced Stages. While this isn't very significant to your overall practice, such
experiences do have the benefit of showing you what your mind is capable of. Use them as
inspiration, while continuing to work toward mastering your current Stage. Once your practice
matures, you will have the knowledge and skills to consistently create these kinds of experiences.
Some examples will help illustrate this point. As mentioned earlier, at the end of Stage
Six, inner self-talk stops and the mind's experience of the breath becomes non-conceptual. This
accomplishment is frequently discussed and praised in books on meditation. Yet, having periods
without self-talk are not uncommon before Stage Six. Even if discursive thought is absent most
of the time, it's not important if you still sink into dullness or get drawn into other kinds of
distractions. Until these major obstacles are overcome, the disappearance of inner dialogue is
beside the point. Another example: when a meditator at Stage Three or Four is especially calm
and focused, she may have a taste of meditative joy corresponding to Stage Nine, or a
combination of joy and tranquility corresponding to Stage Ten. In her excitement, she might
overestimate her abilities and try to replicate that experience, instead of working to master the
skills she needs for her current Stage. Even a beginning meditator at Stage Two may have
experiences that correspond to advanced Stages. Isolated meditation experiences can happen to
anybody at any time. But if they cant be repeated, consistently and intentionally, then they are
of little value.
Keep in mind that the Ten Stages indicate levels of mastery. That is to say, mastery of
one Stage is a requirement for the mastery of the next. If you work diligently, without taking
shortcuts, it will be easy for you to find your way and make progress.

The Rate Of Progress Through The Ten Stages
Some books give the impression that it takes years or even decades to become an Adept
Meditator. This simply isn't true! For householders, mastery of the Ten Stages is possible
within a few months, or a few years at most.
11
What you need is a regular daily sitting practice

11
The Dalai Lama has said, If one knows the nature, order and distinctions of the levels explained above without
error and cultivates calm abiding, one can easily generate faultless meditative stabilization in about a year. The
Buddhism of Tibet, by H.H. the Dalai Lama, trans. & ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins. When I first began teaching
meditation, I also believed that with diligent practice most people should be able to master all Ten Stages in less
than a year. I have since learned that is not realistic in terms of most people, and making a flat pronouncement of
of one to two hours per day, in combination with some of the supplemental practices described in
the Appendices. Meditation retreats are quite helpful, but ones lasting months or years are
certainly not necessary. Diligent, daily meditation, combined with occasional longer periods of
practice, is enough for success.
That said, several factors will determine how fast you make progress. Some of them you
can influence, others you can't. To start with, different people have different natural abilities for
working with attention and awareness. Some lifestyles and career paths are more conducive to
developing these skills. Also, some people are better able to discipline themselves to practice
regularly and diligently. Regardless of your natural abilities, you absolutely must master Stage
One "Establishing a Practice" to make progress.
Life factors and stressful events can also affect the process. Losing your job, the death of
a spouse, or a health problem can set even an advanced meditator back to the earliest stages. In
fact, almost anything that happens outside of meditation potentially has this effect. This just
serves as another reminder that meditative accomplishments, like everything else, depend on
certain conditions and therefore can be influenced by worldly events.
Another factor that influences our progress is the problem of compartmentalization.
There is a common tendency to separate meditation practice from the rest of our lives. But if the
skills and insights we learn on the cushion don't infuse our daily life, progress will be quite slow.
It's like filling a leaky bucket. This may be one reason why some people consider long retreats
the only way to make real progress. Retreats are certainly wonderful and can help you bring
your practice to a whole new level. Yet, you can only experience the full benefits if the wisdom
you acquire permeates every facet of your life and that takes work. Otherwise, long retreats
are like filling an even bigger leaky bucket. Because this is such an important point, I discuss a
variety of supplemental non-sitting practices in the Appendices. I encourage you to take them up
as soon as you can.
The most important factor for improving quickly is a clear understanding of each Stage.
That means recognizing the mental faculties you need to cultivate, as well as the correct methods
to overcome specific obstacles. It also means not getting ahead of yourself. Be systematic and
practice at the appropriate level. Just as a scalpel can be more effective than a large knife,
skillful means and positive reinforcement are much better for pacifying the mind than blind,
stubborn persistence. Finesse and patience pay off.

that sort can be discouraging for those who have been practicing for much longer without attaining that degree of
mastery.

Cultivating The Right Attitude
We naturally tend to think of ourselves as the agent responsible for producing results
through will and effort. And certain words that we can't avoid when talking about meditation,
such as "achieve" and "master," only reinforce this idea. However, holding such a view will
make it harder to practice effectively. This is because when you first start meditating, you try to
willfully force the mind into submission. Inevitably, it doesn't comply. When that happens,
people tend to become discouraged and blame themselves. This can turn into a habit unless
you realize that there is no "self" in charge of the mind, and therefore nobody to blame. As you
continue to meditate, this fact becomes increasingly clear, but you can't afford to wait for that
Insight. For the sake of making progress, it's best to drop this notion as soon as possible.
In reality, all you're "doing" in meditation is forming and holding specific intentions
nothing more. In fact, while it may not be obvious, all your actions originate from your
intentions. Consider learning to catch a ball. As a child, while you may have wanted to play
catch, your arm and hand initially just didn't move in quite the right way. However, by
sustaining the intention to catch the ball, after much practice, your arm and hand can now
perform the task whenever you want them to. "You" don't play catch. Instead, you just intend to
catch the ball, and the rest follows. The mind intends and the body acts. In exactly the same
way, you can use intention to profoundly transform the way that the mind acts. Intention
provided it is correctly formulated and sustained is all you need to create the causes and
conditions for paying attention and remaining mindful. Intentions that you frequently repeat
during meditation lead to repeated mental actions, and those eventually become habits of the
mind.
At every Stage, all "you" really do is patiently and persistently hold the intention to
respond in a specific way to whatever occurs. Setting and holding the correct intentions is
what's essential. If your intention is strong, the practice will unfold in a very natural and
predictable way. Once again, sustained and repeated intentions lead to repeated mental actions,
which become mental habits the habits of mind that lead to joy, equanimity, and Insight. The
exquisite simplicity of this process may not be easy to see in the early Stages. However, it will
become more and more apparent, until you reach Stage Eight and your meditations become
completely effortless proving the power of intention to you firsthand.
As we go into greater detail about the Ten Stages, you may lose sight of the underlying
simplicity of the process: intentions lead to mental actions, and repeated mental actions become
mental habits. Yet, this simple formula is at the heart of every Stage. To help you remember
this, I will briefly recap the Ten Stages, pointing out how intention works in each one. Refer
back to this description any time meditation begins to feel like a struggle:

* The goal of Stage One (Establishing a Practice) is to sit down to meditate for a set
period of time every day. To achieve this, you form a strong intention to meditate and to
frequently rekindle your motivations for meditating. Put all your effort into forming and
holding a clear intention. If your intention is clear and strong, certain mental actions will
naturally follow, and you will eventually find yourself sitting down to meditate regularly.
This is much more effective than forcing yourself to practice by disciplining and
chastising yourself. Your goal has been reached when sitting down to meditate becomes
a habit.

* The goal of Stage Two is for periods of mind-wandering to become shorter and periods
of attention to the breath to grow longer. Willpower can't prevent the mind from
forgetting the breath. Nor can you force yourself to become aware that the mind is
wandering. Yet, you can hold the intention to: appreciate the introspective awareness
that recognizes mind-wandering; gently but firmly redirect attention back to the breath;
and engage with the breath as fully as possible without losing peripheral awareness. In
time, you will reach your goal, and these three simple mental actions will be well on their
way to becoming mental habits.

* The goal of Stage Three is to overcome forgetting the breath. Set your intention to:
invoke introspective attention frequently instead of waiting for introspective awareness to
arise spontaneously; notice distractions and dullness before you forget the breath or fall
sleep; and sustain peripheral awareness while engaging with the breath as fully as
possible. These three mental actions, which simply expand on the ones from Stage Two,
will become habits, and you will no longer forget the breath.

* The goal of Stages Four through Six is to completely overcome every type of dullness
and distraction, as well as to develop metacognitive introspective awareness. Set and
hold the intention to be vigilant so that introspective awareness becomes continuous.
Also, hold the intention to notice and immediately correct for dullness and distraction.
The intentions you hold during these Stages will mature into highly developed skills. As
they do, your meditations will become evermore stable and alert, leading to exclusive,
single-pointed attention.

* From Stage Seven on, everything becomes even simpler. With the basic intention to
continuously guard against dullness and distraction, the mind becomes completely
accustomed to effortlessly sustaining attention and mindfulness the goal of Stage Seven.

* In the last Stages, your intention is simply to practice the skills that are now effortless.
This creates the conditions for your mental states and faculties to become even more
refined. In Stage Eight, your effortlessly sustained single-pointed attention produces
mental and physical pliancy, pleasure, and joy. In Stage Nine, by simply abiding in the
state of meditative joy, profound tranquility and equanimity arise. In Stage Ten, by just
continuing to meditate, you experience profound joy, happiness, calm, and equanimity
accompanied by mindfulness and a powerful faculty of attention even between
meditation sessions.

As with planting seeds, at each Stage you sow the appropriate intentions in the soil of the
mind. Water these intentions with the diligence of regular practice, and protect them from the
destructive pests of procrastination, doubt, desire, aversion, and agitation. These intentions will
naturally flower into a specific series of mental events that mature to bring forth the fruits of
your practice. Will a seed sprout more quickly if you keep digging it up and replanting it? No.
Therefore, don't let impatience or frustration stop you from practicing, or convince you that you
need to seek out a "better" or "easier" practice. Getting annoyed with every instance of mind
wandering or sleepiness is like tearing up the garden to get rid of the weeds. Attempting to force
your attention to remain stable is like trying to make a sapling grow taller by stretching it.
Chasing after physical pliancy and meditative joy is like prying open a bud so it will blossom
more quickly. But impatience and striving won't make anything grow faster. Be patient and
trust in the process. Care for the mind like a skilled gardener, and everything will flower and
fruit in due time.

Putting this Practice into Context

Meditation has been at the core of Eastern spiritual practices for millennia. This hasn't
been the case in the West, except for the mystical traditions at the periphery of Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam. However, interest in meditation has been building in Europe and North
America for several decades now. The last few years have seen a veritable explosion of
meditation groups and centers in cities of every size. These centers represent many different
traditions, and books on meditation are found in bookstores everywhere. Meditation has been
secularized as a form of therapy, is taught in graduate and medical schools, and is the subject of
scientific papers and research.
Almost everyone has heard of meditation, even if they've never done it, and the number
of people who have learned to practice in one form or another is growing all the time. But with
the sudden access to so many different kinds of meditation, and the confusing and often
conflicting claims made by supporters of each, meditation can seem mysterious indeed. With all
that in mind, let's look at how the practice in this book fits into the larger context of Buddhist
meditation practices. This discussion gets a bit technical and you can certainly skip this if you
want. But at some point, you may find it useful to return to when you become confused by
contradictory claims and instructions.
Because the Ten Stages lead to samatha, this practice is sometimes called samatha
meditation. Samatha has been translated in many different ways: "tranquility," "serenity,"
"quiescence," "meditative equipoise," "calm abiding," and so equivalent terms you might
encounter are Tranquility meditation or Calm Abiding meditation. But a peaceful state of
mind is only part of a means to an end: the main purpose of the practice described here is a mind
capable of generating spontaneous Insight (vipassana)
12
. Therefore, it is more accurate and
useful to call this technique "Samatha-Vipassana meditation," or "the practice of Tranquility and
Insight."
Samatha-Vipassana meditation is a systematic process for developing both stable
attention
13
and mindfulness
14
. For this reason, it has been referred to as both a "concentration
meditation" and a "mindfulness meditation." But to describe it as only a concentration practice,
as some people do, is quite misleading. Likewise, to describe it as just mindfulness meditation is
also inaccurate, not to mention that many people associate that term with the so-called "dry
Insight"
15
practices discussed below.
The fact is that stability of attention and mindfulness need to be developed together. If
your attention is stable but you lack mindfulness that fully awake and alert conscious
awareness you won't achieve samatha. Instead, it will lead you to a state of blissful dullness: a
dead end. Some meditation masters have suggested that blissful dullness is even harmful,
numbing the mind. Given scientific research showing that how we use the mind can change the
brain, this could very well be true. But just as concentration without mindfulness is a dead end,
the opposite is even more the case. You simply cannot develop mindfulness without stable
attention. Until you have at least a moderate degree of attentional stability, "mindfulness

12
Vipassana (literally clear-seeing) is often translated as Insight, but specifically means supra-mundane insight
into the true nature of reality.

13
Samadhi in Pali.

14
Sati in Pali.

15
Sukkha-vipassana in Pali.

practice" will consist mostly of mind-wandering, physical discomfort, drowsiness, and probably
frustration. True mindfulness practice only begins when there's enough concentration to
overcome forgetting the breath and the mind-wandering that follows (the primary obstacles of
Stages Two and Three).
This may come as a surprise to those who have been taught that meditation practices are
of two types, based either on concentration and tranquility (samatha), or on mindfulness and
Insight (vipassana). This distinction is often made by teachers of "dry Insight" practices from
Southeast Asia, and of therapeutic methods inspired by them like Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR).
16
Yet, this distinction is false and misleading. Yes, these methods
purposely downplay the importance of concentration in favor of mindfulness. But they're not
called "dry" because they don't require concentration. They do. In fact, true Insight practice
only starts when your powers of concentration are at Stage Seven as described in this book.
The reason these Insight practices are called "dry" is because they lack the lubricating
"moisture" that comes with the fully developed mind of samatha: the unique and special qualities
of joy, tranquility, and equanimity. These qualities make it much easier to confront the
potentially disturbing and fearful experiences of Insight into impermanence, emptiness, and
suffering. The mind of a meditator who cultivates samatha before achieving Insight is suffused
with these qualities, and is much less likely to experience a long and stressful "dark night of the
soul" as his or her practice matures.
In the dry Insight traditions, the fully developed mind of samatha is postponed until after
Insight arises. However, once a meditator has come to accept those Insights as inescapable
realities, he or she must continue with mindfulness practice until samatha is achieved. The
culmination of Insight the awakening experience occurs from a state of samatha.
17
So, stable
attention and mindfulness always have to be cultivated together, and samatha and vipassana are
equally necessary for Awakening: like the two wings of a bird, both are required for flight. This
is an important point that the original teachings of the Buddha and the commentarial literature of
all traditions agree on.
The way that samatha and vipassana are combined varies. The Buddha described three
approaches: samatha followed by vipassana, vipassana followed by samatha, and samatha and
vipassana developed together.
18
The first approach involves cultivating concentration and

16
I am referring specifically to the noting Vipassana practice perfected by Mahasi Sayadaw, and its variations,
and the Vipassana practice originating with U Ba Khin as taught by S. N. Goenka.

17
The final stages of the Progress of Insight, as described by Mahasi Sayadaw and outlined in the Vissudhimagga
(the classic Theravadin meditation manual), correspond precisely to the 10
th
and final stage of Samatha described
here. Only the 10
th
of 18 stages can be reached before achieving Samatha.

18
Yuganaddha Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 4.170.
mindfulness to the point of achieving samatha, then practicing in a way that emphasizes Insight.
This leads to very rapid success, and is particularly suitable for someone whose natural
predisposition toward concentration is about average. This approach is the one most commonly
used in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, and in Mahayana Buddhism in general. Shamatha (the
Sanskrit
19
equivalent of samatha) is always practiced before or in combination with vipasyana
(Sanskrit for vipassana) practices. It's the essential foundation that precedes practices like
Mahamudra, Dzogchen, the Meditation on Emptiness, the Union of Insight and Calm Abiding,
and Tantric visualizations.
This approach was also the most common in the Theravadin tradition until the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, when dry Insight practices became more popular. Someone who
follows the Ten Stages in this book without the guidance of a teacher may well take this
approach. This isn't to say that you won't have powerful experiences rich with potential Insight.
However, they may not be recognized as such and can often go undeveloped. The same is true
of someone who is always in a hurry to reach the next Stage, and who may unwittingly dismiss
Insight opportunities as a disruption of their practice. But once you have achieved samatha, you
can then quickly achieve Insight, especially by working with a very powerful kind of Insight
practice called meditative absorption.
20
In all Buddhist meditation traditions, samatha is the basis
for the practice of meditative absorptions. Since it gives access to both meditative absorptions
and Insight, the state of samatha is also known as access concentration
21
. The "jhana to
vipassana" method is described in the Suttas, and is still taught by some well-known teachers in
the Southeast Asian tradition.
The second approach, vipassana followed by samatha, corresponds to the "dry Insight"
practice discussed above. Prior to the full development of samatha, the meditator emphasizes
gaining Insight into the three characteristics of impermanence, emptiness of self-nature, and the
suffering that is caused by clinging to what is empty and impermanent. Nonetheless, he or she
must still ultimately develop samatha in order to experience the final Insight "Knowledges" that
precede awakening.
22

19
Sanskrit is the language used for Tibetan and Mahayana terms. Pali is used in the Theravadin tradition.
20
Jhana in Pali, Dhyana in Sanskrit refers to states of profound single-pointed absorption in which both the focus of
attention and mindfulness become progressively more and more refined. The Jhanas are then used as a vehicle for
attaining Vipassana.

21
Upacara samadhi in Pali.

22
The final Insight knowledges before Awakening are: Knowledge of Equanimity about Formations
(sankhar'upekkha-ana); Insight Leading to Emergence (vutthanagamini-vipassana-ana); Knowledge of
Adaptation (anuloma-ana); and Maturity Knowledge (gotrabhu-ana). Awakening happens with Path Knowledge
(magga- ana) and Fruition Knowledge (phala-ana).
This method is most appropriate for someone who is naturally good at concentration and
who can spend extended periods of time in retreat. It's not as helpful for a layperson who must
rely on short daily periods of practice. A variation on this approach is also found in the
Mahayana. The meditator engages in an analytical Meditation on Emptiness to develop a very
strong intellectually-based Insight. Of course, analytical meditation helps develop strong
concentration, but it's not strong enough for shamatha. Only later does the meditator develop
shamatha. Then, after shamatha has been achieved, the intellectual understanding of Emptiness
that was cultivated previously is taken as the meditation object in a "Union of Shamatha and
Vipasyana."
The last approach is for a person to work on both samatha and vipassana at the same
time. This means you work through the Stages leading to samatha while simultaneously
developing the Insight "Knowledges," based on spontaneously occurring Insight experiences.
This approach works well for a person whose natural concentration abilities are about average,
but usually requires some guidance from a knowledgeable teacher.
Another way of practicing samatha and vipassana together is to alternate samatha with
dry Insight practices, steadily making progress in both. To do this, simply take advantage of
both samatha and dry Insight teachers whenever they're available to you, and participate in
meditation retreats that emphasize either practice. This approach can work well for someone
who doesn't have regular contact with a teacher versed in the combined samatha-vipassana
approach.
In summary, the method presented in this book will take you through the Ten Stages
ultimately leading to samatha. If you also have the guidance of a good teacher, it will lead to the
full development of Insight as well. However, you can practice these techniques in combination
with, or as a precursor to, any of the many Mahayana or Theravadin Insight practices. In other
words, these techniques aren't just another alternative practice. They are complementary to any
other kind of meditation practice that you do.

Ten Stages of Meditation

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Upasaka Culadasa February 2012 1

THE TEN STAGES OF MEDITATION

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