Pointing Out the Great Way: The Stages of Meditation in the Mahamudra Tradition by Brown Ph.D. Daniel & Robert Thurman

Author:Brown Ph.D., Daniel & Robert Thurman
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780861719631
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2006-10-10T03:00:00+00:00

TABLE 18: A COMPARISON OF SŪTRA AND MAHĀMUDRĀ STAGES OF CONCENTRATION

6.

SPECIAL INSIGHT

THROUGHOUT THE STAGES of concentration, the practitioner has gained considerable insight into the workings of the mind. Mental elaborations and coarse-level mental content that obscure seeing the mind in its natural state have been made calm. The practitioner has also stabilized noneffortful awareness as the point of observation of the events in the unfolding mental continuum. Notwithstanding these accomplishments, the stages of staying /calm practice are merely preparatory to those of special-insight practice (lhag mthong; Skt., vipaśyanā). Staying/calm practice merely suppresses the coarse-level cognitions that happen to occur within the mental continuum. Inactive negative emotional states (bag la nyal; TN, p. 327), those that ripen from propensities (bag chags) over time, have not been suppressed. Therefore upon completion of a meditation retreat and returning to everyday activities, the practitioner typically discovers that the “root and subsidiary [conflictual emotions] arise following that” (TN, p. 328).

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