Compare stage maps side by side without merging them
Set the maps next to each other, note where they overlap and where they disagree, and resist averaging them into one scale.
Pourquoi ça marche
The maps share some ground: several begin with calm and concentration before insight, and both the progress of insight and the Mahāmudrā instructions describe unsettling stretches in the middle of practice. They also divide the path differently. The progress of insight counts insight knowledges. The nine stages describe the stabilising of the mind. The ox-herding pictures move from seeking the ox to returning to the world, and the lamrim organises the whole path by scope. Comparing them keeps each map’s logic visible and shows where a shared claim is really a shared word.
Comment faire
- Write each map’s stages in its own words, in one column, with its tradition named beside it.
- Mark where two maps seem to describe the same experience, and note whether they use the same name for it.
- Mark where a map describes something the others do not mention, without deciding which map is more advanced.
- Stop when the comparison starts to feel like a ranking, and return to your own sittings.
Données probantes
The Mahasi knowledges, the Karmapa’s dangerous gorges, the nine mental abidings and the ox-herding pictures are each described in their own sources. A Wikipedia summary of the Ten Bulls notes that the Indo-Tibetan nine stages are not equivalent to the ten bulls, because the first describes calm abiding and the second the stages of awakening to the nature of mind. (anecdotal)
Comparison is interpretive. I did not find an empirical study that compares these maps with one another, and the correspondences are readings, not measured equivalences.
Sources
- Mahasi Sayadaw. The Progress of Insight (Visuddhiñāṇa-kathā), trans. Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight edition.
- Wangchug Dorje, Ninth Karmapa. Mahamudra: Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance, Part 4: Enhancing Mahamudra Meditation (the four yogas, each lesser, middling and great). Trans. Alexander Berzin (1977, rev. 2008). Study Buddhism.
- Samatha-vipassanā. Wikipedia (English), section “Nine Stages of Tranquility,” which summarises the Yogācāra sources (including the Abhidharmasamuccaya and Śrāvakabhūmi) that set out nine “mental abidings.”
- Ten Bulls. Wikipedia (English), which places the pictures in Chan and Zen practice and records the 1957 book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki.
- Terebess Online. “Oxherding Pictures Index”: The Ten Oxherding Pictures, introduction and verse by Kuoan Shiyuan (Kakuan Shien), 12th century; transcribed by Senzaki Nyogen and Paul Reps.
Erreur fréquente
Averaging the maps into a single ladder with a stage number on each rung. That erases the differences the comparison exists to show.
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Plus de pratiques pour Buddhist Meditation Stage Maps: How the Major Traditions Compare
- Let a stage map orient you, not score your sitting
Let a map tell you which experiences others have reported, not where your sitting ranks.
- Log sittings in neutral, descriptive language
Write what happened in a sitting as observations, so the record does not depend on any map.
- Check a stage map against a qualified teacher
Bring a stage description to a teacher who knows your method, and ask what it does and does not fit in your own practice.
- Notice when a stage name is being used to skip past difficulty
Catch the moment a stage name becomes a reason to push through, skip, or dismiss something hard that deserves attention.
- Choose one map that belongs to the method you practise
Pick the stage map written for the method you actually practise, and treat the others as comparisons, not instructions.
- Ground first when a stage feels like dissolving or fear
When a stage feels like falling apart, stop the formal practice and come back to your body and surroundings before anything else.
Concepts associés
- The Progress of Insight: The Stages of Insight in Vipassana
The Burmese insight map of what meditators say they pass through — read as a map, not a ladder
- Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes
Atiśa’s three scopes and Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise: a contemplative map from a precious human life to awakening
- Mahāmudrā: Looking Directly at the Nature of the Mind
The Kagyu path of calm, then looking at the mind itself — practised the way the manuals lay it out
- States vs Stages of Consciousness: Wilber, Combs and O’Fallon
Why a powerful experience and a lasting change are different things, and how each one grows