Use the four yogas as a map, not a scoreboard

Know the traditional sequence — one-pointedness, freedom from elaboration, one taste, non-meditation — so teachings make sense, without grading yourself against it.

Pourquoi ça marche

The Ninth Karmapa’s manual describes four yogas, each with a lesser, middling and great stage — twelve in all: single-pointedness, from settling that comes and goes to stability that persists in all activity; being parted from mental fabrication, when the nature of mind is first seen; single taste, when appearances and emptiness are realised as one; and no further meditation, when the division between meditator and meditated falls away. It also warns that great single-pointedness can be mistaken for enlightenment, when it is only pleasant meditative experience and not stable realisation. Held as a map, the sequence helps a practitioner understand teachings and stay humble about vivid experiences; held as a scoreboard, it turns practice into self-grading.

Comment faire

1. Learn the four names and that each is traditionally divided into lesser, middling and great.
2. Notice that the first yoga is about stability and experiences of bliss, clarity and non-conceptuality, and that the manual says such experiences are not yet realisation.
3. When you catch yourself placing your own sitting on the map, set the map down and return to the practice in front of you.
4. Leave the placing to a teacher who can question you; in the manuals, assessment happens in conversation between teacher and student.

Données probantes

The twelve-stage scheme and the warning about mistaking calm for realisation are in the Ninth Karmapa’s section on enhancing practice. Daniel Brown’s Pointing Out the Great Way builds a graded path of Mahāmudrā stages from several source texts, including typical problems and remedies. Brown and Engler treat Mahāmudrā as one of several traditions that describe meditation as a sequence of stages, and in their own retreat study they note that time spent practising is no measure of depth. (anecdotal)

The four yogas are a traditional description, and their subdivisions vary between authors. Brown and Engler’s study examined Theravāda insight stages in retreatants, not the four yogas.

Sources

• 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.
• Brown, D. P. (2006). Pointing Out the Great Way: The Stages of Meditation in the Mahāmudrā Tradition. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
• Brown, D. P., & Engler, J. (1980). The stages of mindfulness meditation: A validation study. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 12(2), 143–192.

Erreur fréquente

Deciding you have reached “one taste” or “non-meditation” after one striking experience. The Karmapa’s manual describes exactly this mistake at the end of the first yoga.