The Nine Stages of Liberating Insight

　　a. Contemplation of arising and passing away (udayabbayanu-passana-ñana): seeing the arising of physical and mental phenomena together with their falling away.

　　b. Contemplation of dissolution (bhanganupassana-ñana): seeing the falling away of physical and mental phenomena.

　　c. The appearance of dread (bhayatupatthana-ñana): seeing all fashionings (i.e., all physical and mental phenomena) as something to be dreaded, just as when a man sees a deadly cobra lying in his path or an executioner about to behead a criminal who has broken the law.

　　d. Contemplation of misery (adinavanupassana-ñana): seeing all fashionings as a mass of pain and stress, arising only to age, sicken, disband, and die.

　　e. Contemplation of disgust (nibbidanupassana-ñana): viewing all fashionings with a sense of weariness and disenchantment with regard to the cycle of birth, aging, illness, and death through the various way-stations in the round of existence; seeing the pain and harm, feeling disdain and estrangement, with no longing to be involved with any fashionings at all. Just as a golden King Swan — who ordinarily delights only in the foothills of Citta Peak and the great Himalayan lakes — would feel nothing but disgust at the idea of bathing in a cesspool at the gate of an outcaste village, in the same way the arising of insight causes a sense of disgust for all fashionings to appear.

　　f. The desire for freedom (muñcitukamyata-ñana): sensing a desire to escape from all fashionings that appear, just as when a man goes down to bathe in a pool and — meeting a poisonous snake or a crocodile — will aim at nothing but escape.

　　g. Reflective contemplation (patisankhanupassana-ñana): trying to figure out a way to escape from all fashionings that appear, in the same way that a caged quail keeps looking for a way to escape from its cage.

　　h. Equanimity with regard to fashionings (sankharupekkha-ñana): viewing all fashionings with a sense of indifference, just as a husband and wife might feel indifferent to each other”s activities after they have gained a porce.

　　i. Knowledge in accordance with the truth (saccanulomika-ñana): seeing all fashionings — all five aggregates — in terms of the four Noble truths.

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　　All of these stages of insight are nothing other than the sixth level of purification:

　　6. Purification through knowledge and vision of the way (patipada-ñanadassana-visuddhi): At this point, our way is cleared. Just as a man who has cut all the tree stumps in his path level to the ground can then walk with ease, so it is with knowledge on this level: We have gotten past the corruptions of insight, but the roots — avijja, or unawareness — are still in the ground.

　　The next step is to develop the mind higher and higher along the lines of liberating insight until you reach the highest plane of the mundane level leading to the noble paths, beginning with the path opening onto the stream to nibbana. This level is termed:

　　7. Purification of knowledge and vision (ñanadassana-visuddhi): At this point, devote yourself to reviewing the stages of liberating insight through which you have passed, back and forth, so that each stage leads on to the next, from the very beginning all the way to knowledge in accordance with the truth and back, so that your perception in terms of the four Noble Truths is absolutely clear. If your powers of discernment are relatively weak, you will have to review the series three times in immediate succession before change-of-lineage knowledge (gotarabhu-ñana, knowledge of nibbana) will arise as the result. If your powers of discernment are moderate, change-of- lineage knowledge will arise after you have rev…

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