five great stages of the spiritual life
at the college meeting, and again at the private preceptors weekend,
padmavajra gave a presentation on bhante's 'five great stages'. this is the extract his presentation was based on.
The Precious Garland Seminar
Session 9, Chapter 3, verses 201-218
from the unedited, unchecked seminar by Sangharakshita,
on Nagarjuna's 'Precious Garland'
I was just thinking this morning before we actually go into the verses, it might be useful to, to consider what are the principle stages of the Spiritual Path in practical terms, because in Buddhist texts not only sutras, but in all kinds of books on Buddhism which are being produced nowadays one finds different descriptions of the Path : some of them very good descriptions, very inspiring descriptions, but they don't always agree. Sometimes, in fact, they're very, very, different. At times of course they do overlap. Some of these descriptions are very detailed and we sometimes rather get lost in the detail, and you can't help wondering exactly where we are and what exactly we have to do to get to the next stage or substage or even sub-substage. So I thought it might be useful at this point being about half way through the seminar just to, to outline what in fact are the main stages – so far as we're concerned – and also to indicate some, some connections with some sort of traditional formulations, some of the traditional descriptions of the Path.
It seems to me that we can regard the whole Spiritual Path as consisting of five great Stages. These very roughly correspond to the five Paths of the Indian Buddhist tradition but I won't go at this stage very much into that comparison. I don't want to it to be as it were, a comparative description but just a quite straightforward one in terms of our own needs and own experience.
So I can say that the first stage is really the stage of mindfulness and awareness.
This is really the first thing that one has to do, to develop mindfulness and awareness. (pause) One can of course think of mindfulness and awareness in terms of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness or in terms of the Four dimensions of Awareness but that is, as it were, a detail. So the first thing that one has to do, the first stage that one has to traverse is the the Stage of Mindfulness and Awareness ; Which means especially developing self-awareness, which in turn means self-integration. So in a way mindfulness is also the stage of integration ; we bring all our scattered bits together-we integrate ourselves, we overcome conflict within ourselves, disharmony within ourselves : we get ourselves functioning as a smoothly working whole, not a jumble of bits and pieces, and fragments of selves all struggling and jostling for supremacy. So you can begin to see that this quite a big task in itself, practicing mind fulness, practising awareness and becoming integrated in this sort of way. But this is the first stage. It really means giving birth to oneself as an integrated person, as a self-aware individual.
Then comes what I can describe as the stage of Positive Emotion.
By Positive Emotion of course I mean friendliness, compassion, joy, equanimity and faith and devotion. So in as much as positive emotion is something that moves, not something static-this is also the Stage of Energy. So in this stage one tries to make oneself as emotionally positive as possible. One overcomes all negative emotions. One not only tries to develop one's emotions but to refine them. One develops not simply positive emotion but even spiritual emotions. And here the whole question, the whole subject of spiritual beauty becomes of importance. (pause) So in this stage one develops the positive, even spiritualised, emotions to a very high pitch of intensity indeed. This is also the level of meditation/Samadhi because these positive emotions and the energies that you generate carry you through all the levels of dhyana. But it's not the stage of meditation simply in the sense of the stage of sitting in meditation. It's the stage of being emotional positive, if possible in a highly spiritual sense, whatever you are doing, whether you are sitting and meditating, or working, or talking, or just being quietly by yourself. (pause)
In the third stage one could say if the Stage of Vision.
In this stage one sees the Truth-not, of course regarding Truth as a thing out those to be seen, you know, like an ordinary object. One could say that this is the stage of openness to truth. Guenther talks in terms of the dimension of openness to Being with a capital B. He means Sunyata; but though his expression is a bit roundabout it's quite expressive at the same time the dimension of openness of Being. So this is also the stage of openness : openness in the directon of ultimate reality, not holding back on the progress of expansion ; not opening up so far – that is to say opening up as regards positive emotion – but then refusing to open up any further. No, it's indefinite openness to the ultimate or, in terms of sight, a vision of reality, vision of truth. This is also, incidentally, the stage of death one might say. It's the stage of spiritual death because it signifies that the death of the old self, the death of the ego howsoever much refined and the birth of what I mean. It's the birth of-if you like-of the seed of buddhahood. Not that in the sense that that seed wasn't there already, but the seed has now become as it were visible and from that seed the new being as it were, the Buddha will eventually develop and will eventually spring. So the Stage of Vision is also the Stage of death because when you see the Truth as it were, you die; or, even, when you die then you-can see the Truth. (pause) Among actual practices of course, this is covered by the Six Elements practice and the meditation on Sunyata except you don't meditate on Sunyata as though it were a thing out there on which you are meditating :that would just be an idea, a concept a vague image of Sunyata not Sunyata itself. So that's the Stage of Vision, or if you like the Stage of Reality or Stage of death – what ever you like to call it – the Stage of Spiritual Rebirth.
Then comes what we can call the Stage of Transformation.
This is when the vision that you have seen, or if you like, you experience reality starts, as it were, descending and transforming every aspect of your being. It is not just in the head, not even in your spirital be it pervades all parts of your being, all parts of, as it were, your spiritual body. (pause) This is also the stage of meditation in a sense but not the meditation in the sense of the meditation with the help of which you gain Enlightenment but the meditation that you practice after Enlightenment. When I say enlightenment I really mean Pre-Enlightenment I mean this initial visionary experience. The practice of meditation in the sense of dwelling on that visionary experience, that glimpse of reality so as to deepen it and broaden it and to bring it down, as it were, so that it pervades and transforms all the different aspects of one's being.
And fifth and lastly we've got what we may call the Stage of Compassionate Activity.
This means that having completely transformed oneself in accordance with one's original vision-vision of reality-one is then in a position really to help others. One could say that this is also the stage of spontaneity-true spontaneity where if you don't sort of take thought, don't think what you're going to do to help others, at least not in the ordinary way – you just spontaneously function, you do what needs to be done. There's a sort of overflow of your fully Enlightened being. (pause).
So if one traverses these five stages then one traverses the whole Spiritual Path.
But, as you know there is a path of regular stps and there is also a path of irregular steps. You could conceivably start work on the first stage – that is to say the Stage of Mindfulness, Stage of Awareness or Stage of Integration – and then complete that and then go on to the next, that is the stage of Positive Emotion, and then complete that ana then go on to the third stage. Conceivably you could do that but I think very few people would actually function in this way. Most people I think for sometime at least will follow or will have to follow the path of irregular steps. So that means they will be working now on one and now on another of these steps. One could even go so far as to say that one can think in terms of working on all five stages similtaneously. The first would be perfected first – that's where the path of regular steps comes in. That is to say, the second, cannot be perfected before the first has been perfected and so on, but one can work on all simultaneously.
So what does this mean? It means that everyday
one has got five things to practice as best you can.
i
one has too keep up the effort to be mindful and aware and to be as integrated as possible;
ii
one remains in as positive a mental state as one possibly can;
iii
one does not loose sight of one's ultimate goal at any time;
iv
one tries to apply at every level whatever you've realised or discovered on the highest level of your being;
v
and you do your best for other people, you do what you can to help people.
This is your spiritual life and this is your spiritual practice. These are the things with which you are basically concerned.
You can, as it were forget about all the other formulations, all about the Four Noble Truths, the EightFold Path. On the practical side, this is all that you really need or all that you really need to think in terms of. What so ever has been said by all the different Buddhist teachers in the course of several hundred years of development is all really contained in this in principle. Whatever they've had to say about the different stages of the Path – you can get, as I mentioned at the beginning some very elaborate descriptions indeed, which will quite confuse you, even mislead you – well this is essentially, this is basically what it is all about.
You can also think of these if you like in terms of the Five Spiritual faculties which are both successive and linear. the first stage correspond to the faculty of mindfulness. The second corresponds to the faculty of faith. The third corresponds to the faculty of wisdom. Fourth to the faculty of meditation. The fifth to the faculty of virya.
If you want to think of any particular Buddhist virtue and understand its sort of place in the total scheme we you can do that by just allocating it to one or another of these five stages. For instance dana. Where does dana come? Dana clearly comes in state two because, you know, when you're overflowing with love and joy in a highly positive emotional state your natural tendency is to give ; you can't help it.
So if you just try to do these five things all the time you can forget all about making progress or where exactly you are along the path. One just intensifies one's effort in those five directions as it were, all the time. One simply can't go wrong then, (pause).
