Culadasa's ten stages of meditative training, cross-indexed against the qualities that develop along the way. Click a stage column or a dimension row for detail.
Click any stage number to expand its goals, obstacles, and skills. Click any dimension name to see how it evolves across all 10 stages.
| Novice1 · 2 · 3 | Skilled4 · 5 · 6 | Trans.7 | Adept8 · 9 · 10 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dimension | ||||||||||
Click a stage column header or a dimension row label to load details here.
Continuous attention to the meditation object. You stop being a beginner. No more forgetting, mind-wandering, or dozing off.
Sustained exclusive focus. Stable attention plus powerful metacognitive mindfulness. You are now a skilled meditator.
Effortless stability. Mental pliancy arises; the discriminating mind is pacified. Skilled transitions to adept.
Persistence. Śamatha qualities (stable attention, mindfulness, joy, tranquility, equanimity) persist between sessions and become the normal condition of the mind.