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The Treatise on the Stages of Yoga Practice
Hearing, reflecting, and practicing comprise three essential stages on the path of practice:
Hearing means listening or learning; reflecting is contemplating according to the method of right thinking in order to transform reflection into insight (reflection becoming insight); practicing is engaging in actual practice (such as sitting meditation, walking meditation, loving speech…) to nourish wisdom. Learning is not about accumulating knowledge, reflecting is not to add more notions, and practicing is not to create new knowledge, because knowledge (the obstacle of knowledge) only burdens the heart and hinders liberation. Right hearing, right reflection, and right practice are learning, contemplating, and practicing in order to attain insight—wisdom—not for the sake of knowledge or reputation.
From the Mahayana tradition, the excerpt from the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra of Asanga introduces 17 grounds; among them:
- Insight born of hearing
- Insight born of reflection
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Insight born of practice
and 44 verses of the Paramārtha-gāthā on the ultimate truth. The first verse affirms that there is no owner, no doer, no receiver; there are only dharmas—functions operating by themselves (meaning there is no self, no actor, no inheritor; only action, only result). Studying, listening, and contemplating the twelve links, the five skandhas, and the eighteen realms without grasping or continuing to cling to self, allowing the Dharma rain to penetrate the mind (hearing), skillful contemplation (reflecting), and practicing to dwell in the present moment (practicing) will lead to the insight of liberation.