La Vallée Poussin Musīla and Nārada. The Path - Gampo Abbey

Musıla and N›rada. The Path of Nirv›˚a: by Louis de La Vallée Poussin
Those who die with passions connected with the desire realm are reborn in the desire realm
Those who have been liberated from these passions and who have risen to the first meditation
are reborn in the heaven of the first meditation, because they are tied by the passions of this
meditation, because they love the meditative joy particular to this meditation; and so on.
The passions connected with each of these nine stages are of nine categories, strong-strong,
strong-medium, strong-weak, medium-strong…
The passions are expelled by the path of cultivation (bh›van›).
One distinguishes:
8
1. the ‘supramundane’ (lokottara) cultivation (F 195), reserved for the practitioners who
have ‘viewed the truths’ (d¸˝˛asatya),
2. ‘mundane’ (laukika) cultivation (F 195-198) which non-Buddhists can and do practice.
The gods who inhabit the eight higher stages of the world are, with the exception
notably of the ‘Pure Abodes’ (Ÿuddh›v›sika), non-Buddhist practitioners who have practiced the
mundane cultivation.
AAB.1. THE SUPRAMUNDANE CULTIVATION; F 195
The supramundane (lokottara) cultivation (bh›van›) is simply the ‘repeated vision’ of the truths:
bh›van› means more or less ‘repetition’.
A first vision of the truths, the general vision of the universe according to the truths, has
uprooted the ‘errors’. The practitioners now consider the factors of the desire realm (k›madh›tu),
of the first meditation (dhy›na)… of the fourth formless equipoise as being suffering,
impermanent, empty, nonself – two times nine visions per stage 10 – and free themselves from
all desire towards these things.
In order to ‘envision’ or ‘repeatedly envision’ the truths, a certain state of concentration (sam›dhi)
is required. But in order to feel disgust with the successive levels of existence and to free
themselves from the ‘passions’ corresponding to them, the practitioners do not necessarily have
to enter into the concentrations that correspond to these levels. They can restrict themselves to
considering the aggregates (skandha; form, etc.) of these levels, and to recognize their nature as
suffering, impermanent, etc.
First, the practitioners free themselves from the first six categories of passions of the desire realm
and become once-returners (sak¸d›gamin), noble persons who will be reborn not more than once
in the desire realm; next, [they free themselves] from the last three [categories of the desire
10 KoŸa, vi, 190, nine ‘paths of immediate succession’ (›nantaryam›rga) and nine ‘paths of liberation’
(vimuktim›rga) per stage, see above, F 194.