The Practice Which Leads to Nibbāna (Part 1)

The book begins with an overview of the Pa Auk meditation system, explaining concentration practice through mindfulness of breathing and four elements meditation, then proceeds to detailed instructions on developing insight by discerning matter, mentality, and their causal relations. Its main sections include “The Development of Concentration,” “Developing Insight,” “Discerning Dependent Origination,” and “Sixteen Knowledges,” followed by practical meditation subjects such as mindfulness of breathing, the thirty-two parts of the body, skeleton meditation, white kasiṇa, ten kasiṇas, four arūpajjhānas, loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, recollection of the Buddha, corpse meditation, recollection of death, four elements meditation, analysis of rūpa-kalāpas, and theoretical explanations for rūpa kammaṭṭhāna. The work presents meditation as a progressive training: first stabilizing the mind through samādhi, then using that concentrated mind to analyze ultimate realities, distinguish nāma and rūpa, understand dependent origination, and cultivate insight knowledge through the three characteristics until the path culminates in Nibbāna.