The following is respectfully quoted from Jamgön Kongtrul’s “Treasury of Knowledge: Journey and Goal“
On six levels there are the three higher trainings, while on four the results of these are ensured. With the realization of the actual nature of phenomena, five components of practice are successfully refined.
On the first bodhisattva level, one trains in the causes leading to the three perfectly pure higher trainings. One the second level, one applies oneself to the higher training in discipline; on the third level, to that of mind; and on the fourth, fifth and sixth levels, to that of sublime intelligence. Thus, one focuses in succession on the factors that contribute to enlightenment, the Truths, and interdependent origination.
The results of these trainings are as follows: On the seventh level, timeless awareness of what cannot be characterized is ensured; on the eight level, the spontaneously present experience of timeless awareness, on the ninth level, the spiritual maturation of all beings; and on the tenth level, all the supports for meditative stability and power of complete recall.
Once one has directly realized the actual nature of phenomena on the first level, on the second level one trains successively in the component of discipline; one the third level, in the component of meditative stability; one the fourth, fifth, and sixth levels, in the component of sublime intelligence; and on the seventh and higher levels, in the component of complete freedom from anything obscuring the four aforementioned results. On the level of buddhahood, the total refinement of the component of complete freedom from anything obscuring any possible object of knowledge, [2.123.a] as well as the component of the vision that is the liberated state of timeless awareness.
Purity, Elimination, and Realization [e]
Endowed with three causes, what is fundamentally positive becomes even purer. Cognitive obscurations are gradually eliminated, and ten aspects of timeless awareness are ensured.
Due to the three causes (those of making offerings to the Three Jewels, bringing beings to complete spiritual maturity, and dedicating one’s fundamentally positive qualities toward enlightenment) carried out over eons, from the first to the tenth levels these fundamentally positive factors become ever more completely purified. Analogies are used to describe the different degrees of purification that apply to successive levels; one can learn about these in the sūtra the Ten Spiritual Levels.
As for the distinct states of elimination and realization that pertain to those on these levels, the 112 factors to be eliminated on the path of seeing are removed on that path, and those to be eliminated on the path of meditation are removed on that path. But when we discuss the ten levels, on these respective levels there are specific aspects of timeless awareness (that is, of realization concerning the basic space of phenomena) that successively eliminate the cognitive obscurations that are the counterproductive factors specific to any given level.
As well, the five states of fear are eliminated, as the sūtra the Ten Spiritual Levels states:
Immediately upon attaining this level, one is free of the five kinds of fear;
free of the fear of being without livelihood, of death, of not being acknowledged,
of lower states of rebirth, and of one’s retinue. One has no feelings of anxiety concerning these.
Any why, one might ask? These no longer have any hold over one.
Spiritually advanced beings have thoroughly removed
the sufferings of death, illness and aging.
Rebirth takes place due to the influence of karma and afflictive states;
but because they are not subject to these, they are not subject to the rest.
Which is to say, one has eliminated the four “rivers of suffering.” In these and other ways, one has been freed from an inconceivable amount of fear. The point to be understood [4.123.b] is that these processes continue to increase from the first bodhisattva level to the tenth.
Even though one is freed from these four kinds of suffering, one manifests as though one were still not freed, which is to say one consciously takes rebirth in conditional existence. As the same source states:
Because they perceive reality authentically, just as it is,
they have transcended birth and so forth;
nevertheless, through the power of their compassion
they demonstrate birth, death, illness, and aging.
As concerns realization, in meditative equipoise, those on all ten levels realize the spacelike nature of phenomena (that is, the ultimate mode of reality, just as it is, free of the limitations of conceptual elaboration). In postmeditation, they realize the illusion-quality of objects in the phenomenal world (that is, the relative mode of things in all their multiplicity, apparent yet lacking any independent nature of their own).
Other than the authenticity of this actual nature of phenomena, which is initially perceived on the path of seeing, there is no other kind of realization, nothing “new” to be seen; nevertheless, when we consider the distinctions between these ten levels, we can analyze ten aspects of realization as the certain knowledge that derives from eradicating false assumptions in the aftermath of factors to be eliminated having been removed.
