What do you guys think of this?


Ignorant State - Suffering without complete relief due to an attachment to positive experience and aversion to negative experience.

Wisdom State - Relief from grasping due to a lack of attachment to positive experience.

Tranquility State - Relief from emotional stress through an absence of negative experience.

Liberation State - Relief from suffering due to an absence of emotional stress an a lack of value judgement.


There isn't a progression through these but rather two factors that phase in and out of eachother. Detachment comes in two forms, detachment from aversion and detachment from enjoyment. The tranquility state arises by detaching from negative experience. This is achieved through concentration, ethical/morality practice, or emotional filtering (metta and the like). The wisdom state arises by detaching from positive experience. This is achieved through self-examination and the study of stress.

When the wisdom state and the tranquility state are aligned, it creates the liberation state - an absence of negativity without an attachment to the experience. I think the Progress of Insight equivalent here would be the knowledge of equanimity.

I don't understand what you mean by this part...

In my experience detachment form positive states comes from experiencing positive states without getting caught up in the anticipatory cravings.  

So I find concentration jhanas, as an example, to be useful for letting go of this sort of anticipatory attachment to positive experience (compare the 1st jaha factors to 4th + jhanas).

Similarly detachment from negative states comes from exeriencing the negative states, without getting caught up in the anticipation of further negative states.

I've found that the equanimity I feel while experiencing negative states is the result of dropping any comparison to positive states, or the need to move into a positive state to relieve the negative state. The negative state changes form when I do this - there is a release from trying to change the sensations, and so the sensations lose their stressful component. I call this the wisdom state because each time it's attained, it points to the clinging as the source of the stress, not the sensations. So the stress that happens while experiencing a negative state is directly caused by anticipation if future positive states. This can be tricky, though, because it doesn't mean positive states are bad, it's the anticipation that's the problem. The wisdom state is what arises when this paradox is solved in the moment.

The tranquility state works in the opposite way. Unpleasantness that arises within a pleasant feeling is the anticipation of future negative states, so pure tranquility can only be achieved by letting go of the anticipation of negativity. This can be just as much of a paradox because, while positive feelings are the goal, they aren't attained through effort, but by dropping anticipation.

When there is no anticipation of positive or negative future states, the mind is liberated from clinging no matter what is happening. Progression through the jhanas is caused by the resulting liberation state. 

The liberation state appears when there is tranquility accompanied by no effort to go anywhere different, and no effort to keep things how they are.  When there is no tranquility, this is the wisdom state, which will lead into the liberation state if the resulting tranquility it generates isn't attached to.  When there is tranquility first, it will also lead into the liberation state if no clinging arises within in.