Eight Stations of Mastery, and Ten Totalities

T1606 lists all eight in sequence, each defined by a specific scope of external form mastered and a specific inner condition of the meditator. The first station: perceiving form internally, one masters a small quantity of external form, whether attractive or unattractive, inferior or superior, attaining accurate perception of it — arising specifically from the first liberation, possessing form and contemplating form. The second station: the very same internal condition, but now mastering a large quantity of external form instead — arising from that same first liberation. The third and fourth stations repeat this same small/large distinction, but now with the internal perception of form already subdued, mastering external form purely as an external object — arising from the second liberation, formless-perceiving within and contemplating external forms.

The remaining four stations all arise from the third liberation, the pure liberation, and are distinguished purely by which single pure color is mastered: the fifth station masters blue, likened to the deep blue of the atasī flower or of cloth dyed a rich indigo at Vārāṇasī; the sixth masters yellow, likened to the kanikāra flower or cloth dyed deep yellow; the seventh masters red, likened to the bandhujīvaka flower or cloth dyed deep red; and the eighth masters white, likened to the pure brightness of the star Venus or of the most brilliantly whitened cloth. In each of these final four, mastery is attained over the color both as it appears innately in the flower and as it appears through dye applied to cloth, together with the fine, clear luster each color casts — mastery, in every case, meaning that the meditator's own command over the object is now unhindered by whatever limitations still constrained the corresponding liberation it was built upon.

T1606 names the ten: earth, water, fire, wind, blue, yellow, red, white, the sphere of infinite space, and the sphere of infinite consciousness — each contemplated as pervading the entire field of experience, vast and boundless, without limit or gap. T1606 also explains why the four great elements are specifically included alongside the four pure colors already mastered in the stations: without the underlying elements themselves included as totalities, the meditator would be contemplating only derived color detached from any actual physical basis, unable to genuinely pervade anything at all — it is precisely by extending mastery to the underlying elements together with the derived color resting upon them that the totality actually achieves its all-pervading scope. This three-stage structure, T1606 notes in closing, describes the entire arc of this practice: the liberations first establish the basic cultivation itself, the stations of mastery then generate the skillful means of active command over the object, and the totalities finally bring that same cultivation to its complete fulfillment — the liberations themselves reaching their own final completion only once the totalities that build upon them have been genuinely mastered.