1. Arranging proper circumstances for calm abiding meditation
    • Live in a proper and conducive place
    • Have few desires and attachments
    • Be content
    • Avoid distractions and extraneous activities
    • Maintain pure ethical conduct
    • Abandon preconceptions about sense objects
2.  Actual way to Practice Calm Abiding

a) Five deterrents to calm abiding

    • Laziness
    • Forgetting the object of meditation
    • Laxity and agitation
    • Not applying antidotes to the deterrents
    • Applying antidotes when they are not needed

b) Eight antidotes

    • Confidence or faith in the benefits of calm abiding
    • Aspiration
    • Joyous effort
    • Pliancy, serviceability of body and mind
    • Mindfulness
    • Introspective alertness
    • Application of appropriate antidotes
    • Equanimity
3. Nine stages in practicing calm abiding
    • Setting (placing) the mind
    • Continuous setting
    • Resetting
    • Close setting
    • Taming
    • Pacification
    • Thorough pacification
    • Single pointedness
    • Setting in equipoise
4. Six mental powers to attain these stages
    • Hearing
    • Thinking
    • Mindfulness
    • Introspective alertness
    • Effort
    • Familiarity

 

5. Four engagements to employ to do this
    • Painstaking (forceful)
    • Repeated (interrupted)
    • Uninterrupted
    • Effortless (spontaneous)

 

6. Way to develop actual calm abiding from this