The Twenty one practices of The calm state

These are mediation practices, to help develop your internal calm, which is a big part of meditating Practice these one by one, personally I would recommend you don't move on to the next stage until you can do the previous one for an hour.

Practice 1: Focusing upon an ordinary pebble or twig. For this session, set out a small pebble in front of you, as your meditative object and just stare at it one pointedly, letting your awareness neither stray from it or identify with it

Practice 2: Focusing upon an image of the Buddha. Here you may concentrate upon an image to symbolize the body of the Buddha, a syllable to symbolize his speech, or a glowing dot to symbolize his mind

Practice 3: In this practice, you will focus upon a syllable; so visualize in front of you the disc of a moon, the size of a fingernail, and upon it the syllable HUM, as fine as if were written with a single hair, and concentrate upon this

Practice 4: Now you should focus upon a glowing dot visualized in front of you, in the shape of an egg and about the size of a pea, shining and wondrous, and concentrate upon this as before.

Practice 5: Focusing upon the moving breath. Let your body and mind be tranquil and focus upon the inhalation and exhalation of your breath; and with no other thoughts simply count your breaths as they move in and out

Practice 6: In this practice you will follow your breath as it is inhaled and exhaled, and note for how long each breath is exhaled, and for how long it is inhaled, and through how much of your body it moves.

Practice 7: Now let your awareness move with your breath, from the tip of your nose, all the way down to your navel, and watch how it goes and comes, and is held withing.

Practice 8: Now spend the sessions examining individually the five elements of earth, air fire, water, and space which make up your body, and you will become aware of how the breath increases and decreases as it moves in and out

Practice 9: And finally sense the air to be white as it is exhaled, blue as it is inhaled, and red as it is held withing, and the motion of the breath will become visible to you

Practice 10: Holding the breath. Breath out forcibly three times, then gently draw in the upper air through your nose and draw up the lower air from your intestines, and try to hold it as long as you can until your thoughts are stopped and your mind no longer strays to external objects.

Practice 11: Cutting off every thought that occurs, in the next session you will begin to meditate without using any external objects at all.
Continue to contemplate as in the precious practice; you will find your mind following after external objects, imposing its constructs upon them, and thinking that things are real. Do not let this continue, but discipline yourself with mindfulness, and try to prevent every single one of these thoughts. And thus contemplate , cutting off at its very root, any thought that occurs

Practice 12: During these sessions you will be able to contemplate this this for an ever increasing period of time; indeed it will seem that these thoughts are becoming more numerous than before, and following one after the other as if in a continuous stream. This is what we call recognizing your thoughts as you might become aware of an enemy. It is what we call the first state of calm, like the rushing of a mountain cataract.

Practice 13: in this practice, you will now let these thoughts do whatever they want, not cutting them off at all, yet not falling under their spell

Practice 14: You now enter the middle state of calm, like the gentle flowing of a river. Now your thoughts can no longer move you one way or the other, and you can begin to abide one pointedly in a state of calm.
To remain in this state continuously settles all the sediment in your mind. As Gampopa says: If you do not stir the water, it is clear; and if you leave your mind alone, it is blissful

Practice 14: Leaving your mind alone. in this practice you will keep your mind, as if you were spinning a thread, keeping an even tension upon it. For if your contemplation is too tight, then it snaps, and if it is too loose, then you slip into indolence.

Practice 16: Now in these sessions, you will keep your mind as if it were a snapped rope. For all our prior antidotes to thoughts have been thoughts themselves; it is a thought to think that you must impose no constructs upon reality. You have simply substituted one thought for another. This is what we call mindlessness chasing an object, and it is a fault in contemplation
So cas aside your mindfulness itself: keep your mind free of all effort and let it flow naturally and spontaneously in the stream of calm; this is what we call keeping your mind as if it were a snapped rope.

Practice 17: Now you will try to keep your mind as if it were a child looking at the murals painted on a temple wall. For you are now without thought, and without feeling in your body and mind: and thus you will seee visions of smoke and other forms of emptiness: you may feel you are fainting, or as if floating in empty space. When these ecstatic visions occur, you must neither enjoy them nor fear them, and thus neither think they are important, nor cling to them. This is what we call keeping your mind as if it were a child looking at the paintings in the temple

Practice 18: And finally you will keep your mind as if it were an elephant being pricked by a pin. For while your mind is fixed, your mindfulness is automatically recognizing every thought that occurs. What is to be cast aside, and that which casts aside meet each other, and your thoughts can no longer jump about from one to the next. The antidote to thought now occurs spontaneously and naturally, without needing any effort at all on your part: This is what we call mindfulness holding its object.
Thus you feel your thoughts occur, but you yourself never cut them off nor react to them in any way.this is what we call trying to prick an elephant with a pin. And this is what we call the final state of calm, like an ocean without waves. You recognize the changing within the changeless, and you simply leave it alone, for you see the changeless within the changing

Practice 19: In these sessions, you will now analyze this changless and changing, to gain the realization of insight, and you may finally reach the state of meditationless meditation.
Enter the state of calm wherein you are no longer imposing any constructs upon reality, but simply letting it appear before you. Look upon your changelessness, and see its true nature ; see how it is changeless and how it changes from its state of changelessness. Are the changes in the mind something other than the changeless, or is it a changing withing the changeless itself? what is the true nature of this changing? and how does the changing stop?

Practice 20: And now you are beginning to realize that you cannot see the changeless apart from the changing or the changing apart from the changeless; you cannot find the true nature of the changeless or the changing.
You are beginning to see that your introspection is finding nothing there at all, that the watched and the watcher are both the same. You cannot set out its true nature: it is what we call the vision beyond all thought

Practice 21: The realization of final insight. Now you know how to leave every thought and passion entirely alone, not cutting it off at all, yet not falling under its spell. During these sessions try simply to recognize every thought for what it is: let it spontaneously become emptiness, pure in and of itself, without your casting it aside. In this way you learn how to make use of all hindrance. This is what we call making a hindrance into the path itself.
By just recognizing the thought, the imposition of a construct you are freed from it spontaneously; you realize that there is no difference at all between what you cast aside, and that which is cast aside.
And now too there is born in you exceeding compassion for all those living creatures who do not realize the essence of their minds. And you will spend your lives working for the sake of these others, but all your meditations have now cleansed away any idea that these others really exist. And it is with regard to practice such as this that we say: I neither keep nor cast aside anything that happens on the path.