But if we take such wonderful texts as MN 39, MN 107, MN 125, we’ll see different approach to practice. As I see it, the most (nowadays) overlooked thing in these texts is phasing. This is illustrated by vivid similes (house building and calculating in MN 107, elephant training in MN 125). The main idea is that you should develop (to a necessary degree) one step/stage first before moving to the next. When someone starts directly with some higher stage (like meditation retreats or seclusion or keeping higher precepts all the time) – this is what can be called amateurish approach and, obviously, brings nothing but frustration from Dhamma practice, and I think this is one of the major reasons why people quit Buddhism entirely or, at the very least, dissatisfied with it. But with the right approach you build one storey first, only after that you start building second – you don’t start with the roof.
So here is the scheme of gradual way. All main stages I borrowed from such suttas like MN 39, but also added collateral practices which can be practiced at the certain stages mostly as additional (but not compulsory) helpful methods/tools (placed them in the scheme just as I see it). I’ve also written extensive comments with suttas citations on the scheme in Russian, but that will be tiresome for me to translate it all into English -) (though you can take a look using google tool which sometimes does decent automatic translation). If you have comments, we can discuss.
