This page tracks two complementary frameworks for orienting in practice. They are not two separate tracks — they are two ways of mapping the same territory.

The purifications are the conditions you deliberately establish. You train sīla, you develop samādhi, you take up vipassanā practice systematically. Agency lives here. The first two purifications — sīla-visuddhi and citta-visuddhi — are entirely within your hands: conduct and concentration. The later purifications follow from these conditions when they are sufficiently established.

The insight knowledges are not techniques you do — they are what happens when the conditions are sufficiently in place. You do not practice toward udayabbaya-ñāṇa. You practice ānāpānasati, and if the conditions are right, udayabbaya-ñāṇa arises. Trying to deliberately produce the insight knowledges is one of the more reliable ways to obstruct them.

Purification 5 (paṭipadā-ñāṇadassana-visuddhi) is the insight knowledges — ñāṇas 1 through 13 are what that purification consists of. The later purifications are defined by the arising of the insight knowledges. The two maps are not parallel lists; they overlap and fold into each other.