Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 2, Section XXXVII

I'm making a separate post on this because I think the topic in this section merits a separate section.

This section deals with the, um, four types of Dhyānas (as opposed to the 5 types of Zen):

1. The Dhyāna of the ignorant refers to the Dhyāna of those who cling to the orientation that the body is a shadow and a skeleton which is transient, full of suffering and is impure, and that this is not transcendable.

2. The Dhyāna devoted to the examination of meaning refers to the Dhyāna of those gone beyond the egolessness of things, individuality and generality, the untenability of such ideas as self, other, and both, which are held by the philosophers, proceed to examine what that implies, and what being a Boddhisattva implies.

3. The Dhyāna with Tathatā (suchness) as its object refers to the realization that the discrimination of egolessness (i.e., as a "nullity" or as separate or other discriminations), is mere imagination, and that where he establishes himself in the reality of suchness (yathābhūta) there is no rising of discrimination.

4. The Dhyāna of the Tathagata, of course refers to an enlightened Zen where characterized by the realization of sunyata, and therefore such a practitioner endeavors for the sake of all beings to complete incomprehensible works.

The Zen literature breaks this up a bit differently, "bompu" zen "to get something," an "outside way" zen wich is zen but not Buddhist, "small vehicle" zen and "Great Practice zen." There is an overlap of categories here, perhaps and the Zen taxonomy can be thought of as a set of stages in one's own practice, but the reader should be able to make the mapping..