How common is stream entry?

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reflection
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by reflection »

kirk5a wrote:
reflection wrote: Even sotapannas are best to see their experience just as an experience, something that's actually worthless.
Where would we find support for that view?
Suttas on non-self, for example. Everything is non-self, including the events of stream entry. Because a sotapanna still can have conceit, I think it is wise to keep reflecting on their experience as just an experience. Not an attainment, which it is called often, but gives the wrong impression.

This is another reason why it is not likely for a stream enterer to share purposely share their experience in public; it's such an impersonal thing that they will mostlikely not even feel like sharing it.

I know some suttas state noble ones openly declaring their attainments. But today you don't see it a lot; and I think that's not just because of the vinaya rule that forbids monks to do so. At least, that's my view.

:anjali:

With metta,
Reflection
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marc108
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by marc108 »

divine wrote:@ marc108 Thanks for this advice, I have been asking some people I have met that have meditation experience and consider themselves buddhists. The thing is I can't get myself to claim anything, neither stream entry nor experiences, some of the reasons I'm sure you can imagine. I'm here talking to you because of the anonymity of the internet. But the bottom line is, I don't need it. But help with meditation, sure!
My personal opinion is that it would be unwise to go around claiming anything, but rather to try to find out exactly what your experience was from people who have already attained some stage of Enlightenment. I dont think there is any reason to be fearful of talking about your experiences as long as you approach it with humility, and a mind that is opened to hearing something which may not be what you want to hear. You may find opposition from people on forums, but it's unlikely a seasoned teacher is going to 'beat you up' if you're simply trying to figure out what happened to you.

If you want to maintain your anonymity I would suggest you give Taan Geoff (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, watmetta.org) a call... Taan Geoff is a great Master and if anyone will know whats going on with you he will. 6-7 PST, 619-813-8461
"It's easy for us to connect with what's wrong with us... and not so easy to feel into, or to allow us, to connect with what's right and what's good in us."
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kirk5a
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by kirk5a »

reflection wrote: Suttas on non-self, for example. Everything is non-self, including the events of stream entry. Because a sotapanna still can have conceit, I think it is wise to keep reflecting on their experience as just an experience. Not an attainment, which it is called often, but gives the wrong impression.
What if you're conveying the wrong impression about stream entry, in regarding it as "just an experience" ? We have to consider what "the arising of the Dhamma eye" is.
"When one thing is practiced & pursued, ignorance is abandoned, clear knowing arises, the conceit 'I am' is abandoned, latent tendencies are uprooted, fetters are abandoned. Which one thing? Mindfulness immersed in the body." -AN 1.230
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tiltbillings
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by tiltbillings »

kirk5a wrote:
reflection wrote: Suttas on non-self, for example. Everything is non-self, including the events of stream entry. Because a sotapanna still can have conceit, I think it is wise to keep reflecting on their experience as just an experience. Not an attainment, which it is called often, but gives the wrong impression.
What if you're conveying the wrong impression about stream entry, in regarding it as "just an experience" ? We have to consider what "the arising of the Dhamma eye" is.
That becomes an interesting lesson. No doubt sotapanna is a big deal, but then what? Do you come onto a forum like this a blab it about, where it become naught more than credential - ah, a posting by whatizname the sotapanna. If a sotapanna can still have conceit, should that conceit be fed? Or might we want to look at it all a bit differently.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

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reflection
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by reflection »

kirk5a wrote:
reflection wrote: Suttas on non-self, for example. Everything is non-self, including the events of stream entry. Because a sotapanna still can have conceit, I think it is wise to keep reflecting on their experience as just an experience. Not an attainment, which it is called often, but gives the wrong impression.
What if you're conveying the wrong impression about stream entry, in regarding it as "just an experience" ? We have to consider what "the arising of the Dhamma eye" is.
Hi Kirk,

I'm not trying to convey some right or wrong impression. I'm trying to convey a point of perspective. From one perspective sotapannaship is a high goal, an worthy attainment. From another perspective it is nothing, it is worthless because it is all non-self. Nomatter how grand, it's just an experience. It has some nice results, but still; a sotapanna will not feel like being a sotapanna. This is why Ajahn Chah called it "fish sauce" here.

I personally consider this perspective to be one the sotapanna is more likely to float towards him/herself, because seeing non-self is intrinsic to it. The "arising of the dhamma eye" is exactly this, as I see it.

Metta from Reflection
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Re: ...---... How common is stream entry?

Post by Sokehi »

better never talk about it imho.

If you are, that's fine and you are blessed. but your way doesn't stop there. I've came to know some teachers... well if those "teachers" had told me I'd be a sotapanna I'd really doubt about the usefulness of my previous efforts.
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Re: ...---... How common is stream entry?

Post by Cittasanto »

I remember a story about the early days of chithurst.

There was a man who had a conversation with Ajahn Sumedho and in the coarse of him telling Luang Por about his experiances he thought Luang Por had told him he was a sotapanna, in fact Luang Por had said that he had experianced what is known as a Blissful mind (can not remember the pali term) which he misheard as sotapanna.
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by Viscid »

Why does the sotapanna classification exist, anyway? Does a stream enterer practice the Dhamma differently after stream-entry? And why did it become less emphasized in later Buddhist schools?
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by James the Giant »

Viscid wrote:Why does the sotapanna classification exist, anyway?
The path of progress goes in cycles, which contain stages. Stream Entry is the end of one cycle.
Also because it's a clear and startling point on the path, and brings with it fruit, great benefit, merit, insights. One's very self (self?) is irreversibly changed at that point.
It is also said to be the point of no return. Once you've passed that point there's no going back. Woohoo!
Viscid wrote: Does a stream enterer practice the Dhamma differently after stream-entry?
I read that they practise no differently, but they now know clearly how to practise correctly. From there it's just a matter of, uh... practise.
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khlawng
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by khlawng »

tiltbillings wrote: That becomes an interesting lesson. No doubt sotapanna is a big deal, but then what? Do you come onto a forum like this a blab it about, where it become naught more than credential - ah, a posting by whatizname the sotapanna. If a sotapanna can still have conceit, should that conceit be fed? Or might we want to look at it all a bit differently.
Hi Tilt,

I am not specifically addressing what you say on a personal level since this view that "a sotapanna is such a big deal" is shared by and large by the community here. However, I don't believe being a sotapanna is a big deal!

I have stated my arguments before in my previous post and to summarize:

1) You cannot tell someone who is ripe to become a stream enterer apart from another common person.
2) You can hardly tell a stream entrant apart from another common person.
3) That out of the 3 qualifications, one needs to work on only 1 i.e. eradication of the concept of self and with just minimal moderate effort in guided concentration, gain supramundane knowledge to breakdown the concept of self, couple with enough mundane knowledge, you have awaken the dhamma eye.

Here is another thing I would like to add

In the homage to the Sangha, it states, 8 individuals to be respected. To recap:

The person on the path of stream entry and the stream enterer
The person on the path of once returner and the once returner.
The person on the path of non-returner and the non-returner.
The person on the path of arahantship and the arahant.

Remember, this was recorded down from the Buddha's time. If a stream enterer is such a big deal, then he surely is already on the path of once returner, automatically. So why 8 individuals? Why not just 5 and collapse it down to once returner, non-returner and arahant after stream enterer? He eventually, base on this common notion that he has reached such a lofty level, he should be able to stream right up or seen the light enough to just drop everything and work towards arahantship? Why choose to continue to remain a stream enterer?

It is my believe a stream enterer has choices like any normal person. When he reach that points, he has the choice of

1) continuing his domestic life like everyone else including continuing indulging in sense desire, as he has not EVEN BEGIN to weaken it. He naturally keeps the precept but not perfectly.
2) Paring down responsibility in his domestic life to continue his effort to becoming a once returner i.e. he lives simply and works merely for sustenance
3) Drop out of domestic life and pursue the ulitmate goal

The problem I see here is, there is a perpatual self-doubt running around the community that becoming a sotapanna is such a lofty goal, so impossible by you and I, that we might want to consider whether we are putting up a self-impose barrier and whether we are allowing others to put a barrier on us, on the pre-condition of "eradication of doubt" to become a stream entrant. Are we to believe that after years and years of service, chanting, reading the sutta, meditating, that we, the lay buddhist is confined to, at best, as a person on the path of stream entry until death and decay?! If that is the case, then there is generally something wrong with our community and the Sangha (my I be forgiven if I have offended the Sangha). Shouldn't the minimal goal, of any Sangha and Buddhist community, be to churn out stream entrters like a factory. If not, then why not! Why is it so difficult? Where has this technique dissapeared to since the Buddha's time?
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Re: ...---... How common is stream entry?

Post by nowheat »

retrofuturist wrote:It's any instance where "other power" (as opposed to one's own efforts) is invoked.)
But do you ever catch the suttas actually saying this? I ask because, recently, I have seen silabatta being interpreted as "clinging to one's own conception of Buddhist rules and rites" rather than a reference to, say, Brahminical rules and rites. I've done some cross-checking of the word in context and am not finding any good sources for defining it either one way or the other.

:namaste:
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Re: ...---... How common is stream entry?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
nowheat wrote:
retrofuturist wrote:It's any instance where "other power" (as opposed to one's own efforts) is invoked.)
But do you ever catch the suttas actually saying this?
Not in so many words...

SN 42.6: Paccha-bhumika Sutta
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Metta,
Retro. :)
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by marc108 »

khlawng wrote: Why is it so difficult?
People talk about eradicating the self view like its something easy, or something you would easily 'choose' if given the 'choice'. I think Bhante G touches on this in MIPE. I may be reading his example wrong, but I believe what he is talking about is the eradication of the self view.
When you really get into it, you will eventually find yourself confronted with a shocking realization. One day you will look inside and realize the full enormity of what you are actually up against. What you are struggling to pierce looks like a solid wall so tightly knit that not a single ray of light shines through. You find yourself sitting there, staring at this edifice and you say to yourself, "That? I am supposed to get past that? But it's impossible! That is all there is. That is the whole world. That is what everything means, and that is what I use to define myself and to understand everything around me, and if I take that away the whole world will fall apart and I will die. I cannot get through that. I just can't."
It is a very scary feeling, a very lonely feeling.
This is not an easy thing for a person to go up against and not an easy thing to integrate back into lay life. It's not like you just pin your Stream Winner badge on and go back to life like normal.
"It's easy for us to connect with what's wrong with us... and not so easy to feel into, or to allow us, to connect with what's right and what's good in us."
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by manas »

Hi khlawng,
khlawng wrote:Where has this technique dissappeared to since the Buddha's time?
I read that the number of persons attaining arahantship had already started to decline during the Buddha's lifetime, even. So, should we be surprised if 2600 (two-thousand six-hundred!) years later, with the original Sangha long split into various sects & schools of practice, that 'even just' stream-entry is quite a challenge?

manas :anjali:
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Re: How common is stream entry?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
marc108 wrote:People talk about eradicating the self view like its something easy, or something you would easily 'choose' if given the 'choice'.
It's necessary to distinguish between the self-view (sakkāya-ditthi) broken at stream-entry, from the sense of self, the conceit 'I am' (asmi-mana) which is only broken with arahantship - http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Asmi-mana" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As for the self-view fetter, it's no more or less a choice than any other belief, as far as I can gather from the suttas.
marc108 wrote:This is not an easy thing for a person to go up against and not an easy thing to integrate back into lay life. It's not like you just pin your Stream Winner badge on and go back to life like normal.
Why not? The lay stream-winners (and beyond) in the Sutta Pitaka didn't seem to find it a big dilemma.

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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