5 or 8 precepts are minimum for stream entry?

Buddhist ethical conduct including the Five Precepts (Pañcasikkhāpada), and Eightfold Ethical Conduct (Aṭṭhasīla).
Jack19990101
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Re: 5 or 8 precepts are minimum for stream entry?

Post by Jack19990101 »

Re -
"You are assuming the five heinous crimes are the sum total of what a sotapanna cannot do. "

Yeah - so it is an assumption otherwise, is it not

Let's say - anti-precepts conducts might be on hidden.
All we need to do, is to find a situation or two, a sotapanna is breaking precepts, to rid of our doubt.
Jack19990101
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Re: 5 or 8 precepts are minimum for stream entry?

Post by Jack19990101 »

Re -
"The five heinous crimes are those acts which mean that it is impossible for such a person to become a sotapanna (or higher) in this life."


I do agree with it.

That is to have reposition the list of 5 conducts to be blockers for outsiders.

That would leave - Buddha doesn't declare any conducts difference by Sotapanna.
That would render ur point out un-supported too.

it is not helpful in in dissolving our doubt.
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zerotime
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Re: 5 or 8 precepts are minimum for stream entry?

Post by zerotime »

Jack19990101 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:05 am It comes to me the confusion resides between Sotapanna Path vs Fruit.
that's the point, I agree.

Confussion is when "stream-entry" doesn't mean directly a first experience of nibbana. Stream-entry happens later. Maybe minutes, days, weeks, months... It depends.

Nibbana = enter in the water
Stream-entry = follow the stream

The Stream is the following path driving to the eradication of fetters and arhanthood. When an awakened person becomes engaged in the Path of eradication of the remaining fetters, there is a real entrance in the Stream. Until that moment there is no a proper stream-entry.

Because that reason, we read inside the Suttas how the integration of sila with 5 precepts is the moment when a sotapanna can declare it about himself. Not because the nibanna experience but with the understanding of sila like necessary to continue the progress. Because the rest of fetters to be eradicated all are related with sila, except the last one of ignorance at the arhanthood moment.

A sotapanna can break the precepts while he is integrating the consequences of nibbana, when still is not properly inside the Stream. While still he/she is not aware about the following progress will request the eradication of remaining fetters. There is a process for that. And such awakened person still wouldn't be properly a sottapana but he would be in-the-process. The full entrance can be expected although it can be faster or slower depending of conditions.

However, the unavoidable necessity of sila after stream-entry, this doesn't happen for awakening. And then we can check how even Angulimala was awakened.

There is no necessity of an strict observance of 5 precepts to realize a first nibbana experience. In fact, for the lay people the moral obsessions can become more powerful to block wisdom than a typical low-profile breakage of precepts. If yesterday somebody lied to his boss, it cannot impede stream-entry. Although if somebody is obsessed to avoid lies at any circumstance, it can become an obstacle. Because in the obvious difficulty to fulfill that obsession in Society, there is also a business with the Truth. And this is a self-power position designed to fail, blocking the arising of wisdom.

And anyone in the lay life can note the absurdity in the investment in these strict moral obsessions: if in example, somebody enjoy drinking some beers with friends and one day this person became awakened, then in the following days, weeks or months, the effect of the alcohol in the mind simply will be not comfortable, and his beers will become 0.0 in a natural way. If he stole some things in the supermarket, soon he will not feel comfortable doing that, and he will leave such behavior. At the seeing of an insect, it will arise a feeling of friendship like only happened with dogs. And the same will happen with many unwholesome trends, which will be felt uncomfortable and leaved in a natural way. In fact, the precepts will become quite useless because all will become quite natural.

Therefore, Where is the sense of the obsession to go beyond 5 precepts?. Observing the 5 precepts is more than enough before stream-entry.

The 5 precepts is all the necessary as the Buddha taught. And it should be managed with wisdom and generosity to forgive oneself, avoiding obsessions.
pudai
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Re: 5 or 8 precepts are minimum for stream entry?

Post by pudai »

No not at all; Just mindfulness otherwise known as samadhi.

Consider the phenomena of sudden enlightenment... The gradual part after that is just sorting out the mind/heart so it remains as pure bright and clear as it was in that moment... no matter what arises; Like a mirror stays being a mirror no matter what it holds as a reflection... But after that initial experience; It(the entire path) will unfold on it's own without force or trying much in the same way the sudden experience occurred.

What is always full and yet always empty? Other than a mirror... Keep practice like that and there is no mistaking the real for the imagined. Talking to someone else about dogs is sharing a reflection of dogs whether they are present or not. Imagining the person talking about dogs to have the head of a dog may be funny but its just imagined. Like Gautama's "horns of a hare" being non-existent and taken as an object of nirvana... Since it is not of any world? Nirvana exists in the same manner; neither in any name or any form of this world or the next.

If you've ever seen the "Jackalope" someone was really inspired by that sutra verse to make it into a "reality" instead of as an object of nirvana.
The six senses accommodate; All the factors of existence... The All.
Apart from; The All... Nothing exists.
The senses are empty of a self & what belongs to a self.
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