Mikha Rlin:
Nicely put.
Is this something that is easily understood in stream entry?
Honestly I don't know if stream entry will make this part any easier to understand, because for me personally it happened the other way round: After attending a couple of game theory lectures in school, I understood the above statements very well, on an intellectual level, before I ever started meditating. This understanding made me really sad. If anything, stream entry has helped me "move beyond the sadness" once and for all. I still believe (obviously) that individuals are mere tools/slaves to their genes, from a biological point of view, but my point of view is no longer purely biological. Even when I started meditating, I already understood that the mere understanding of game theory / biology won't make me happy or even ameliorate my suffering. That's why I started to meditate. After a few months of good (as in consistent and with the right guidance, not necessarily always pleasant) meditation, I am happy to report meditation does indeed take away a lot of suffering and moreover it actually causes a surprising amount of happiness.
From talking to other people, I understand that not everyone puts an experience like stream entry into the same words, so in all honesty I should probably just say the following: I believe stream entry will not necessarily answer the questions you (or any of us) ask before stream entry, and it will not necessarily help you understand exactly what you want to understand, but it will make you realize that the answers to your questions are not as important as the insight you have actually attained through stream entry. It's sort of like this: Before stream entry, you may want to know exactly what you are because you believe this knowledge could make life easier and better for yourself and the people you have contact with. Stream entry won't show you exactly what you are (so it won't actually answer your question), but it will show you some things you are
not, and (possibly to your surprise) you will find that this insight makes life a lot easier and better; so you have not really found an answer to the question you were asking, but you have solved the problem you were trying to solve by asking the question.
Mikha Rlin:
This is quite fascinating. I wish I could understand the goal of Theravada path.
I'm not sure how you meant this. If in fact you know about the goal of the Theravāda path, but simply meant to say that you disagree with that goal or path, then you should just ignore the rest of this post.
The goal is very simply the end of all suffering. The theory behind it is that all suffering is caused by greed, hatred, and delusion, and that you can get rid of all greed, hatred, and delusion through basic morality, regular concentration practice, and honest investigation of what your experience is in this life. If you meditate with this goal and use the right techniques, you will go through several stages of insight, but the four major landmarks are:
1. Stream entry, which gets rid of a lot of delusion, specifically shows you that you don't exist in the way you thought you did.
2. Once-returner, which significantly weakens your greed and hatred and, according to the people I have talked to, can make you feel very much like you are completely done, fully enlightened.
3. None-returner (anāgāmi), which totally gets rid of all your greed and hatred.
4. Arahat, which totally gets rid of all your delusion, including what they call "conceit."
This "getting rid" happens literally from one second to the next, once you get to that point in your cultivation (meditation), but it usually takes a few weeks for you to fully understand what has happened. For example, it is not uncommon to experience several weeks without the greed and hatred you were used to, so you begin to think you might have attained to one of the higher stages of enlightenment, and there is really no way of ever confirming that. However, what usually happens after a few weeks is you take another honest look and realize there are still some greed and hatred left, so you conclude you can't be an anāgāmi yet. There is apparently also the contrasting view that anyone who can achieve nirodha samāpatti (the sustained cessation of all feeling and perception) has to be at least an anāgāmi, so some people consider themselves that or an arahat, even though by the other definition, they would be considered a once-returner at best. The people I spend time with are among the most conservative ones, so if they can still detect any level of greed or hatred within themselves, they will insist they have not yet reached anāgāmi.
Stream entry, on the other hand, is a different story. We have several people here who have reached it and have compared our understanding to pretty much anything we can find about it, and we are pretty sure if anyone would be considered a stream enterer, we would. Again, it usually took a couple of weeks to fully understand and accept that a major shift in how we relate to life had occurred and that this shift was indeed stream entry, but once this has become clear, doubt regarding stream entry never returns again. Even a few years later, you can remember, "Yes, when I started meditating, I had this intuitive notion of the inner observer as a separate entity from the sense impressions it was observing. Then I had the insight that this inner observer consists entirely of the same kind of fundamental phenomena that all the other things I can observe consist of. Ever since then, I have known this, and it has colored my experience, and never since then have I seen things the way I used to."
Mikha Rlin:
A good actual teacher or a good book?
I was really referring to a good actual teacher, because that is definitely the fastest way to make progress. I know two people in this area (Tampa, FL), either one of whom would be an excellent choice to provide instructions and answer pretty much any questions you may have about Theravāda, although neither has reached what they would consider Anāgāmi, which by their definition would involve the total eradication of all greed and hatred, but they are actually both getting close; and getting people to stream entry is something they do a lot. They don't charge any money, and one of them gives lessons through Skype. If you would like to PM me your e-mail address, I will be happy to ask him to contact you.