Lots of this is purely based on my opinion...
The suttas, more often then talking about specific techniques, talk about maintaining a skillful mind as continuously as possible. What I do is use whatever technique is best suited to my moment to moment hindrances. If lust is strong I do contemplation of the body, if anger is there I do metta towards whoever I was angry at. If there is nothing specific going on, just constant moment to moment subtle changing unskillfulness, I do breath concentration with an emphasis on keeping a relaxed body. My practice is motivated by people who have gotten sutta-ish attainments in this community as well as people outside this community who have apparently gotten similar attainments. However, that said, every person I mention on this list did MCTBish techniques, and all but one of them had a clear stage that was equivalent to MCTB enlightenment. 4th path then is probably useful stepping stone but not a necessary one.
Now, the following examples I give are of people who
I think are attaining sutta-type stuff.
Here is an article that seems to be oriented towards ending defilements and hindrances,
http://dhammasukha.org/Study/Articles/simple-easy-mind.htmNotice the difference:
dhammasukha:
Meditation (Bhavana) helps one let go of such difficult delusional states in life as fear, anger, tension, stress, anxiety, depression, sadness, sorrow, fatigue, condemnation, feelings of helplessness or whatever the catch (attachment) of the day happens to be.
MCTB:
Remember that these practices and teachings are not about becoming some kind of emotionally devoid, non-existent entity, but about clearly understanding the truth of our humanity and life. Becoming fluent in the true nature of all categories of sensations, including the sensations that make up all categories of emotions, is a particularly good idea and highly recommended.
Dhammasukha defines craving as the tension one feels in the body, and they focus on building up metta and relaxing that craving. Per their definition you can't have any such tension and be an arahant, though in MCTB definition, you definitely can, you just have to be recognizing that the tension is impermanent and not-self. I think it is interesting to note that the 3C's seem to be looked at in MCTB as a comfort, like - "that pain isn't so bad, it is impermanent" whereas in the suttas they are a tool to create dispassion rather than as a coping mechanism which is basically an end in and of itself.
Another source, from inside the pragmatic dharma community is the hamilton project blog, started by a DhO poster Nikolai Halay, he has been reporting some attainments which seem similar to sutta stuff.
http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.comAnother prag-dharma person with sutta-ish stuff going on would be TJ Brocoli, here is a quote in which she describes her practice history:
my practice progress over a period of ten years after stream entry was very gradual, stable, and steady, and at the same time progress was obvious to me (each month something was slightly better or easier, and each year life was clearly better than the previous one.) there were periods of acceleration here and there due to more practice and/or stronger intent. i wasn't too affected by the symptoms of cycling, although those fluctuations of emotional energy and moods were obvious. the slow and steady change continued until the last months and weeks before the dissolution of the self-center and base of all passions. the last three years were nice, with the cycling having picked up a underlying current of equanimity. in the last six months leading up to the dissolution of identity, my day-to-day experience was excellent and very equanimous with good moods all the time. what seemed to have inspired that improvement was meeting up with Tarin for the first time after his becoming actually free. seeing the new peaceful Tarin seemed to nail into my head some stronger intent from the realization "damn, if this ex-pissy-moody dude can do it, then what am i waiting for?" we didn't discuss af much; we just hung out with other people who talked about normal everyday things. but it helped a lot to see the evidence for myself that ending all affective suffering was a very realistic goal, and also to see how Tarin hadn't at all turned into anything weird--not repressed or delusional and neither super-human nor non-human like people often imagine.
towards the end when i had had enough of the excellent-but-still-not-totally-clean experience for six months, i talked to Tarin a lot about what could possibly be left. it seemed like the identity was no longer "generating" trouble or making any problems arise, but its base remained as a constant tint of dullness and blockage to clearer sensing. it took a few weeks of this new momentum of intent and discussions with friends before i started to figure out what there was left to do. Tarin could not come up with any solutions for me either, but he often came up with the right questions. it seemed to me that all i needed was to see through every bit of the self (identity)--to see exactly what it was, where its edges were, exactly which bodily sensations related to it, etc. at that point it seemed like i had no trouble dropping/dissolving/letting go of something as long as i could see what it was, and my problem was that it wasn't fully seen. i did not have the benefit of recent or frequent pce memories to pin down this identity. so i just chipped at it from whichever direction i could, and took apart different aspects of the identity.
[...]
the way i practiced seemed like no-brainer vipassana, or the most obvious thing to do at the time, but i could not have come up with that practice a few weeks or months before it became necessary. and had someone explained it to me earlier, it probably wouldn't have made sense to me. when that vipassana stretch was done and no more control-freak sensations could be found, i had a full-on pce for the first time in eleven years, but i knew that it wasn't going to be an in-and-out shifty thing that would come and go because my baseline of experience had slowly been approaching it over the years and had finally moved into it. everything in its way had been cleared. i was in this pce for about a day, and also had a clean and clear experience-gap (fruition) with no afterglow or after-effect noticed, and no "entry moment" or "exit moment" noticed. (i only assumed that there must have been a gap because i was watching a commercial on tv with pce-alertness and all of a sudden the next commercial started before the first one even revealed what product it was advertising.) at that point i didn't know if that pce experience lined up with af or not, but it didn't matter anyway because perception had cleared up the way i had always wanted it to.
then, the next morning i woke up into a totally new experience, and my first thought-impression of it was "woe, it's like there's no puppet master". i literally said stuff like "woe" and "huh!" out loud a few times while moving my limbs back and forth: "wait, what's doing the moving?? woe...holy crap this is different." there was a new kind of clean and weightless quality to experience that wasn't there in the pce.
[...]
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1917355Another guy would be End In Sight, here is his old practice journal:
http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4641050/first+ever+practice+journal%21Another would be Antero, here is a practice journal of his which starts after he attained 4th path (MCTB enlightenment):
http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4687982/Antero%27s+practice+journal+4