Hi all,
I had a major shift (interruption to reality) corresponding to descriptions of stream entry a couple of weeks ago (May 18th evening) and have been in review ever since (My practice log can be found on KFD forum). Review has changed since it kicked in a day or so after the stream entry 'event' going from distinct cycling up to neat fruitions, gradually changing to now where it is less perceivable outside of meditation and is less distinct but still there. Alot has changed which I am still realising with more exploration. Incidentally, this disconnection to self is great and feel much less stress than before. As a result I have generally had to loosen up my normally pretty strict practice to accommodate this new territory I am now in, which is fine and provides a different angle for me on practice - healthy I reckon.

So my questions to those who have been here are,
* In the experience of others who have traversed this territory before, what were your experiences of this territory and how did it become the next path (BTW is that first path or second path?).
* Is the same effort required in practice to progress on this path as seemed to be before stream entry, or does it continue to run itself as it seems to be at the moment in review.
* I have used jhanas (shamatta) in my practice alot and mixed it in with daily noting (insight) which seems to be effective although it does make it hard to notice nanas. Review has been the first time I have really recognised the nanas from A&P up to equanimity, great for dark night though which I did recognise as a general phase. So can jhanas be used the same way getting to and traversing this next path as before stream entry?
* Are their any practice pitfalls I should be aware of that particularly related to this stage of progress?

Thanks and best wishes.

Metta is absolutely key to paths after stream-entry. Note: metta derives from the word mitto: friendliness.

[edit: mitto= friend, so a translation of metta is "friendliness"; it's key after stream entry; mistakes will probably be how one learns here].

Metta will become deeply sincere and fine or paths don't follow.

The pitfalls point the way

Well, it's normal to spend several months fascinated by the whole thing --- it seems kind of like it was a distraction in hindsight (fascination with the SE occurrence that is), but natural par for the course. And how faith arises-- I was completely unprepared for that.

Thanks Katy,
One of the characteristics of this new territory is that I feel alot more compassion and empathy for people (not in a condescending way) or maybe my attention is drawn to that aspect of interacting with people more? For example watching a band yesterday, whilst I was absolutely into the guitarist and the great riffs and solos he was cranking out, the thing I was drawn to and remember the most is watching a mentally and physically disabled girl enjoying the music from her wheelchair and particularly the dedication and love her father was showing to her ensuring she was comfortable and happy and enjoying it all, dancing with her in the chair etc. I am sure its just another day for them but I felt really floored by the love that I could see there and it occupied alot of my contemplation during the gig - not something I would normally be occupied with at a gig. Seemed that it cut through alot deeper or more sustainably than it might have a few months ago.

So Metta practice is useful at this stage you are suggesting?

I am interested in your 'faith' comment - could you expand on this a little?

Yes: empathy/understanding is much more likely to come up on its own after stream-entry: this mind is a little less occluded a little less of the time by its own perseverations and further one has a direct understanding of why people/animals may be acting harshly. Yet, looking at the fetters still attached to a stream enterer...not so pretty ;)

You may already be considering this, but I regularly support and re-interate the consideration of about nine months to a year timeline of significant changes following stream entry. Everyone is perhaps somewhat different, but I found this metric very true: there were smaller significant shifts practically every three months.

I am being waaaay more emphatic than "suggesting". I am being very clear here: one will see where one has a friendliness, metta, and where one has not. One will be worked by metta through and through. Stream-entry has its own dissatisfaction or everyone would stop here, and that dissatisfaction collects around what is non-metta and when/where/why one is emitting/responding from non-metta/ where one has aversion or hostility. Perhaps that sounds harsh. But it's natural; one is just learning. One has to learn by daily experience where there is arising from the mind that which is not metta, friendliness, or arising aversion/hostility. [Unless one manages to shoot straight to equanimity and I guess fourth path? I wouldn't know anything about these later changes.]

For instance, perhaps you now know that for all one reads about stream entry, the actual mental shift cannot really be anticipated nor imagined the way it actually happens. The way metta actually happens can seems like something completely unexpected and unforeseen and unimaginable. This is normal. If you have a mentor in this area, a teacher in any field who you know is just "safe", "soft", platonically attractive to be around it will be good to surround oneself with the memory or knowledge of that mentor-- constantly take in how they are doing things, how they are talking to others, how they are walking about.

If you look at the fetter model, the same two fetters follow the two middle "paths". Metta addresses both paths' fetters (their fetters are the same, differing in severity).


There are a few translations of Vicikicchā.

After stream entry I was not looking for the fetters or what had fallen away. By nine months after, though, I could look back and see how Vicikicchā panned out for this brain anyway. From months 3-6 after stream-entry I was just magnetized to one of my dharma teachers and pali scriptures-- as if the mind fell devotedly for the means that had "saved" it/"released" it into that initial "path". I could see myself going through all sorts of sincere devotional gestures and action week after week.

Around month 5-8 "faith" moved into more of the translation "skeptical doubt"-- as in the disappearance of skeptical doubt. Faith (development of) and skeptical doubt (release of) are two renderings, I think, of Vicikicchā.

Lastly, I think my mind just opened (and I consider that it was very open before) and suddenly I found I had a lot more "I don't know: just observe"-- that I did not have so many answers nor need to make any up. The mind of "don't know, just observe" is very expansive and sheds a lot of urge to be conclusive or containing. There is little urge to take a position outside of curiosity and observation and some kind of metta-receptivity. And skeptical doubt at the very least is an assertion which has an urge to negate, even subtly, as in condescension (which condescension is a hallmark of souring equanimity, in my view). There is a world of difference between observing receptively/openly and asserting skepticism --- needing to assert skepticism***. Does this make any sense?

[edits: typos]

[***this is not the same as asserting practical doubt, like if someone tells me a peanut is a cashew-- there I would have very practical doubt.]

Metta is going to be what pinpoints and "treats" the dissatisfaction that arises in and emits from sotapanna.

If you need to see this about metta and the next "paths" via buddhist scripture, there is a good footnote in the monk Analyo's book on the Sattipathana. My copy of this book is buried in storage but I think Ian And and Nick (formerly Bagpuss) are very familiar with this book and could possible cite this page). And I sat with Analyo shortly after stream-entry (in a curious serendipitous meeting with several well known/published monastics after the stream entry release) and he mentioned this very clearly, too: metta for the next paths. At the time, I was like, "Um, ok," and I took kind of a formal meditative approach to it until I was bored (metta in all directions meditation). It was and is daily life practice-- the practice that is constant, relentless-- that shows me metta is, yes, required now through and through. And there's no avoiding it. If I "fail" in it, the failing is typically quite instructive, and metta will find this mind. Thank goodness for that!

(1) Review and lots of fruitions. The energy that came along with getting first path faded in about a month. I would reccomend using this energy to further your practise....whatever got you to 1st path....continue and it will get you to 2nd path.
(2) Page 35 of The Progress of Insite
(3)You are in first path til you get to the second path fruition....Sotipanna in everything you do til Sakadagami.
(4)Same effort that got you to stream entry plus more.
(5) Review kinda runs itself without a lot of effort
(6) Whatever got you to 1st will probably get you to second
(7)Changing what you were doing when you just saw that it works. Wasting your energy boost and loosing momentum for second path. Metta is a great practice and you should do some but I see it as a different axis than insite practise. Continue with what you were doing since second path happens faster than getting first....you could be only a couple of weeks or months away if you continue....or you can get stuck review like I did and take a couple years to get there.
Good luck
~D

Thanks DW, really appreciate your answers here too - really helpful.
So I will incorporate Metta but continue Jhana and noting (with other forms of noticing as appropriate) which is what got me to this point.

I like the example you gave of the father/guitarist and his daughter.

Relatedly, Receptive listening is a tremendous form of metta.

So a sotapanna is still packed with other fetters, one of which is conceit, and a sotapanna is still one who is cycling through dukkha nanas and equanimity.

So it is really easy in my opinion that a stream-enterer can just stagnant there, live their life as an okay teacher and an exceptional ass.

This is visible in any tradition. You know, in theistic-faith traditions, the exceptional "practitioner" has absolute faith-- so there is nothing that is not divine. One of the men killed in the Oak Creek temple murders was observed by surviving children to be in the act of Ishvarapranada and it was said by others that he had a tremendous faith and humility in this so that his expressions of gratitude to the great teacher (Wahe guru) at death were probably faith that his own demise (despite the resistance he put up for himself and other victims) was "perfect", that the goodness of God would be expressed somehow in this. I don't know, but I've heard Sikhs say that from the murders of the Oak Creek worshippers a lot of good will poured in from across the U.S. and from all traditions, that Sikhism became more known across that country through a compassionate response.

Conversely, the faithful person who has incomplete faith-- that person will assert conceit and the pretense of being able to judge others versus serve them. And they can easily lead a congregation of dark nighters...

The same is true of sotapanna: here one can just become stagnant, getting jhana jollies and ego-stroking from DN-searchers who will naturally sit under the first sangha shade they see, without the capacity to determine the thoroughness of a teacher, DN-sufferers who naturally have to ignore or can't see red flags of conceit or even sensual desire and subtle malice in that first teacher who may be a sotapanna who's stagnated.

So malice and sensual desire grossly expressed are the 2nd path fetters to be studied and extinguished naturally and their subtle expression is said to be the third path challenge.


So receptive listening is a tremendous form of metta. A person often has their own answers and self-correction when they are just listened to respectfully, equally. And this kind of listening checks the conceit and sangha-lust of a sotapanna who may think too much of themselves/their guidance.


edits

Thanks Katy, this is wise advice. Fortunately, I have a firm opinion that even if/when I get 4th path (MCTB ) I would make a lousy teacher and would have trouble describing how the heck I got there, much less pretend I new how I could help anyone else get there So whilst I really wish I could actually be of more assistance to people who need it, I am always painfully aware of how much I don't know and need to learn, so getting my own sorry ass to a more awakened stage will be more than enough attainment for me. So I am keen to get moving on the path rather than hanging around post stream entry (when the process allows). I have been practicing metta over the last few days and finding it a really good way to get into jhana and as you have recommended this skill will come in handy breaking those fetters and of course will be good for others too as more metta is a good thing. I take your point about receptive listening and find it easier now than before SE so will develop that as part of daily metta practice. Thankyou.

Well, Rod, I went in a direction that you didn't need but because I needed and wanted to express it: this point about known hazards (fetters) after stream entry and a stream enterer's potentially problematic conduct, which boils down to ignorance.

So just as I can look back at the dukkha nanas and see, "Oh, I just didn't know how those would be relieved nor what I was creating" so, too, with the sotapanna-phase not being able to see what isn't known. So that's basic ignorance: I can't see what I don't know.

But for the sotapanna and whatever the parallels in other traditions) that person becomes attractive to others who are struggling/seeking and potential more so when they "treat" the fetters, these tensions. So a sotapanna probably should also know that some attraction/seeking out is likely to happen --- and the results of attractiveness will be a tool by which to study the fetters or bake them in more.

Anyway, sincere, receptive just-listening is a great form of metta, which treats for the next mental releases/path/ or what ever we want to call mental changes. And for the other person (who may have sought out a sotapanna or the like for advice) can often hear the cause and solution-steps in their own mind to their own struggles if they are listened to very well, equally, as a peer. Sometimes.

What I like about the DhO model is that we are figuratively like the left and right feet of a person: one foot advances because the other foot is supporting, then that foot advances because the first foot supports. So like this there's a great ability for us to support and 'advance' each other's practice.

So thanks for your post.

Here are a couple threads with advice.
thread 1
thread 2
thread 3

Very helpful, thanks. I am now in some pretty vague territory which I guess must still be review as I am starting sits in A&P but now I can stay in EQ after the fruition and not be bumped down to A&P. I think Kenneth F calls this Review B. So sitting almost the same length of time I used to before SE doing jhanas and doing metta as well. The part I have not got going again yet is noting. This is just laziness so will fix that. I am presuming that whenever review finishes, this should provide reasonable momentum to get through to 2nd path. I really like so far what has resulted from SE so am keen to go further but not impatient if that makes sense. I can feel the post SE 'superpowers' fading a bit though.

The energy that comes along with the path moment faded in about a month both times. The first time I didn't know about stream entry til later so i didn't know to get going til after the energy was gone...so I am speculating that the energy can provide momentum to zip up the nanas post 1st; but after second path I immediately started working the nanas and zipped up to EQ pretty quick. 2 years in review got me tons of fruitions til I could see some of the entry clearly...this was cool as it left no doubt that yep, it is it. Not so with 2nd. So spending the time was nice in a way but would rather be further along presuming lots of things.
It's your energy so spend it how you want.....metta, fruitions, review, 2nd path work, other. Just don't kick yourself later when it is gone. (presuming it does for you)
Good luck
~D

Katy, your posts on this thread are absolutely brilliant! Thank you!!!