Stream entry through Impermanence Door

John B, modified 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 1:03 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 1:03 PM

Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 69 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
So I've been pondering the last few months about a couple experiences that happened at the end of a 10-day Goenka retreat and soon after. After rereading about the three doors and formations I've sorted it out the best I can, and I'd like to hear some other opinions if it looks like at face value I'm on the right track.

I had a fairly clear progression of the ñanas on retreat and had a pretty good idea I was in equanimity during the last few days. I had come out of the dark night and was having extremely even-keeled sits and began exploring 2nd and 3rd jhana for the first time with strong equanimity myself. What I think was my actual stream entry event happened just before/while waking one evening. I had a dream that involved some people close to me, and come to find out after the retreat, had some uncanny parallells with things that had been going on that week I didn't know about. Anyways, the dream involved some people all of a sudden being rushed up near me and there was a welling up inside me. Immediately upon awaking I had a gasp for air and had a feeling of fear and shock that lasted for somewhere between 4-6 hours. They were most intense for the first 2-3 hours or so. Due to the sense of shock, uneasiness, the unsettling nature of the dream as well, and having been in equanimity for a while in my sits, it leads me to believe this was stream entry through the impermanecne door with the other predominant characteristic being suffering.

Some of my experiences during high equanimity were viewing the different brahma viharas, which now I think had to do with emphasis on not clinging, even to those incredibly pleasurable and uplifting states. By far my practice had been focusing on impermanence of body sensations and eventually every sensation I could get my attention on. I bring up the brahma vihara experience because this time around in my most recent sits while in equanimity I have been trying to have a greater emphasis on exploring noself, and I've had some interestnig experiences of exploring anger, guilt, and just straight aversion. I think that's because noself tends to be related more to seeing aversion and, at least for me, identifying with those types of emotional experiences, so they have been coming up during sits.

For the 8 days following retreat I moved again through the ñanas fairly quickly, seeing how I was only sitting about 2 hours a day. Near the end of that cycle I had another dream experience that involved me grabbing some type of key that represented knowledge in the dream, a more clear and short gap of darkness, but awaking to shock and fear. This time the fear was more hollow and had a stronger feeling of someone vaccuming out my chest and stomach That was around 2 am. i was able to fall back asleep but then felt significant aftershocks until 9 am and still felt them throgh the afternoon. I had to go back and check my practice log to remember some of the details of the timing. I think this was a fruition, entering through the same door of impermanence with suffering as the accompanying characteristic.

Since then I haven't had extra access to jhanas or been able to cycle through multiple fruitions. I've seen that some people don't necessarily always have access to lots of fruitions after stream entry, and perhaps that depends on the entry door of stream entry? I've had a steady practice with a greater emphases on noself, and it's taken me a couple months to move through the ñanas. I did have some immediate changes after stream entry, mainly all of my doubt about the practice itself being removed with a greater confidence in what I was doing. The only thing was, at the time I didn't know when the stream entry experience was. The day after the stream entry dream I was playing around with formations a lot in my sits, exploring boundaries of my body, perception of time, and perceptions of consciousness, a lot kind of mixed together. I thought stream entry may have happened occurred sometime while playing around with the formations, but now I think otherwise.

Sorry, a lot of info there, but finally got some things clarified in my own head, so any thoughts from others or similar experiences even would be helpful to hear.
neko, modified 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 4:14 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 4:14 PM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 762 Join Date: 11/26/14 Recent Posts
  • If there was any sense of an experience, even of nothingness or something that seemed incomprehensible, particularly anything involving the vaguest hint of the passage of time during it, write it off as something other than emptiness. This is an absolute rule.
  • Similarly, if there was any sense of a this observing a that, or a self of any sort that was actually present for whatever happened, write it off as something other than emptiness. If you were there, that wasn’t it.
  • If there was not a complete sense of discontinuity and if it makes any sense to think of time, space, perspective or memory continuing across the gap, write it off immediately as something other than emptiness. On the other hand, if the only way to remember what happened involves remembering just forward to the end of the particular door that presented and then remembering back to when reality reappeared, well, keep reading. 
  • If on continued repetition of the unknowing event over days or weeks it fails the above tests, write it off as something other than emptiness.
  • If continued repetition of that particular kind of unknowing event over days or weeks fails to give any clear experiences of the Three Doors or to reveal something very paradoxical and profound about the nature of subject and object, be skeptical.
  • If there was a double-dip into unknowing events with a few profound moments of clarity and altered experience between them, as is characteristic of the A&P Event, with one shift happening half-way down the out-breath and a second shift at the end of that out-breath, write it off immediately as more likely having been that or maybe the early stages of Equanimity.
  • If the event cannot be repeated, write it off. Those who have attained a path will attain more Fruitions naturally, maybe one to many per day, as they basically can't help but cycle.If there is not a rather predictable pattern of stages and perspective shifts that begins to become clear (specifically following the course of the progress of insight listed above in some way, particularly as regards shifts in perceptual thresholds) write it off as something other than emptiness. 

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+Was+that+Emptiness
John B, modified 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 4:48 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/17/16 4:48 PM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 69 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
Thanks, neko. I've definitely read through this list a number of times, and the big thing is I haven't had multiple repetitions of the unkowing event. Only the two imes I suppose, and the event itself isn't anything I can remember, so perhaps their was no event itself. I guess my question is, why have cycled back down to A&P after both of the events and worked my way back through the ñanas? I've read about some people who don't have multipe fruition experiences after stream entry - is that more the exception than the rule? The aftershocks of the the events I experienced were really significnt and certainly nothing I had experienced before, so what was going on if it wasn't stream entry or a fruition?

It's just hard to say because I was dreaming, and it's so odd to me that those experiences happened at the end of dreams. Seems like it would have been much clearer if I were awake, but I have read of some other people who had stream entry during a dream, so I figured it wasn't entirely impossible.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 5:48 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 5:46 AM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 2326 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
I tend to have a bias toward putting all dream experiences into the A&P nana, so I tend to think that what you have been experiencing is the "A&P Event" which basically looks the same as Stream Entry... except after SE there is much more clear jhanas and afterwards all sits start at the A&P for a while. If your sits haven't changed much after those events, it's probably not SE.  A&P Events tend to come with new or refined insights about the nature of experience, duality, etc. so even if it isn't SE, it's a good thing. 

For what it's worth...Conversely, many people get SE during evening/late night sits as they are slipping into sleep. The blip often happens during those conditions (part of the reason Zen retreats have the all night sits). 

It is true that many people don't have multiple fruitions after SE. Especially if not on retreat or if there practice doesn't show a lot of concentration.

It can be tricky to diagnose when people get close to SE. They will naturally quickly move through the early nanas (in seconds) so probably A&P will be most obvious in the beginning. They may have very clear A&P events. They may have the beginning of formless jhanas. They may have and "brownouts" and "near misses" --- all of which are very similar to SE. Plus, in the easy, drifty realm of medium EQ, there can be normal sleepy "nodding off", which also is similar to SE. So it can be very tricky! It took me a few days to realize one event was my SE (by then I could see my sits had changed) and I wasn't even sure until I confirmed it with my teacher.

In any case, if these are happening, choose to be inspired rather than frustrated. Keep going. Straight ahead!, as they say in Zen.

Hope this diagnostic info helps!
John B, modified 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 4:09 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 4:08 PM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 69 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
Hey shargrol, I appreciate your insights as always. Thinking about your comments, it seems likely that it wasn't SE, but some sort of "near miss." I was wondering if you could explain what "brownout" refers to. I don't think my sits changed a whole lot after the two dream experiences, except that I seemed to leave equanimity and begin working back towards how A&P felt and moving into the dark night. My experience moving through the stages of insight seemed very clear on retreat and immediately after, so I'm pretty confident, even looking back now, about where I was. It seems wierd to have A&P events while in equanimity and high equanimity, but if I had actually been cycling extremely quickly and not realizing it, it's possible.

Yeah, on retreat my concentration was much stronger than I had experienced before with access to some jhanas. It seems like if the experience were SE I would have had access to fruitions, given the strong concentration. Recently I've been in a drifting off kind of mode, definitely mid-equanimity realm, so I'm looking forward to and working towards stream entry in that case.

If it's the case that I haven't had SE yet, I'm wondering if there is something I was missing in my practice that kept me from taking that step forward. The only thing I can think of is my biggest focus being on impermance, and not much of suffering, and almost no focus on noself. That's changed lately as I've been exploring noself in my sits. Maybe getting clearer about the other characteristics will help me out? My practice seems to be taking me through the different nanas through equanimity, and the general advice I've seen around is to continue to just do what you had been doing to get that far.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 9:03 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/21/16 9:03 PM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 2326 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
In general, it's totally normal to go up and down through the nanas during a single sit. Towards SE, it is common for sits to be different flavors of equanimity, so to speak. In other words, EQ almost seems to seep into all experiences, even if there is momentary experiences of disgust, misery, desire for deliverance, etc. 

There are a few approaches that are good to have in the toolbox near SE. Basically, you can either soak in jhana, surrender to what is happening, or be curious/inquire into "what is mind?"

Jhana practice consists of letting low-level jhana arise and then intentionally becoming aware of those sensations, where they appear. This has the effect of making them stronger or having them spread. With a gentle kind of intention, a general cool feeling (3rd jhana) can grow and spread over the whole body and even blur the boundaries of the body. The main "trick" is to keep your mind within the jhana sensations and let them grow and spread on their own -- don't try and direct it. A well jhana-ed body and mind tends to slip into SE.

Surrender is basically taking the position of radical equanimity. Everything that is happening is okay, exactly as it is, because there is mindfulness. Let the mind go where it wants, let the body feel what it feels. Radical equanimity allows the mind/body to jump into SE.

During High EQ, it's possible to see thoughts as thoughts. Suddenly "meditating on the mindstream" is possible. Stay curious, where do thoughts come from, where do they go? What is mind? Inquiry into the nature of mind can create an opening for the mind/body to jump into SE.

Hope that helps. Keep doing what make sense. Enjoy jhana feelings, enjoy exploring, let go, stay curious!
John B, modified 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:38 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:36 AM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 69 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
That is a very helpful post, especially for my sits right now. It's a little frustrating to look back and see how close I was, even intuitively. I had been spending time on retreat, while in equanimity, investigating third jhana quite a bit. Looking back I see how much it helped my mind become flexible and get into different formations. Perhaps if I had stuck with investigating third jhana I would have had SE at that time.

Seeing as how my concentration is so much lower these days - only a couple forays into first jhana - I'll probably try surrendering or observing thought/mind stream. Most likely surrendering because I've had the most practice of straight mindfulness of body, and not nearly as much focusing just on thoughts/ awareness/ consciousness.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:42 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:41 AM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 2326 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
Sorry about this, but I should have said 3rd jhana >for example<. Really, any jhana sensation is worth soaking in when it appears. I just picked third because that seems to be the one that really jumps out, just because it feels so strange to have cool skin all of sudden. Any jhana is good. Soaking in panoramic openess in fourth is good, as is the gentle intensity of first, as is the happy pleasures of second, as is the numb bliss of third.
John B, modified 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:47 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/22/16 8:47 AM

RE: Stream entry through Impermanence Door

Posts: 69 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
Right, makes sense. My jhana experience is so limited it's probably not the way for me to go right now anyhow, but good to know.

Breadcrumb