Francis M. Crawford:
I notice what seems like a disconnect of an order of magnitude in terms of the speed with which insights/stages might occur in insight practice...
...This makes me curious for two reasons:
1) it would be nice to have some idea how soon on average one may have to deal with the dukkha nanas (again, just on an order of magnitude;
The key word here is
average....the bell curve shows that most people will take longer to get to stream entry, I will posit that people who find themselves on the Dho and who post and who continue to post are in the tail end of "not average". We dont know much about the lurkers. So reading here will get you skewed ideas of what is "normal" time frames. Then again, you're on the Dho, check, you are posting, check....
This presuposes that we are even talking about the same definition of stream entry which may not be the case as i've read about very stringent definitions that seem to me to be the game of spiritual inflation. (My technique, guru, style, path is better than yours and gets you more)
Francis M. Crawford:
2) I wonder if hardcore Mahasi-style noting from the beginning (which he seems to have pioneered as a way to power laypeople to progress faster) and subsequent stream entry experiences are somehow different or miss some essential seasoning that you get with a slower path (not speaking about jhanas here).
I.e., is it like just memorizing the material for the final exam without reading the textbook? (bad analogy I know).
Let me throw out something to think about, if and when you stop forward progress and get stuck and or "done" by substandard criterea, That seems to be the time to reflect back and wonder if you missed something. When its full steam ahead, noone seems to care.
If your definition of SE includes morality shifts, that may take you much longer to do than the purely perceptual shifts. Especially if you start out as a dick or in some other way are more messed up than usual. Again, it depends on what your definition is of SE and what extra amazing magical goodies and frosting you want to put on top of it.
~D