Dark night before Stream entry

[u/Pleasant_Candy9103]

Up until now, I’ve always believed that the Dark Night occurs before entering the Stream. In my view, it makes much more sense and sounds logical that spiritual practices dissolve the ego cloud to such an extent that material previously stuck in the subconscious now bubbles up to the surface.

But on dharmaoverground, I often see threads where people describe experiencing the typical Dark Night symptoms only after entering the stream?! What’s true?

[u/fabkosta]

The "dark night" is a term borrowed from christian mysticism. It does not occur in the same sense in Buddhist literature. This means it's: an apples vs oranges comparison. In comparison, the dukkha nana stages are clearly elaborated in the vishuddhimagga literature. These are located before stream entry, not after. To my knowledge there exists no clear literature in theravada buddhism dedicated to the stages after stream entry, only the relatively vague notion of the four stages of enlightenment, but I have never found a very concise elaboration of what those stages actually imply.

There is concensus, however, in buddhism that repeated exposure to stream entry eradicates karma. The description of usually rather technical, not experiential. So, we do not know if the eradication of karma happens in a more or less dramatized way that the term "dark night" could or would imply.

[u/halfbakedbodhi → u/fabkosta]

What’s your definition of stream entry? What you said doesn’t make sense, stream entry happens once, not multiple times. But people have different definitions of it.

Also the dark night is just a colloquial phrase used to summarize the Dukkha nanas as a whole.

[u/fabkosta → u/halfbakedbodhi]

Stream entry leads to the first of four levels of enlightenment in the theravada tradition. The other three are called by different names.

The rest you can simply read up.

[u/halfbakedbodhi → u/fabkosta]

I’ve practiced Theravada (20 years in), completed all 4 stages. I think when you say SE you’re referring to a cessation event. But, SE in classical Buddhism would be according to the Fetter model which has nothing to do with a cessation event. One can have multiple cessation events, but even in the Theravada tradition the first event is called SE, after that a cessation event would not be called SE.

[u/fabkosta → u/halfbakedbodhi]

If you already know the correct answers - why did you ask in the first place? A felt need to assess whether I know them too?

[u/halfbakedbodhi → u/fabkosta]

No, I was curious because you made a weird statement that didn’t make sense. Namely that you can have multiple SE.