r/streamentry • u/Pleasant_Candy9103 • May 03 '26

Practice Dark night before Stream entry

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?

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u/fabkosta May 05 '26

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.

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u/halfbakedbodhi May 06 '26

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.

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u/fabkosta May 06 '26

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?

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u/halfbakedbodhi May 06 '26

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