Factors for Stream Entry
April 10, 2018

The Buddha describes four factors for stream entry, the first taste of awakening. When you look at the list, you realize that they’re basic factors for any serious practice. So whether you’re aiming at stream entry or not, it’s good to know these factors because they underlie all the practice, any kind of practice where you want to get results.

The first factor is associating with people of integrity. How do you recognize people of integrity? The Buddha gives a couple of tests. One requires you stay with that person for a while, so that you get to see the person in action. Then you ask two questions. Notice: would that person ever tell anyone to do something that would not be in that person’s best interest ? And two, would that person ever claim to know things that he doesn’t really know? If the person passes the test—in other words, the answer to both questions is No—this may be a person of integrity.

But to know these qualities, you have to have some integrity yourself in order to recognize integrity in other people. This is why the Buddha set down his prerequisites for a student: someone who was truthful and observant. You try to be observant both of yourself and of the teacher, and you try to be truthful to yourself and to the teacher. In other words, whatever comes up in your mind, whatever problems you have, you’re not embarrassed to talk about them. You don’t claim attainments that you haven’t attained.

So having some integrity is a basis for recognizing it in other people. Remember that old principle that crooked people can’t recognize people that are honest because they’re assuming everybody is crooked. It takes someone who’s honest to get a sense of who’s honest out there.

Once you find someone of integrity, then you listen the true Dhamma from that person. And again, the Buddha gives some tests for recognizing true Dhamma. The most important is, when you put it into practice, what kind of qualities does it give rise to in the mind. Does it give rise to greed, aversion, and delusion ? Then there’s something wrong. If it makes you difficult to maintain, if it makes you be burdensome on other people, then there’s something wrong. You look for a Dhamma that gives you good reasons to behave in skillful ways.

Then when you’re heard the Dhamma, the next factor is appropiate attention. This is where you have to put a lot into it. Appropiate attention means basically looking at things in terms of the four noble truths, seeing how whatever teaching you’ve learned from the Dhamma applies to the problem of suffering in your life: Where are you suffering? And what are you doing to cause that suffering? Notice that’s the question: What are you doing? We don’t blame the suffering on things outside or people outside. We look for the cause within ourselves. Then we figure out what we can do to practice so that we can abandon the cause. That’s always the question you should bring to any particular teaching: How does this apply to understanding suffering and putting an end to it?

There’s a passage where the Buddha said, “All I teach is suffering and the end of suffering.” Some people say, “Oh that’s not the case. He also teaches about levels of rebirth, about karma, and about all kinds of other things.” But, of course, all of these things are relevant to the question of suffering. As he said, birth is suffering. Now if there’s only one birth and you’ve already had it, then there wouldn’t be any reason to talk about it. But the thing is we keep on taking birth.

And there are all kinds of levels we can go to. Some of them are pretty horrendous. Some are pretty good but they don’t last forever. And it’s good to know this. It’s good motivation for the practice. As the Buddha said, all beings everywhere, no matter what level they’re on, are subject to aging, illness, and death. Think about that: No matter where you go, whatever level in the cosmos, there’s going to be aging, illness, and death. In some places it’s more subtle; in some places it’s more obvious, but it’s always going to be there. And the Buddha says when you reflect on this, it gives rise to the path. In other words a sense of samvega arises. You realize you really do want to get out of all this, no matter how good it is. So when you see someone even here on the human level, living a really comfortable life with lots of wealth, you don’t get jealous of them. You don’t say, “Oh I wish I could have that.” You realize that even if you had that, there would still be suffering.

So everything the Buddha taught is relevant to the question of what suffering is, what’s causing it, and what you can do to put an end to it. If you see all of his teachings as playing a role in answering these questions, then you understand what those teachings are for. The Buddha didn’t set out a cosmology just for the sake of having a cosmology. He didn’t analyze craving just because it was interesting. The analysis is there to help you understand what’s going on in your mind right now that’s making you suffer. The worldview is there to spur you on to realize you’ve got to get out of worlds entirely.

So that’s the motivation to take the teachings and really take them to heart, seeing how they apply specifically to this big problem inside you: the suffering you’re causing for yourself. Because if we didn’t cause suffering for ourselves, we wouldn’t be causing suffering for others. We wouldn’t be oppressing others. After all, we live in a world where everybody has to eat living beings of some kind. Even if it’s just plants, we have to depend on the labor of the farmers who plant the plants, and farming is not a pleasant occupation, it’s not an easy occupation. So you realize this world that we live in is just eating, eating, eating. This is what defines us. We feed both physically and mentally.

The question, then, is: Is there a way out?

When you think in those terms, it gives rise to dispassion—and that leads to the fourth factor: practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. As the texts say, that means practicing for the sake of dispassion. That also means bending yourself to the Dhamma, and not bending the Dhamma to fit your likes and dislikes. You realize that the Dhamma places demands on you. These four noble truths have duties. Some of them involve quite a lot of work, but you’re willing to put in the effort, because you want something better than just another world to go to.

So you use your understanding of right view and you apply it to the mind, trying to develop concentration, mindfulness, and all the other factors you need so that you can really see into the mind clearly. You use your right view to look at all other views that would pull you away, and you learn how to take them apart. Anything that would pull you off the path, you learn to see that it’s inconstant, stressful, not-self, not worthy of claiming. And so you take all the things that would take you off the path and you put them aside.

The real trick comes where you come to the point where have to put the path aside, too. Even for a stream enterer, there has to be a moment where you just drop everything.

Take the case of Anathapindika, who was a treasurer in Savatthi and a very busy man, but he had become a stream enterer. Once he was visiting a group of adherents of other sects and they wanted to know from him what the Buddha’s views were. And here he was, a stream enterer, yet he said: “I really don’t know the entirety of the Buddha’s views.” “But how about the monks? What abou them? What are their views?” “Well, I don’t know the entirety of their views, either.” “What about you? What are your views?” “I’ll be happy to tell you my views, but first you tell me yours.”

So they go down the list of all the big issues of that day: The world is eternal, the world is not eternal, it’s finite, it’s infinite, the body and the life force are the same thing, they’re something separate, an awakened person after death either exists or doesn’t exist, or both, or neither. Those were the hot issues of the day.

Then the Anathapindika points out that if you hold on to any of those things, those things are inconstant, stressful, put together, fabricated. Things of that nature are stressful, so if you’re going to hold on to them, you’re going to be holding on to stress. So they ask him, “What is your view?” He says, “I see that whatever is fabricated is not worthy of seeing as me or mine.” They say, “In that case, if you hold that view, then you’re holding on to stress, too.” He said, “No! I use that view to take other views apart and I also take it apart.”

Right view is the only view that can transcend itself in this way. And it’s in transcending the path that you attain stream entry. The path itself is what gets you there, but then you have to put it aside. Even though you hold on to it for the time being, there does come a point where you have to let it go. But you let it go not because it’s failed you, but because it’s served you well. The Buddha’s image is of a raft going across a river. You need the raft to get across the river but once you get to other side, you put it aside; you don’t have to carry it around on your head.

So these are things that are worth thinking about, regardless of whether you’re thinking about practicing for the sake of stream entry. If you’re practicing just to get the mind in good shape, it needs is these four qualities: associating with right people so that you can hear the true Dhamma and get good examples for how the Dhamma is lived. Then you use appropiate attention to apply it to your big problem in life: the suffering you’re causing yourself. And you’re thorough in how you do this. You realize that you really do want to put an end to suffering. You really do want to find a happiness that’s secure, and so you’re careful not to fall for anything less.

That’s the part that often makes it hard because it’s so easy to fall for other things — “It’s a nice practice, it makes me calm, it keeps me from going crazy in this crazy world” — a lot of people would stop right there. But there are some people who realize that there’s more, there’s better, and they don’t want to settle for second best. Those are the people who go far.

Of course, this is a choice that we make. And here the Buddha is giving you the tools for making a good choice.