Soh Wei Yu

The Original Pure Land
Padmasambhava is to be inseparable from the primordial nature.
His Copper-Colored Mountain buddhafield is the purity of your personal experience.
May everyone be born in this original pure land,
The uncontrived natural state of indivisible appearance and awareness.
CHOKGYUR LINGPA
(Jewels of Enlightenment: Wisdom Teachings from the Great Tibetan Masters
By Erik Pema Kunsang)
29 Comments
Comments

Mr. A
Sounds very Advaitic Soh
🙂

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
That is dzogchen view, however dzogchen is different from Advaita as explained by the Dzogchen teacher Arcaya Malcolm Smith and his student Kyle Dixon:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2020/08/acarya-malcolm-on-dzogchen-and-advaita.html
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.BLOGSPOT.COM
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
Acarya Malcolm on Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta
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Mr. A
Soh
, excerpt from your reference provided above,
"This is a non-reductive system. Nothing is actually reifed as being established at the end of the path. Just an array of illusory appearances"… See More

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
Illusory appearances do not “exist”. They are empty of extremes such as existence or non existence

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Mr. A
Soh
, yes....I am also talking of "illusory" appearances dear. Why would one use the word "illusory"?!

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Mr. A
Even in Advaita all phenomena neither exist nor not exist. They are called mithya (neither sat nor asat)

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Soh Wei Yu
Mr. A
No substrate is necessary.
Substrate implies a background. It is seen here that the sense of a background is erroneous. There is no background. Appearances are just vibrant transparent pellucid presencing. Even what you call I - even in the absence of five senses - is just another “foreground” manifestation mistaken into an ultimate background.
I will stop here because it is likely going to end up in a neverending debate

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Soh Wei Yu
You either realise it or do not

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Mr. A
Soh
you have grown wise. I agree, three thousand years have not resolved this. But just to let you know there are refutations to what you have stated too in Shankara's Upadeshasahasri.
At any rate. I ain't serious. Just enjoying some appearances 🙂

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Soh Wei Yu
Right now every manifestation is pellucid, vibrant, utterly alive, bright, transparent, boundless, presencing all and everywhere with no trace of self/Self/objects
Utter joy and bliss
Utter perfection and purity everywhere
Utter paradise
Eyes always wide opened all senses open and beaming with brilliance without the dichotomy of sense organs, sense object and sense consciousness
Energetic radiance in total exertion
Transcendence is in the ordinary, nirvana is samsara
What was realised as “I” is just the same luminous taste in all manifestation, except there is no background I. That background unchanging is simply a wrong view. “Who” no longer applies, it is a flawed enquiry, and no longer applies for the past ten years.

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Mr. A
Wait, wait, let me spoil some of your utter joy and bliss 🙂
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Good descriptions, regardless of whether it is 'full enlightenment'

 

[11:13 AM, 9/5/2020] Soh Wei Yu:


https://youtu.be/4t8KvdMtT4A

 
[11:46 AM, 9/5/2020] John Tan: I like his descriptions, quite good but may result in energy imbalances.  Best is to practice breathing exercises and learn to regulate the energy into calmness...

 


Comments by Soh:

 One good way to regulate energy through breathing exercise is to practice the vase breathing.

 

Here is an excerpt from “Open Mind, Open Heart” by Tsoknyi Rinpoche:

 

“Vase Breathing

 

One of the methods that helped this woman and countles others cope with emotions is a practice that helps us draw lung back to its center, or “home.” For this, we use a special breathing technique as a tool, because breath is a physical correlation to the subtle wind energy of lung.

 

This technique is called vase breathing, and it involves breathing even more deeply than the type of deep diaphragmatic breathing often taught in many yoga and other types of classes with which people may be familiar.

 

The technique itself is rather simple. First, exhale slowly and completely, collapsing the abdominal muscles as close to the spine as possible. As you slowly breathe in, imagine that you’re drawing your breath down to an area about four finger widths below your navel, just above your pubic bone. This area is shaped a bit like a vase, which is why the technique is called vase breathing. Of course, you’re not really drawing your breath down to that region, but by turning your attention there, you will find yourself inhaling a bit more deeply than usual and will experience a bit more of an expansion in the vase region.

 

As you continue to draw your breath in and your attention down, your lung will gradually begin to travel down there and begin to rest there. Hold your breath down in the vase region just for a few seconds - don’t wait until the need to exhale becomes urgent - then slowly breathe out again.

 

Just breathe slowly this way three or four times, exhaling completely and inhaling down into the vase area. After the third or fourth inhalation, try holding a little bit of your breath - maybe 10 percent - in the vase area at the end of the exhalation, focusing very lightly and gently on maintaining a bit of lung in its home place.

 

Try it now.

 

Exhale completely and then breathe slowly and gently down to the vase area three or four times, and on the last exhalation, hold a little bit of breath in the vase area. Keep this up for about ten minutes.

 

How did that feel?

 

Maybe it was a little uncomfortable. Some people have said that directing their breath in this way is difficult. Others have said that doing so gave them a sense of calmness and centeredness they’d never felt before.

 

Vase breathing, if practiced ten or even twenty minutes every day, can become a direct means of developing awareness of our feelings and learning how to work with them even while we’re engaged in our daily activities. When our lung is centered in its home place, our bodies, or feelings, and our thoughts gradually find a healthy balance. The horse and rider work together in a very loose and easy way, neither trying to seize control or drive the other crazy. In the process, we find that subtle body patterns associated with fear, pain, anxiety, anger, restlessness, and so on gradually loosen up, that there’s a little bit of space between the mind and the feelings.

 

Ultimately the goal is to be able to maintain that small bit of breath in the vase area throughout the day, during all our activities - walking, talking, eating, drinking, driving. For some people, this ability becomes automatic after only a short while of practice. For others, it may require a bit more time.

 

I have to admit that, even after years of practicing, I still find that I sometimes lose my connection to my home base, especially when meeting with people who are very speedy. I’m a bit of a speedy person myself, and meeting other speedy people acts as a kind of subtle body stimulus. I get caught up in their restless and displaced energy and consequently become a bit restless, nervous, and sometimes even anxious. So I take what I call a reminder breath: exhaling completely, breathing down into the vase area, and then exhaling again leaving a little bit of breath in the lung’s home.”

 





  • All the 4 parts of his talks [The Silent Mind] are good.👍
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    John Tan: What do u find lacking in Alan Watt's "The silent mind" talk?

    He spoke of anatta, seeing DO, emptiness of mental constructs, effortlessness and spontaneity, in the flow but what is missing?  Or do u see anything missing?
     
    [12:35 PM, 9/1/2020] Soh Wei Yu: Didnt describe intensity of luminosity?
    [12:37 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: Yes.  Directness always have this clean, pure, pristine and transparent taste because there no imputation blocking.



    On someone else:

    [6:13 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: Possible but experience should b natural and spontaneous, no strain and no effort.

    What appears is fully transparent, vivid, pure, clean and pristine as the layer that blocks dissapears.

    Until each moment of experience is free from observer and observed, just natural spontaneous pellucid appearance in obviousness.

    When we de-construct more and more, we will also notice the relationship between radiance energy and mental deconstructions.  The universe will reveal itself more and more as radiance of vibrational energies in  dance rather than "concrete things".
    [6:16 PM, 9/1/2020] Soh Wei Yu: Oic..
    [6:23 PM, 9/1/2020] John Tan: As for non-conceptuality, it is not a mind trying to free itself from symbols and language.  Rather it is the insight that sees through mental constructs (reifications) and conventionalities.  It is an unbinding process of freeing the mind from being blinded by the semantics of conventions (existence, physicality, cause and effect, production) that is more crucial.

Sent this to William Gaucher, who went through the earlier thusness stages and realised anatta recently and contacted me via the blog, after a discussion about fabrication and luminosity.


John tan said the following article is very good.


All Around, All at Once: Part 3: “Unfabricated”

Presented by Ven. Jinmyo Renge Osho-ajari

Dainen-ji, November 17, 2017

 

Each moment unfolds as a display of richness, of colours and forms and sounds, as a myriad of sensations. Sincere practice is allowing the whole bodymind to live as the brightness of seeing, the depth of sound, as ever-changing sensations, as the Luminosity of experiencing as a whole. And when we allow ourselves to do even a measure of this, there is a quality of questioning, of interest, of intimacy with everything that is being experienced. But to do this requires that we choose to stop following the congealing of attention into fabrications that lead to further contraction and inevitably, suffering.

 

Anzan Hoshin roshi says, in the series of classes on “The 8000 Line Prajnaparamita sutra”:

 

    Fear is the underlying mechanism of self-image, the attempt to reify reality in the most basic kind of way by simply freezing it and contracting. And the conventions of consensual experience or the experience of those who are unlearned, those who have not studied their experience, those who have not heard the Dharma, who have not practiced it, those whose lives are based on the understanding of a culture which is itself founded on contraction, will allow themselves to fall into that fear and will allow themselves to be held back by that fear from their own freedom.

 

What this points to is that we must wordlessly examine absolutely everything, taking nothing for granted: not who we think we are, not our memories, not what we think the body is, not what we think the mind is, not what our tendencies and habits tell us to do, not what our anger or fear is telling us to do. Any state you experience, any stance, any structure of attention you experience is not necessary. They are all recoil. They are all self-inflicted damage.

 

As the Roshi explained in Class 4 of the series “The Development of Buddhist Psychology:

 

    All conditioned existence gives rise to dukkha or unsatisfactoriness, suffering, contraction, confusion; that this suffering, this dukkha, is fueled by the mechanism of grasping, of trying to hold on to something when it cannot be held and by continually misunderstanding the nature of our experience.

 

“Dukkha” does not describe one particular kind of state and the "suffering" isn’t necessarily traumatic or dramatic. I mention this because sometimes students will describe a particular kind of state, such as boredom, as dukkha. For example, a student might describe a state of sinking mind, of disinterest, when what they really mean is boredom, and boredom is the result of stupidity klesa. In other words, boredom is a way of experiencing that is poisoned by a flattening of attention that you are fabricating, following, propagating. It is a kind of pouting that one is not being entertained. It is not as dramatic as the tantrums of anger or grasping. But it is still a childish tactic.

 

But dukkha refers to all  states which are the result of conditioned experience, and all states create suffering, unsatisfactoriness and bondage.

 

The roots of the Pali word "dukkha" are "jur" and "kha." "Bad" and "space". The root metaphor behind this is the hole in a wheel through which the axle passes being blocked. So the word means obstructed space.

 

We need to learn that the space of who we are, which is present as seeing and hearing and just the fact of experience is already open. When you are in a state, you think you have no choice about that, but the truth of the matter is that you are not choosing. You are following compulsion. Choose to actually practise and open attention and the axle will turn freely.

 

It’s easy to cultivate states when you are sitting - states of boredom, states of calm, states of quiet, states of euphoria, shiny, shiny states. But all of these are dead ends because whatever is experienced within the state can only be the product of the state. The context is narrowed to the kind of content that suits it. And this is why such states can seem so convincing, and so compelling. This is why you fixate on them. There is no one who is better at lying to you than you are, and the thing that’s convinced by the lie is the same thing that’s doing the lying. It’s not magic once you understand how the trick works. The states define who and what is imagined as a self but is really just a process of obstruction and fabrication.

 

    In Zen practice, however, what we are doing is attending openly, rather than fixating. You can’t ‘fix’ a state from inside of a state. You have to open around it and release it first. Anything you experience when attention is arranged in a structure (a state) is going to be biased and therefore cannot be true. Seeing these structures and learning to attend to them more and more openly with the whole of your experience is part of the many truths that zazen reveals. In the Class Six Outline in the series, “The Development of Buddhist Psychology”, the Roshi said,The Buddha has clearly seen that the root of dukkha was clinging to what  could not be clung to. This clinging was the result of conceiving of the impermanent and dynamic exertion of experience to be a collection of real and permanent objects and entities, believing that this clinging will bring pleasure and satisfaction whereas it results only in suffering and confusion, and that what is selfless and beyond the personal is self and personal. The succession of these moments of grasping and confusion he called “samsara”, the “flow”. He called the cessation of this useless struggle and strategic approach to experience “nibbana”, the “blowing out”. In many places throughout the early texts, we find the Buddha again and again asking students to give up their spiritual and secular strategies and just understand something so obvious that it is often missed.

 

This is why we ask students to sit according to a schedule, why the Roshi has said so often that “the schedule IS Buddha”. The dreaded committed sittings and the schedule you have promised to follow is important because you have to make choices that go beyond compulsion in order to do it. It is something in your life that will insist that you go further than your habits and tendencies dictate and can invite you into the world of the Buddhas. The world of the Buddhas is unfabricated and unborn and you arrive there by releasing yourself into it.

 

We sit zazen and we do this practice because moment after moment, we do not understand. Any snippets of understanding that come and go are not enough. We cannot afford to entertain ourselves with our states, our thoughts, our interpretations, our fabrications. These are all part of how we misunderstand and will not help us to clarify our understanding. We cannot afford to be lazy. So ‪this morning‬ and throughout this Dharma Assembly, please make the effort to really practise the richness of colours and forms and sounds, the nuance of sensations. Allow the whole bodymind to live as the brightness of seeing, the depth of sound, as ever-changing sensations, and as the Luminosity of experiencing as a whole, by opening all around, all at once.

Also see:
What is Nirvana?
Great Resource of Buddha's Teachings
The Deathless in Buddhadharma?
The Meaning of Nirvana

Early Buddhism's Model of Awakening

The Mahayana Model of Awakening
Buddhahood: The End of All Emotional/Mental Afflictions and Knowledge Obscurations

 


One of the most top-voted threads on Reddit's streamentry subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/igored/insight_buddhism_a_reconsideration_of_the_meaning/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf%20

 

[9:07 PM, 8/27/2020] John Tan: Yes pretty much agree with what he said.
[9:40 PM, 8/27/2020] John Tan: But the same insight of anatta must be applied to object, characteristics, cause and effect, production and cessation...which is a more slippery issue.  Nevertheless, experientially seeing through self/Self is still most crucial.

 

 

 

John TanFriday, January 23, 2015 at 6:13pm UTC+08

u cannot choose and pick what u like about liberation and enlightenment. Saying one has actualized anatta and uprooted self and attained arahatship is not what u see ppl declaring here and there. I have told u many times what [these people] realized is only at most stream entry. U r talking about liberation and freedom from cyclical existence and therefore u r referring to arahatship.

 

 

......

 

 

 

[6:11 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: This article is written myriad object?
[6:14 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: Should put geoff and myriad objects article in main link, I think it clears a lot of misconceptions.
Soh: Yeah.. ok
Main link as in the stickied posts in atr blog?
John Tan: Yes
Soh: Ok
[9:58 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: Any links to insightful articles?
[9:58 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: I think a section on that is good
Soh: Ok.. later i think how to create
John Tan: Otherwise many ppl might missed all these good articles
[9:59 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: Otherwise many ppl might missed all these good articles
[9:59 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: And its really difficult to search through the whole blog other than u 😂😂😂
[10:00 am, 19/04/2022] John Tan: Nafis is another one that probably went through the whole blog... Lol
Soh: yeah im surprise he is becoming like me.. many of the posts he pasted was what i wanted to pasted but lazy
lol

 


….

Update, 2024:


I recently wrote on reddit:


What Krodha said in this thread is right: "It is quite rare to attain stream entry, I’ve been involved with dharma for over a decade and can count those who are tried and true stream entrants on one hand. That said, contemplate the Bahiya and Kalakarama suttas and cultivate the first dhyāna."


I would add that many people have misunderstood what stream entry is. Maybe 99% on reddit. The only thread on the streamentry subreddit that correctly presents stream entry can be found in https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/igored/insight_buddhism_a_reconsideration_of_the_meaning/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf%20 , it is a good read and highly recommended reading.




——


Glad you liked it. If that interests you, I think this should interest you too. On nondual awareness and its nature and the subtleties of insight:


https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-

experience.html


https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html


https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2007/03/mistaken-reality-of-amness.html


🙏 :) p.s. I'm Soh, and Thusness (John Tan) is my mentor... I've been through similar stages in my journey


——




Self-view is well defined, for example, as I quoted in my article:


The contemplation of neti neti, or dissociation, the separation of the witness from the witnessed, Self from not-self and so on, is done to 'support' a position of a true Self. So with regards to the phenomenal world of everchanging things, I reject as not me and mine, for I am the ultimate Witness that is perceiving all these.


This is the false View no. 4 described in Sabbasava Sutta: "...As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will stay just as it is for eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress." - the commentary of 'Middle Length Discourses' book explains, "of these six views, the first two represent the simple antinomy of eternalism and annihilationism; the view that ‘no self exists for me’ is not the non-self doctrine of the Buddha, but the materialist view that identifies the individual with the body and thus holds that there is no personal continuity beyond death. The next three views may be understood to arise out of the philosophically more sophisticated observation that experience has a built-in reflexive structure that allows for self-consciousness, the capacity of the mind to become cognizant of itself, its contents, and the body with which it is inter-connected. Engaged in a search for his 'true nature,' the untaught ordinary person will identify self either with both aspects of the experience (view 3), or with the observer alone (view 4), or with the observed alone (view 5). The last  view is a full-blown version of eternalism in which all reservations have been discarded."”


https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2011/10/anatta-not-self-or-no-self_1.html


The insight and realisation of anatman puts an end to all views of self.



——




Since self view is well defined by Buddha in several suttas, that is a very clear indication of when stream entry occurs. Most people however misunderstand that point and have a watered down version of “ending self view”.


So yes what you said is right it is not arbitrary


On a related note, i wrote an article about the different degrees of no self. Only the true anatman insight can end self view, not mere non doership, impersonality or even nondual: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2020/04/different-degress-of-no-self-non.html



….

A crucial criteria in Buddha's teachings on stream entry is the ending of self-view. This ending of self-view marks the attainment of stream entry.

Krodha/Kyle Dixon explained well what that entails: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/15m6m36/explain_like_im_five_what_is_selfview_how_to/

What's an easy way to identify self view in daily life?

Self-view is the nonconceptual feeling of being an inner subjective knower of external phenomena that feel separate from you. If you feel that you are the seer of sights, hearer of sounds, feeler of feelings, knower of the known, that is self-view.

Overcoming self-view looks like this:

With the recognition of selflessness there is an emptying out of both the “subject” and “object” aspects of experience. We come to understand that “I-making” and “mine-making” with regard to the mind and body as well as all external representations is deluded. When the recognition of selflessness is fully developed there is no longer any reification of substantial referents to be experienced in relation to subjective grasping. Whatever is seen is merely the seen (diṭṭhamatta). Whatever is heard or sensed is merely the heard (sutamatta) and merely the sensed (mutamatta). Whatever is known is merely the known (viññātamatta). This is explained in Ud 1.10 Bāhiya Sutta:

"Then, Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bāhiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress."

When there is no self to be found one’s experience becomes very simple, direct, and uncluttered. When seeing, there is the coming together of visible form, the eye, and visual consciousness, that’s all. There is no separate “seer.” The seer is entirely dependent upon the seen. There can be no seer independent of the seen. There is no separate, independent subject or self.

This is also the case for the sensory object. The “seen” is entirely dependent upon the eye faculty and visual consciousness. There can be no object seen independent of the eye faculty and cognition. This is the case for all possible sensory objects. There is no separate, independent sensory object.

The same holds true for sensory consciousness as well. “Seeing” is entirely dependent upon the eye and visible form. There can be no seeing independent of the eye and cognition. This is the case for all possible sensory cognitions. There is no separate, independent sensory consciousness.

It’s important to understand this experientially. Let’s take the straightforward empirical experience of you looking at this screen right now as an example. Conventionally speaking, you could describe the experience as “I see the computer screen.” Another way of describing this is that there’s a “seer” who “sees” the “seen.” But look at the screen: are there really three independent and separate parts to your experience? Or are “seer,” “sees,” and “seen,” just three conceptual labels applied to this experience in which the three parts are entirely interdependent?

The “seer,” “seen,” and “seeing” are all empty and insubstantial. The eye faculty, visible form, and visual consciousness are all interdependent aspects of the same experience. You can’t peel one away and still have a sensory experience — there is no separation. AN 4.24 Kāḷakārāma Sutta:

Thus, monks, the Tathāgata does not conceive an [object] seen when seeing what is to be seen. He does not conceive an unseen. He does not conceive a to-be-seen. He does not conceive a seer.

He does not conceive an [object] heard when hearing what is to be heard. He does not conceive an unheard. He does not conceive a to-be-heard. He does not conceive a hearer.

He does not conceive an [object] sensed when sensing what is to be sensed. He does not conceive an unsensed. He does not conceive a to-be-sensed. He does not conceive a senser.

He does not conceive an [object] known when knowing what is to be known. He does not conceive an unknown. He does not conceive a to-be-known. He does not conceive a knower.

Sensory consciousness can’t be isolated as separate and independent. Nor can any of these other interdependent phenomena. Even the designations that we apply to these various phenomena are entirely conventional, dependent designations. But this doesn’t mean that we should now interpret our experience as being some sort of cosmic oneness or unity consciousness or whatever one may want to call it. That's just another empty, dependent label isn’t it? The whole point of this analysis is to see the emptiness of all referents, and thereby stop constructing and defining a “self.”
— Geoff/Jnana

15

Note by Soh: For the full chapter and article by Geoff/Jnana which is very highly recommended, "required reading", please read in full: Great Resource of Buddha's Teachings



Update, 2022:


Someone wrote:

>the first five looks fairly easy, even somebody trained in Adaita Vendanta could do most of them



Soh:


Actually what triggers stream entry would be a direct experiential realization of anatman and conditionality. This is different from the realization of atman-brahman in Hinduism or Advaita Vedanta.


Anatman could be summarised as the realization that in truth, always already, in seeing, there is just the seen, no seer, in hearing, there is just sound, no hearer, and so on. Read Bahiya Sutta and Kalaka Sutta for example. Also check out the chapters on selflessness and cessation in this well compiled PDF: https://app.box.com/s/nxby5606lbaei9oudiz6xsyrdasacqph


Also, you should read this well written article explaining what stream entry is, what the realization entails, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/igored/insight_buddhism_a_reconsideration_of_the_meaning/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf%20


When the direct realization of anatman manifests and you attain stream entry, you instantly cut off the first three fetters all at once. You will no longer have skeptical doubt about the Buddhadharma because now you have direct experiential realization of it and have ascertained the Buddha's words to be true.



Edit and update on my first point: When you experience impersonality and even nondual even in Advaita Vedanta, it is certainly not the overcoming of self view of the first fetter. There can still be the view of an unchanging self or awareness like vedanta. It is very clear by reading all the suttas that overcoming of self view covers even eternal witness and substantialist nondual views, so impersonality and nondual does not reach the elimination of self view that a stream enterer has attained.


I wrote an article before with citations from Buddha on how all these self views are refuted, including an eternal witness or an unchanging infinite consciousness as self and so on http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2011/10/anatta-not-self-or-no-self_1.html — stream entry realization covers the dissolution of all these subtle views of self and inherent existence.