Welcome!

wellcome opera
what's an A&P event?

hi Chris, thanks opera used another acronym that I'm not familiar with:MCTB (' even after the motivational boost I got from MCTB a few years ago') would you mind helping me out again?
the links you posted for A&P are very clear and beatiful, by the way

Tomer, it's short for the title of a book by Daniel Ingram, called Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, which a lot of people here have read at some point, and for a lot of pragmatic dharma style practitioners was part of the inspiration for their practice.

great, thanks

The PDF is available for free at http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ , and a paper edition is available on Amazon .

Additionally, an updated version is available at the Dharma Overground site in wiki form.

It's a highly detailed description of the stages on the Theravada Progress of Insight path, from the point of view of someone with remarkable clarity, precision, accuracy, and speed of noting. The clarity and range of your experiences will most certainly vary from the descriptions.

It's certainly worth the read, but is by no means the only way down the path.

Thank you, Tomer.
I didn't realize my post was heavy on PD jargon, sorry! (note: PD is for Pragmatic Dharma, I learnt this one on this forum!!).
Thanks to Chris, Ona and andy for the clarifications.

Hello all. I'm Zach. I'm from Durham North Carolina (if that sounds obscure, it's where Duke University is) and just graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, where I founded a campus meditation group that's still going strong. Ona Kiser told me about this site, and I was thrilled to hear there was an online community of serious, skilled, pragmatic meditators.

My practice is pretty eclectic. I do meditations from Tibetan Buddhism, as well as awareness exercises from Gurdjieff's Fourth Way. I also practice Hermetic magic. I have regularly-scheduled identity crises, so my main tradition changes every morning

Excellent: how efficient to pencil in your identity crises!

Great to see you here, Zach. Hope you find it interesting and helpful.

Welcome, Zach!

Hi Zach, welcome! I'm definitely interested to hear more about Gurdjieff...

Hello! My name is Joe. I’m a 23-year-old graduate student, and I’ve been practicing for about six years (though seriously for only four), mostly in the Theravada tradition (if you're interested, I've posted a detailed practice history under "Joe's Thoughts," where I'm also going to try to keep a daily practice log -- awakenetwork.org/forum/111-personal-prac...joe-s-thoughts#15463 ). I first heard about awakenetwork at the Buddhist Geeks conference this past august, where I met a number of the people involved. I don't currently have a teacher, but hopefully that will be changing in the near future. In the meantime, I'm really looking forward to being a part of a community of such skilled and supportive practitioners.

Hi Joe. Welcome to AwakeNetwork. Looking forward to hearing more about your practice.

Welcome!

Hi, Joe! I remember you from BG2013 and am really happy to see you on the forum! I look forward to keeping up with your progress.

Hello and best wishes to all Dharma Refugees, and a big thank you to those who make this forum possible!

AugustLeo

Hello! Welcome.

Hey refugees! Good to see all of you here. I posted practice notes quite a bit on the old KFD with the same user name. I was going to start a practice notes thread again on Kenneth's new site but then I saw the thread about his forum possibly moving here.

I have been lurking for a few days checking everything out. I think this is a wonderfully organized site and I am happy to be here!

-Anthony

Hi everyone,

My name is Julie. I am a university professor in Bangkok, Thailand, where I also was born and raised until I graduated from high school. After that I moved to the US to persue higher education for 11 years before moving back to Thailand again about 1.5 years ago.

Even though people like to think that buddhism is prevalent in Thailand, strangely enough, I only began to seriously meditate in the US. In a way, it was partly motivated from a teacher in Thailand when I visited home one long summer after graduated from college. That meditation teacher, who was also once a scientist at NASA, said on TV that he got the ideas of how to solve research problem during meditation. I have always had so much fear and anxiety when it comes to research and always thought that I'm not good enough for it. You can see how hearing that really motivated me to meditate more regularly.

Of course, I did not "know" how to meditate then, so I stopped when I got really busy again in grad school. Life then became really difficult until one day I thought I would begin to practice again. This was when I bought "Insight meditation correspondence course" by Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg. My practice has become regular from then on. During the course, I passed through A&P and tried to make sense of my experience, so I browsed through websites and discovered Daniel Ingram's MTCB and the maps. I don't think I would say my practice was motivated much by his book though, but it served me well as a reminder to not fall into various traps. I have also practiced at Cambridge Insight Meditation center (CIMC) and sat a few retreats at IMS after that. I started participating on DhO about 2 years ago right before coming back to Thailand, but I never posted much. Recently, someone mentioned this site on there, so I thought I would join here too.

After spending so much time searching for a new teacher in Thailand here, I got kind of sick of it at the moment, and I'm just happy to just be practicing by myself with maybe some help from online community from time to time. Presently, I'm doing formal practice as much as I can as natural progress allows me to, but also believe that putting all areas of life together is part of the practice as well.

Welcome Julie. Thanks for the the introduction.

Hi Julie, welcome! May this community be of assistance to you as you need it.

HI Julie, Welcome!