Daniel Ingram videos

I'm letting it play in the background while I work. It's not stuff I haven't heard before yet (first one is talking a lot about not having access to info about enlightenment, etc.). I must say it's a little funny - he doesn't do "dharma voice." I joke with friends that most teachers have this specific way of talking - kind of slow, pausing, dreamy voice and with a "I've spent ten years in India" vague accent - and Ingram just chats like a regular energetic kind of guy.

The talks remind me of the blog post (on dharma refugees blog) about emphasizing attainments vs not. I have to say in my own practice there were periods where knowing there was a map, a road, technique, stages, etc was really, really motivating and important (Ingram's book shocked me into action, but I soon after turned down other roads). And there were periods where maps/techniques/stages etc didn't matter at all. I don't think the structured approach is not useful - it has its benefits. Likewise the "be here now" kind of approach - also useful for certain people in certain places. Nice to have a wide variety of teaching approaches, so you can find what you need when you need it.

"dharma voice" -- right, I think that is true for a lot of teachers. Not all, but many.

There is some guy whose name I forget right now who teaches at Spirit Rock. The podcasts of his talks are great because he has this kind of street Bronx or Brooklyn accent and his language and examples are very down to earth and personal from his east coast urban background. For some reason this makes his teachings seem more immediate and compelling to me than the more "dharrma voice" types.

We were debating (friends and I) if dharma voice is just something you pick up from being on too many retreats, or if it is deliberately cultivated? It's funny how many voices there are: baseball announcer voice is different from NPR voice, from airport announcer voice, from TV news voice...

I'm one of those people who has the (bad?) tendency to imitate people I'm talking to, without thinking about it. I tend to get a strange non-American foreign accent in my English when traveling abroad, for example. People ask me where I'm from, and then I realize I'm speaking my "English with precise enunciation and no slang so foreigners can understand better."

Yes, I think it was Vinnie.

Tomo, I'll post about these actual videos for sure later on rather than "dharma voice."

@cmarti - isn't every teacher an acquired taste? I think about Adyashanti, for example, who I found just impenetrable and strange when a friend first sent me a link to his talks. But later I thought he was a frickin genius and he's now one of the biggest influences on my practice. Likewise I sent Adyashanti's link to a friend who recently started meditating, and she thought he was "cutesy" in an irritating way - both his style and his non-technical approach didn't make sense to her at her stage of practice. At another point I was really into Shinzen - I thought he had so much to say that rang true for what I was dealing with. I still appreciate the pointers from my mentor throughout this adventure, Alan Chapman, as he seems particularly able to not be tied into specific terminology and traditions, but has been able to adapt to what I need to hear at different times, whether relating to magick or meditation.

I don't think hardcore dharma CAN appeal broadly, any more than going to fitness boot camp appeals broadly (even among people who would like to be more fit) or going to a music institute for lessons would appeal to most people who would like to learn to play guitar.

Ingram's style is very technical and geeky, and many, many people - even those who "want to be enlightened" as a priority - will not find that appealing. Those who do will benefit from that approach - whether just as a starting place or more long term.

From my own experience I found it very encouraging when starting out to have a roadmap and process of such detail as Ingram outlines. I found the stages of insight from the Therevada tradition very useful for a while, when they mapped my experiences very clearly, and when I needed something to hang on to lest I feel I was just going nuts. When you hit those first bad dark nights, it is infinitely reassuring to read about everyone else experiencing the same thing, and I've *never* heard that discussed at any Buddhist centers or talks I've gone to. Later that sort of stage/map cycling became much less clear, and the whole technique/mapping thing became less important. But I wouldn't therefore say it's not important to anyone else, just because it isn't important to me now.

(no idea what Tomo had in mind either)

But, yes, Ingram is for sure not your typical "dharma" teacher. But isn't that part of the appeal, or his spiel anyway? The whole reason the hardcore dharma movement developed? That your typical teacher rarely talks about enlightenment as something real/achievable/available/whatever?

Do you think now, years after the launch of Ingram's book, that the scenario has changed in terms of most teachers talking about enlightenment more openly? Or is the "mushroom culture" still predominant?

My ideas on Ingram (until now at least) were always that he wasn't really trying to become a well known "dharma teacher," that he was more of passionate enthusiast who just wanted to share his thoughts, ideas, and experiences with whoever may want to listen. (Plus my experiences with emailing with him was that he was very generous with his knowledge) I've always liked that he was a full time physician who clearly wasn't in the dharma world for the money.

My first thought when I saw these videos this morning here and on facebook was that maybe he was trying to branch out, to become a regular teacher.

I don't know, I still haven't watched the videos.

I'm a little uncomfortable about Ingram. I think part of it is the fact that he opens his bio by saying, 'I am an arahat, I have achieved the following perfections:' which strikes me as a little autistic/timecubey. But beyond that, the 'hardcore' unremitting effort (and almost obsessive evaluation and measurement) towards achievements and attainments always strikes me as this extreme attachment to self-view and ego. There's an approach to practice that strikes me as D&D Wizard dharma, where it seems like the purpose of the practice is often to build up oneself and achieve great feats of mental power and wisdom.

@chris - how many of the open talkers have crossed paths with the hardcore dharma movement at some point? or are they coming from other traditions?

Just curious, because everyone I know of (except Shinzen and Adyashanti) at some point crossed paths with HD, so I figured my sample was definitely skewed (I'm thinking of various people who were at one time or another interacting via Buddhist Geeks, DhO, etc.). It seemed that a lot of the open conversation that was going on when I first ran into it originated out of that loosely interconnected web of acquaintances, and there was (and this is mentioned extensively in the first video of the current videos under discussion) the "fact" that openness needed to happen because there was a lack of openness in most dharma teaching. But like I said, that's the world I wandered into, so who knows what else is/was going on.

I'm a little uncomfortable about Ingram. I think part of it is the fact that he opens his bio by saying, 'I am an arahat, I have achieved the following perfections:' which strikes me as a little autistic/timecubey. But beyond that, the 'hardcore' unremitting effort (and almost obsessive evaluation and measurement) towards achievements and attainments always strikes me as this extreme attachment to self-view and ego. There's an approach to practice that strikes me as D&D Wizard dharma, where it seems like the purpose of the practice is often to build up oneself and achieve great feats of mental power and wisdom.

-cruxdestruct

Wow. What does "autistic/timecubey" mean? Maybe is the austistic dig sort of a Asbergers/Rainman kind of reference? That Ingram is just so into detail that he is skewed like an Asbergers person? I''ve actually thought from time to time that he might be borderline (and very high functioning) Asbergers. (For some weird reason I've been around several people diagnosed with Asbergers.)

"Timecubey" -- I don't have any reference for that. What is it?

What are "open talkers?"

Timecube is an old-school and richly detailed internet whackjob. Which is not to say at all that I think that DI himself is a whackjob; I just immediately become uncertain any time somebody announces their arahantship in the first sentence of their bio, in the exact same tone as you'd put down where you got your degree. Of course, if there actually is one specific thing as 'arahant', and he happens to be it, then obviously that's my problem, not his.

(also it bears noting that I'm not exactly sure how DI is using the term 'arhat', though I'm sure he explains it elsewhere. Given my tradition's much less fine-grained distinction among various enlightened beings, it could be that he uses it to refer to some kind of intermediate figure on the path whereas I use it to refer to someone who has attained full enlightenment and nibbana.)

Zach:
Calling himself an "arahant" (never sure on the spelling of this and many other words obviously) is part of the whole idea of the pragmatic/practical/hardore dharma movement. It's his way of being open and not ashamed to talk about and admit what he has attained practice-wise. I also think he is paying homage to a similar style of writing from dharma practicioners of many years ago who weren't so fussy about talking about their attainments as people are now.

And, he is using the term by the basic Theravada Four-Path model, in which people who have made it to fouth path are called arahants. Whether that is "full enlightenment" or not generates a LOT of debate.

"nibbana" -- i guess there are a lot of definitons out there of this. In the Ingram four-path theravada, Mahasi style vipassana world, it is another word for the fruition/cessation moment that happens when one has been in "high equanimity" for a period of time. So, in that definition Ingram has attained a lot of nibbana. (Me too for that matter) But, if "nibbana" is some kind of final perfection in which all suffering is gone forever, then no I don't think Ingram claims that.

Oh, what is your tradition? I thought is was Theravada/Vipassana from Thai Forest Tradition?

What I like:

1) the message that it can be done, known, attained

2) the message that all this "bad" stuff that comes up along the way is utterly normal (and I like how he mimicks the feeling of the stages with his babbling, almost puts me back in those states when he does it!)

3) the message that maps will help you keep practice going during the bad stuff and the good stuff

What I don't like:

1) implied message that "I've been through a lot of shit, I can handle going through a lot of shit, recognize it and respect my mad skills" (including his ability to pass a 5mm kidney stone)

2) implied message (but possibly my projection) that advanced degrees make one more worthy as does advanced attainments of levels of enlightenment

As much as I'd like to have him drop his "I'm awesome" thing... it's a package deal, I suspect. The only reason I know of him is because he is the way he is. The existance of his book and maps and the more common belief that this stuff is do-able only manifested, I suspect, because of that annoying attitude.

What can you do?

Yep, I'm Thai Forest*. But in my sangha, and in the talks that I listen to and draw my practice from, notions of four streams and the specific phenomenological features of enlightenment (or arahantship, or nibbana, and thus obviously whether they're the same or different) for the contemporary practitioner more or less never come up, except maybe as a technicality brought up by an eager scholar in Q&A. I suppose this might be a cause or effect of exactly the kind of 'Maybe for them, but not for us' attitude that we're railing against here; it doesn't really bother me.

To be honest even discussions of the jhanas tends to leave me rather unmoved. In my personal practice, the time and energy I spend thinking about what it's like at the end of the path, or how I know when I've hit certain milestones, feels unskillful and beside the point (again, for me; I am sure the people we're discussing comprise a number of truly excellent and wise practitioners). I am sometimes surprised, when I find myself on other, more 'scholarly' fora, at how much time and energy people spend quibbling into the talmudic details of exactly what level a given teacher might be at, or what arisings should no longer occur if a speaker presumes themselves to be a once-returner as opposed to a stream-enterer; it all kind of blends together for me, like people talking about their cars. Or, again, like D&D; there is a pleasure that I know well in memorizing a sophisticated system of attributes and rankings, and being able to navigate its logical entailments.

So I guess it's not that I feel like one shouldn't, or can't, discuss one's attainments. But if that's the only path to release from suffering I'm fucked, because I've got no stomach for it.

* Please never take any of my assertions about 'my tradition' or about Thai Forest as trying to speak factually about the Thai Forest Tradition in any objective sense. I'm only Thai Forest because all my teachers have been Thai Forest teachers. If there's any kind of canon, or consensus, or creed, which can be said to distinguish what the Thai Forest Tradition approves of or excludes in any kind of systematic or official way, I am wholly ignorant of it.