Jed McKenna's Enlighenment Trilogy

Okay, I want to take a survey of people who've read this guy. I have had a love/hate relationship with him ever since I started reading him, when I was in the terrifying review stage after 1st path. This was the first taste I'd had of emptiness, and I was not ready for prime time. Reading this guy's books made things worse. He made the entire enlightenment effort out to be a massive endurance contest, a huge agon (in the Greek sense of a contest of strength of character). I didn't quite figure out his self-analysis method, but worst of all, he described his attainment in terms that had him cut off from other people. I nervously questioned Beth about it--is this what it's going to be like? She reluctantly acknowledged that he's not too far off the mark, but the lack of sociability was probably a personality trait he had beforehand.

Anyway, here's my take on him now: he gets it, but he also thinks he and a tiny handful of others are the only ones who do, and that Buddhism is a fraud. Many do-it-yourself-ers think they're the only ones who know anything about anything. I put him in this category. Plus I don't like his rejection of compassion or any of the first training. He trims it down to the very bone. There's a machismo about his heroics that annoys me, and I don't like the manner he uses when he talks to/about most women, especially young women.

So there you are. What do others think? I'm just curious. As I said, I have a love/hate relationship with him. There's someone on the internet, a reviewer of teachers, who thinks Jed McKenna doesn't exist (in the usual sense as well as the sense we mean) and the works are fiction. There is no testing out of his approach in a public setting, in dialogue with others. There are no professed students. But I do think he has a forum, if in fact it's really him. Wish I could get him to a Buddhist Geeks conference or on one of our forums and pick his brains.

Laurel Carrington wrote: Anyway, here's my take on him now: he gets it, but he also thinks he and a tiny handful of others are the only ones who do, and that Buddhism is a fraud. Many do-it-yourself-ers think they're the only ones who know anything about anything. I put him in this category.

I've heard of him before but have little interest in learning more at this point. Your opinion of him is something I've experienced with other awakened teachers, I call them the "my enlightenment is better than yours" crowd. I'm puzzled by the lack of compassion some apparently awakened people exhibit. For me compassion came with waking up, and I actually did relatively little metta practice. Maybe it's insights into dukkha which conditions it. In that case a Buddhist looking at the 3Cs or a Christian contemplating Christ's suffering and sacrifice might have a leg up in that department. Yet there are Advaita folks who respond with compassion too, and I'm unaware of any part of their practices which might cause it to grow - other than seeing the One - somebody set me straight if I have that wrong.

We were discussing this a bit over on the Gary Weber thread. People's individual personalities as well as their life experience seem to have a strong impact on how awakening expresses itself - obviously there is also likely to be gradual maturation etc.

I also don't get it when people don't manifest compassion after awakening, for example, because to me it seems an intrinsic quality of awakeness. But I know in my own practice I'm still working through "my karma" or whatever you want to call it. I'd guess that happens uniquely to each of us, and how and when different qualities manifest (or don't) is based on a really complex tangle of factors and runs on its own timeline and is affected by what kinds of practices we do (which is impacted by our nature/personality/interests).

Laurel, I've read the first two, starting with the second. (Got them out of order through an inter-library loan program). I'll read the third one as well at some point.

For me, after reading the first few chapters, I kept having the phrase "reading this is like coming home" running through my mind. While the books "felt right" in a way, I too had some qualms about the extent of the letting go I might have to do. Interestingly, I distinctly remember a clear pang of grief and some release after finishing the second book (first).

It may have been his references to his full-on, full-time non-dual Realization that spurred me to do more reading about the subject, which I think had the domino effect on me.

I had done a bit of research on Jed McKenna and had also run across the theory that he was a fictional character. After reading, my take was that the book isn't about Jed, but is fully about the reader. In that sense, whether he exists or not doesn't matter so much to me. What matters is whether the books are effective in getting the reader to "The First Step."

Tom Otvos wrote:

Chris Marti wrote: The process doesn't change your personality, it changes your view.

I read the part, last night, where he was being interviewed by the journalist. He pretty much says exactly that:

Jed McKenna wrote: But then I came back all enlightened and everything, and I needed something to wear. I look around and there's my discarded ego lying in a pile on the floor so I slip into it and here I am.

We almost have to put that suit back on because it's still the only thing hanging in the closet after the dust settles. But after waking up we may see that we're really free to begin making a new suit to wear. It's up to us.

Yes, and there's a feedback between the suit and the occasion; once I started experimenting with new ways of being in the world after letting go of such a clingy identified attachment to my personality, I started finding myself in very different circumstances. It's almost frightening how much life circumstances can change in the light of clarity, just by living from a newfound integrity grounded in the openness of awakening rather than the closedness of identification..

I haven't read it. But one consideration would be: who was he, what was he like before? Was he a generally functional and balanced person? Did he hold down jobs, have a good family life? Was he pretty crazy or unstable? Perhaps his personal "conditions" (karma, psychological baggage, etc.) contributed to his specific experiences in a unique way.

I know many awake people who were and continue to be in happy families - in fact with better relationships with spouse and children and extended family than before, so it's clearly not a causal factor in creating dysfunction.

It could be that if someone was in a crappy relationship, awakening would open their eyes to the need to move on, where before they would be entangled in "but I should stay". Or it might help them find ways to resolve the conflict and improve the relationship.

Similarly, reading one guy's account of how golf ruined his life doesn't mean that golf ruins lives.

With the disclaimer that I do not find the issue of "done/not done" applicable, personally [to paraphrase Warren Zevon, "I'll be done when I'm dead."]-- let me venture a phrase that Ngak'chang Rinpoche uses to illustrate a not-uncommon view of the goal of practice/ spirituality:

"the Enlightenment Ward"

It's the place that people in the more Hindu versions of yoga ascend to-- so transcendent as to be unable to function in normal life, to care for themselves, to care about anything. It's the sort of thing you see in footage of Indian sadhu festivals: skinny, wild-eyed, naked guys who have stared into the sun for years, or elevated an arm until it has withered, or developed unusual abilities that I privately call "stupid d*ck tricks." If you think embodied human life is in itself 'the problem,' then escape from it all is going to be your goal, and this sort of thing is going to be symptomatic of success.

Confusion about the difference between the various strains of spirituality from the 'Mystic East' was much more common back in the 1960s and 1970s when the first generation of young American pioneers were traveling around in an often drug-addled cosmic equivalent of a pub-crawl. They were long on enthusiasm and short on discriminative insight.

The lack of discrimination has kind of filtered into the pop-culture understanding of the Asian traditions; I believe it is much more common among people influenced by Poonjaji and other Ramana Maharshi acolytes. The Man Himself-- admirable, even saintly, as he may be-- exhibited the archetypal trajectory: in the early days, had devotees not found him and cared for him, he was in a deep trance that would have ended when he did. Or that's the story that I heard-- from people who thought it proved how big a saint he was.

I wasn't very familiar with that history, Kate. It helps put things in perspective.

I liked the books, they were snarky and entertaining, kind of cutting through the everpresent spiritual BS in a way that seemed fresh to me at the time (pre MCTB for me). I think Jed went a bit far out to make the case that Herman Melville was enlightened. But maybe seeing hints of enlightenment in ordinary things is valuable.

I seem to recall Jed giving some statistic about the number of people that were "enlightened" like him, and he thought something like one in a billion. To me that's a guy who hasn't got out very much.

I do often use his admonishment of "further." At least for the time being it seems worthwhile to keep poking around.

I found Jed's first book entertaining, but ultimately not that helpful.

I've tried a number of times to read the second book, but I just get bored. He always portrays himself as the maverick enlightened guy who wins every discussion; who knows better than everyone, all the time; who doesn't really care about anyone personally, but acts like he does because that's what No-self is doing.

First off-- Jackson, I LOVE the you-&-baby pic! Thanks for sharing.

I've never more than flipped through the JMcK book [the first, I guess] on the bookstore shelf; it just never looked interesting. Having had such good descriptions from you all, I needn't bother to take a second look. I have long been put off by people who describe "the No-Self" at pontifical length, whether of the know-it-all sort, or the smarmy lovey-lighty sort.

Philosophically, there is the fundamental illogic of having "ascended to being" this sort of mythical creature. And, practically, I have not seen the results of selfless beneficence that might offset the silliness of the claims.

Tom Otvos wrote: There is facing your own shit, and then there is wallowing in it, rubbing it on the walls, and yelling "burn, burn, burn" in some orgiastic frenzy that really makes me question the process.

Thank you, Tom, for the belly laugh!

The close-minded "my way of seeing things is right and all others are stupid" thing is fairly common in all human beings and all subject areas in case you hadn't noticed...

Chris Marti wrote: Who here is being all "my way of seeing things is right and all others are stupid?"

I think they're talking about Jed McKenna being that way...

"Who here is being all "my way of seeing things is right and all others are stupid?" "

-- I took that to be a paraphrase of JMcK--?

I guess I come at the "sh*t" from a different angle: it seemed to me not to be "what I AM" [not least, because "am" generally was revealed to be a shorthand fiction]-- but "what I am DOING." Changing that up is a much more feasible proposition.

I may be guessing wrongly here, but it seems Tom is referring to a kind of spiritual theatrics that comes in and out of vogue: someone gets some bona fide insight, but the tale gets warped out of all usefulness by a need to be the hero of an intense drama. Adya seems to have kept this in check to a great extent; probably Zen training is helpful in this regard.