my idea of pragmatic dharma

Chris Marti wrote: Mind likes security. As human beings we like to classify, codify, know - with certainty. This makes us feel better, and safer. We are generally not comfortable with not knowing. We do not like uncertainty, we hate chaos. So we spend lots and lots of time classifying, creating categories, making ourselves think we really understand everything. Everything. Even when we don't really understand we try to convince ourselves that we do. I have always considered myself a pragmatic dharma devotee but I also recognize that me and my fellow pragmatic dharma followers have a tendency to overdo the codification and classification of everything related to the dharma. I believe it comes from the innate human desire to figure everything out. If we can just write it down, wiki it, know it, we'll grok it forever. My practice has taught me that permanence of that nature, and creating order amid the natural chaos, is not really possible.

But I think this could be said equally of any Buddhist tradition, for that is what "tradition" means: codification. Except maybe Zen, which is hard to assess one way or another in terms of whether time spent will be worth the time spent. I see pragmatic dharma as producing more discomfort and insecurity in me than more ancient traditions precisely because it is so eclectic, impure, individualized, insistent on self-reliance, and tolerant of messiness and chaos. So I guess I'm not following this tack. If anything, PD insists upon taking responsibility for one's own path. It also demands a letting go of the codification, but it is a letting go that is not merely a bypass or suppression of what one needs to learn by diving right into fixation, expectation, and the like.

Chris Marti wrote: Another issue I'd like to hear others' thoughts on is how well does pragmatic dharma play with the historical, lineage based traditions of Buddhism? My original perception was that not well at all - but I believe this tendency has reversed itself in the past few years. I think pragmatic dharma has matured a bit during that time. We now seem to be more tolerant of the older traditions and seem to accept them as something more than repositories of mushroom culture or superstitions about the practice.

Well, dharma is new in the West, so it is a new tradition. So I think that it is inevitable, in the beginning, that some babies will be thrown out with the bath water. It is evolving and will be for quite some time. I think much of the rejection regarding "mushroom culture" is spot on, having myself been involved in a very traditional Gelugpa center with lots of unhelpful and presumptive hierarchy, secrecy, guru-centrism, and fascination with Tibetanism (costumes, food, and other fetishes). Just as punk rock had to clean the palate after Moody Blues before we could appreciate Radiohead, so, too, do I think that there has to be some overshooting as a new tradition is melding with a new mainstream culture. Ultimately, I'm not all that concerned with whether PD plays well with traditions, but with whether traditions play well with PD. How is that for a provocative statement? Note, too, that I've listed my tradition here as Theravada, but I'm really divided about that. I probably should change that to PD, for I use the Thai Forest tradition for my meditation manuals (mixing samatha and vipassana within each sit), but I benefited incalculably from the honest communication in MCTB about maps and paths. So, I guess I have to admit that I'm eclectic, individualized, and therefore PD.

EDIT: When I was involved with traditional Tibetan Buddhism, the party line on purity of the lineage and tradition was nonstop. This is why I'm puzzled as to why anyone would align purity with PD over against the traditions. This insistence on purity caused me to waste a lot of time. I'm 50 years old and stared when I was 46. I have a terrible genetic profile for things to happen to me that may well prevent my awakening in this lifetime. My hair is on fire, so I don't want to have to wade through a bunch of layers of hierarchy and trappings to beg for a little honesty about practice that will work.

EDIT NO. 2: This said, there really are, I believe, some problems that attend careless mixing and matching of traditions. One can end up with some indecipherable mush from indiscriminate mixing. One thing that sometimes annoys me on forums is lack of basic knowledge of the old teachings and traditions. This lack of exposure creates some pretty bad blind spots. For example, without a basic understanding of the teaching of Dependent Origination and the complexities of karma, people may not understand how or why someone with 4th Path would not have ended all manner of suffering for good.

It should be noted that pragmatism is a uniquely American philosophical movement started in the 19th century by William James et al. Therefore, PD is an American, or "Western," new tradition. All the practice journals here are an exciting library of the tomes of this new tradition. Truly, this is the cradle of something great and new.

I'm trying to find this talk by Robert Thurman about his view that dharma will have to be basically invisible in modern society for it to be successful, integrated. First phase is subculture; second is mainstream.

I'm curious about which old teachings are particularly useful?

For myself, the 6 realms, 5 element frameworks have been crazy-useful (which I've mentioned a few times, in sort of a subtle way to promote conversation, but I might be the only person to really resonate with that material.)

I find the issue of eclecticism VS. taking on the whole package interesting. It brings up so much! I want to reflect more before committing anything to a post on that topic as I think there are pluses and minuses on both sides of that equation.

One thing I am noticing lately is that different systems definitely contradict each other and when I take a piece of one system, even though I may think I am being eclectic, there is a sense in which the system comes along implicitly with the method I picked up.

So in this case after picking up methods here and there, there can be all these subtle conflicting 'views' that are being implicitly held which ride along with the methods, causing subtle confusion.

I am starting to see the wisdom of my Vajrayana teachers who recommend not mixing lineages. There may well be something more operating in those statements than territoriality...

Chris:

By "codification" I mean any process that is reduced to a system of classification and even prescription. So, by this standard definition, the Buddha's list teachings are a codification of the process of awakening (the Four Noble Truths, the Five Spiritual Faculties, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Three Trainings, etc., etc.). Path models and progress-of-insight "maps" would also be examples.

assort,
break down,
categorize,
classify,
compartmentalize,
digest,
distinguish,
distribute,
grade,
group,
peg,
place,
rank,
relegate,
separate,
sort, and
type

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/codify

Chris Marti wrote: Another issue I'd like to hear others' thoughts on is how well does pragmatic dharma play with the historical, lineage based traditions of Buddhism? My original perception was that not well at all - but I believe this tendency has reversed itself in the past few years. I think pragmatic dharma has matured a bit during that time. We now seem to be more tolerant of the older traditions and seem to accept them as something more than repositories of mushroom culture or superstitions about the practice. I always felt it a bit odd that the pragmatic dharma movement was so quick to reject other methods, was not more open minded about them given that the main idea behind PD is "whatever works." I think Vince Horn/Buddhist Geeks has had a lot to do with the most recent trend, especially through his Buddhist Geeks Conferences.

Anyone?

1) I see pragmatic dharma as a reaction to mushroom dharma. I think it would be useful to define and contrast these apposing viewpoints so that it is very clear what we are talking about.
2) "I think pragmatic dharma has matured a bit during that time" I wonder if members of the PD community have matured to where they no longer consider themselves in that category anymore...depends on the defining qualities. If the defining qualities have changed over time it might be useful to identify where in their path this transition happened. (I hypothesize somewhere around third+ path.)
3) "Whatever works" and "pragmatic" have the problem of being too openly interpretable unless we pin it down. I was recently in what I consider a mushroom culture sangha that threw out the word pragmatic and I literally shuddered....here was a baby boomer; that hides his attainments; but knows the Mahasi method; but doesn't teach it; and he is co-opting terminology and believing it. (It was like your parents trying to use your generation's slang)
Would any sangha willingly agree to be put in a box against "whatever works" and "pragmatic"?

Chris:

It focuses more on the experiential as that is what we have to work with. At the end of the day the maps, hypotheses and practices we use are meant to help us investigate our experience. Concepts and maps and an intellectual understanding of the practice will only take a person so far and at those times it is the basis of our experience that must be the practice. How does experience play out? What is perception made up of? What are the assumptions (maps/concepts) we are using that might preventing us from seeing the non-conceptual experience of perception? This is another way of saying what shargrol said above - we use both our intellectual capacity to understand and our observation/investigation of experience to try to interpolate our way to "the way things are" -- which is quite nuanced and subtle, and not subject to fast and easy definitions and descriptions in words. And yet we all have to try to use words to describe what we discover because that's all we can do short of direct mind to mind telepathy. Again, this is nuanced and we have to try to hold onto several things at once - concepts and raw experience, maps and no maps, relative and absolute.

Chris,

I guess I'm not understanding where your view comes from that PD facilitates this balance less effectively than the frameworks of other traditions. The Buddha himself was the chief framework-monger.

I'm also genuinely curious why you think that a teacher is better able to assess whether someone has attained a path (however that path may be defined) than the individual who experienced it if awakening is experiential, immediate, and not subject, therefore, to third-party verification. Do you see the the role of the teacher as being a devil's advocate to promote skillful self-assessment? Not to put words in your mouth--but just to convey that I'm genuinely curious.

Jenny:

One thing that sometimes annoys me on forums is lack of basic knowledge of the old teachings and traditions. This lack of exposure creates some pretty bad blind spots.

Chris:

That's what I said!

Is it? I think that there are multiple strands to this thread, so I guess I'm not seeing the issue of lack of exposure to the old teachings as being the same problem as an imbalance of "intellect/conceptualization/mapping" and the Experiential and Direct.

I think that, in particular, newbies to PD, who basically congregate online, on forums, don't have even the basic teachings (frameworks) of the Buddha as a basis for communication as an essentially "Buddhist" tradition. So people may skip Part 1 of MCTB, for example, and start right up with noting or whatever, and then this gung-ho ramp-up leads to errors in reasoning and just wrong assumptions that can cause doubt and other problems. For example, loads of people come onto the DhO and spend gross amounts of time debating about why not all suffering is eradicated in arahats. The whole debate would be preempted if they simply understood that the Buddha promised the ending specifically of all-pervasive suffering, but karma continues while one lives, and therefore so does suffering of change and suffering of pain. That is what I mean as the current problem with PD, although I think it is more a problem with just zealous newbies who know no better and are using instantaneous peer communication for a library.

But the issue whether the PD maps pin things down too much and therefore actually hinder attainments--I'm not seeing it, though I'm admittedly not far along the path, so maybe I will see it more and more.

It seems to me that the challenge of getting 4th Path is analogous to the challenges of having to intuitively "relearn" how to meditate in Equanimity. Here is the paradox about Equanimity: Without MCTB1 and Shargrol and DhO, even as relatively intuitive and open as my style is, I would never in a million years have known how to relax my grip on technique and map-driven expectation and adjust to this completely different animal from previous stages. So in Equanimity, this allowance for it to show itself must happen, the intellectual attack on landing and dragging home an attainment must evaporate as a viable strategy. Strategy must evaporate as a strategy. Perhaps the fastest way to Equanimity is through its opposite, nonetheless.

Ironically, the maps were for me a shortcut to this dropping of map fixation in Equanimity. Understanding from MCTB maps what Equanimity required, I just completely stopped waiting for stream entry or looking for it. I just kept Equanimity going, and that was enough--partly because in itself such a relief after a brutal Dark Night. And, strangely, with the dropping of hope, great faith in process arose, a faith that was different from waiting and expectation. Mostly this faith was or seemed spontaneous, but note this too: I had also been reflecting a lot on the A&P event of July 2013, and the by-the-book order and quality of DN stages that followed that stage and culminating A&P event. There was no doubt that the maps were correct, and that this process was underway. So, maps--exceedingly helpful, actually, for getting into Equanimity stage, yet can be a trap and a recurrent trap, too, later on.

I'm not way down the path, as I say, but there is a way in which the PD maps can help with opening. I'm not so sure that there is some either-or that can be pinned on PD alone and not on other dharma frameworks. It is a new tradition; it will take a while to work the kinks out.

DreamWalker wrote: Would any sangha willingly agree to be put in a box against "whatever works" and "pragmatic"?

lol, this gave me a good chuckle....

I think if we look closer at the PD vs. Mushroom 'map' we need to acknowledge that projection and shadow stuff goes both ways in this.

PD folks are perhaps more familiar with the qualities mushroomy folks project onto the PD scene-- arrogance, intellectualism, scripting, etc-- but it may be wise to flip that and look at what we, as PD-identified folks (if such we are) project onto 'mushroom' sanghas.

In other words, to be conscious of abstraction when it comes to this model 'PD vs. mushroom'.

It's not that there isn't validity to the 'mushroom' characterization-- I guess I'm just suggesting this inquiry into *mutual* projection in order to differentiate THAT stuff from stuff that may look similar, such as the way many traditional sanghas which transmit solid dharma and get results may also not talk about attainments or place much emphasis on maps out of concern to avoid some of the pitfalls of that approach. These are two different things but 'mushroomy' dharma may be a sort of near-enemy shadow of a traditional format that actually does work haha... hard as that may be for us egalitarian, transparency- and pragmatic- oriented Americans especially to swallow

But I'm only, on my own path, becoming able to appreciate more traditional approaches (i.e., AS thoroughly pragmatic, in their own way) because at a crucial point I discovered MCTB and KFD and the maps and they made so much sense out of what I had been experiencing since my first 'big' a&p. So I don't want to be down on PD, transparency and openness. That said I feel strongly that the whole tumult around actualism and Kenneth's 'direct mode' and related experiments (for just two salient examples) reflect a massive eruption of shadow material in the PD scene that was not at all surprising to me, given what I could see as the dogmas of PD it actually appeared completely inevitable. 'The return of the repressed' is a fascinating thing.

Jake:

PD folks are perhaps more familiar with the qualities mushroomy folks project onto the PD scene-- arrogance, intellectualism, scripting, etc-- but it may be wise to flip that and look at what we, as PD-identified folks (if such we are) project onto 'mushroom' sanghas.

In other words, to be conscious of abstraction when it comes to this model 'PD vs. mushroom'.

It's not that there isn't validity to the 'mushroom' characterization-- I guess I'm just suggesting this inquiry into *mutual* projection in order to differentiate THAT stuff from stuff that may look similar, such as the way many traditional sanghas which transmit solid dharma and get results may also not talk about attainments or place much emphasis on maps out of concern to avoid some of the pitfalls of that approach. These are two different things but 'mushroomy' dharma may be a sort of near-enemy shadow of a traditional format that actually does work haha... hard as that may be for us egalitarian, transparency- and pragmatic- oriented Americans especially to swallow

This is a nicely nuanced comment, Jake.

It seems that PD is often a restarting place for people, like me, who have been to very traditional centers and encountered a lot of bullshit, meaning only impenetrable hierarchy, lack of access to "real" meditation instruction, pompous Western senior-student "teachers" who stopped calling on the likes of me in the canned classes because I asked hard, uncomfortable questions, and the like. Later, PD people seem to tend to branch back out to older traditions, no?

The bad taste in my mouth from the local center not only has caused me to project that onto traditional sanghas "in general," but also to somewhat unfairly project that onto what good I did actually get from being involved with the local Gelugpa center for a year and a half. I did receive a lot of book learning, for instance. Although I was frustrated at not receiving more intensive mediation instruction, I now recognize vis-a-vis online PD culture, how valuable that exposure to the old teachings is. And, there were months in which I was part of a very small group of people who showed up on Wednesday evenings to sit with our Geshe from Tibet, who was clearly (to me) a very realized being. Those meditations were probably too advanced for where I was, while the Meditation 101 was the opposite, but, hey, I got to sit with this master, regularly. He did make himself available.

One of the really interesting issues that came up at that center was that our Geshe refused to be people's personal teacher. He was an extremely humble man--to the point of having us bow to the Buddha but never to him (he joined us in bowing to the Buddha), to the point of never, ever sitting up higher than us, which I think is pretty rare in this tradition. He stated that he was not our "guru" but our "dharma friend." I wonder if he had read MCTB, lol! He was trying really hard to fit in with American egalitarianism. Ironically, the American students wanted him to do the Tibetan guru trip.

I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable with a lot of the mixing and matching of practices that goes on in PD. Maybe I just took the wash from my traditional place, but these old traditions are remarkably well worked out. Although I am excited to see what dharma will morph into in the "West," I sometimes cringe, because when you hastily start throwing in this and taking out that, I do think something oddly lopsided results in the awakening people attain, although that is only my completely arbitrarily subjective impression.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!
R.e. Gelugpas in general, they have a reputation for emphasizing book learning initially and the guru stuff applies more on the Vajrayana (tantric) level of teaching while the 'spiritual friend' relationship applies more to the Sutra (especially Mahayana) level of teachings in the Tibetan scheme. The Gelugpas emphasize Sutra stuff for beginners (which to them means like 20yrs lol) and generally reserve the tantric stuff for folks who are ordained and have been studying/practicing Sutric stuff for decades. So your Geshe's attitudes make a lot of sense in terms of the culture of his sect, at least in terms of my impression of them anyway.

The Traditions emerged in very different cultural contexts-- mostly agrarian Patriarchies. Some included elements of or were even grounded in more nomadic pastoral or hunter-gatherer cultures with much more egalitarian gender balance (such as the Shamanic elements in some Tibetan lineages, which lineages are filled with powerful female teachers and deities, as opposed to say the Gelugs at the other extreme who were totally wrapped up in patriarchal agrarian politics of raising armies and feudalism in addition to perpetuating a lot of monastic misogyny-- their whole rise to power was partly based on a polemical and physical attack on those earlier, more egaltitarian strains of Vajrayana.).

PD on the other hand is evolving in a very very different socio-cultural context in which the logic of egalitarianism and gender parity is more evident given current socio-economic and ecological factors so it makes sense we need to grapple both with individual awakening AND the larger socio-cultural stuff in terms of how we articulate our path, our realizations, etc. It is impossible to avoid: even adopting a Traditional approach in a conservative way is to engage this dialogue with history and to take a stand in regards to these issues, however passively one is attempting to take that stand, however much one is trying to avoid it.

Jake:

The Traditions emerged in very different cultural contexts-- mostly agrarian Patriarchies. Some included elements of or were even grounded in more nomadic pastoral or hunter-gatherer cultures with much more egalitarian gender balance (such as the Shamanic elements in some Tibetan lineages, which lineages are filled with powerful female teachers and deities, as opposed to say the Gelugs at the other extreme who were totally wrapped up in patriarchal agrarian politics of raising armies and feudalism in addition to perpetuating a lot of monastic misogyny-- their whole rise to power was partly based on a polemical and physical attack on those earlier, more egaltitarian strains of Vajrayana.).

Thanks for this synopsis--surely not one I received from my center! Yes, I think senior students basically had various nuns under him for personal teachers. Some were clearly getting tantic transmissions somewhere, sometime, but I never knew the details. Those Wednesday evening meditations did go into the more elementary "tantic" visualizations, which I found extremely difficult, not so much because I can't visualize, get into those places, but because the visualizations were so durn complex and detailed--too much going on! I finally started thinking, "Um, maybe I ought to master breath meditation first."

PD on the other hand is evolving in a very very different socio-cultural context in which the logic of egalitarianism and gender parity is more evident given current socio-economic and ecological factors so it makes sense we need to grapple both with individual awakening AND the larger socio-cultural stuff in terms of how we articulate our path, our realizations, etc. It is impossible to avoid: even adopting a Traditional approach in a conservative way is to engage this dialogue with history and to take a stand in regards to these issues, however passively one is attempting to take that stand, however much one is trying to avoid it.

Yes, we are living at an interesting nexus.

So I don't want to be down on PD, transparency and openness. That said I feel strongly that the whole tumult around actualism and Kenneth's 'direct mode' and related experiments (for just two salient examples) reflect a massive eruption of shadow material in the PD scene that was not at all surprising to me, given what I could see as the dogmas of PD it actually appeared completely inevitable. 'The return of the repressed' is a fascinating thing.

By this do you mean it was an attempt to deny our humanity by denying our affect, or do you mean it was a return to the relatively neglected body, emotions, and the enjoyment of 'content'? If neither then I'm not sure where you're going with this and would appreciate clarification. (I'm not trying to start a PCE shitstorm; I'd just like to understand this POV)

Also, can you clarify the dogmas of PD?

Chris:

And generally speaking the arguments are speculative as you are saying, as most often they are not being made by folks with advanced practices or who can speak from experience but by folks who are guessing, hypothesizing, and so on.

Yes, and you know, that sort of debating is a sort of addiction and really an avoidance of practice rather than a support of practice; for, as you say, it is designed to go round and round rather than being tested. I've gotten enmeshed in it myself, as about everyone active on here knows, and then have pulled out of it and felt like I was on some kind of drug.

Which leads me to make this shallow-sounding statement that I wish newbie people in PD would seriously try, as a community, to ground everything in sila. I mean, really. I can look back at earlier DhO and see that the "elders" set the tone and the standard of behavior and discourse. But where are they now? It gets run over with people cranked up on Dark Night noting and little else.

Goodness, I sound like an old prude, but you know what I mean. And the deal is, it isn't as if the site owner/leader is this way or indifferent to it. He seems to work very hard through morality and generosity. He's just busy and away, and it is unbalanced anyway to have just this one "alpha male" exemplar, for cult of personality erupts, and so forth. And then he has to quash that over and over and over again. I guess that is what happens, though, when you write a book and build a forum, as owner, around that.

And the sockpuppets. Did I mention the trolls and sockpuppets? Oh, yes, a gazillion times, yes.

Oh. I'm talking trash about the DhO again. I was over there earlier tonight to rejoice that the old hyper-masculine, militaristic-looking logotype was taken down. Also, there was interesting stuff posted by DW, which led to a bit about Emptiness-of-Time practices.

How about a rule that trash talking - even mildly - about DhO, Daniel, or other people (even in the abstract) is simply forbidden? Always. That makes it simple, right? It's important, if there's to be any kind of respectful and interesting conversation here, that you stop doing that. Agreed?

I am going to change gears entirely and put on my historian hat. My personal understanding of pragmatic dharma is that it originated in Burma, that Mahasi Sayadaw's teacher U Nārada was a key figure in introducing a focused insight practice, that Mahasi Sayadaw and U Pandita Sayadaw were brought to IMS by Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein, and the noting method these people taught became a powerful tool for westerners aiming to wake up. Then Bill Hamilton visited IMS and became disillusioned with the mushroom culture that had taken over, and he came to believe that a policy of secrecy and dependence on long retreats wasn't working. He influenced Kenneth and Daniel, Daniel wrote his book, Daniel started his forum, Kenneth started his, Chris and Jackson originated this forum, and now here we are. This is a bare thumbnail sketch. I'm omitting the disputes and differences in approach. A couple of years ago I read Bill's book Saints and Psychopths, and from that time on I have personally thought of myself as having a lineage through Bill, Daniel, and Kenneth. Colleayn once described my practice as dry Burmese insight, when I was post A&P and pre-first path. It felt kind of nifty to have a sense of where my practice fit in.

For about a year or more Kenneth and Beth were my teachers. Then I began working with Abre for the later paths. A person who was important to me as I worked toward 3rd was Leigh Brasington, who taught me the jhanas when I was on a two-week retreat with him at Cloud Mountain in August 2012. He was at Buddhist Geeks in 2013, and some of our Awakenetwork people attended a workshop with him. The previous year I talked with him at some length about pragmatic dharma, and while he was willing to admit that it's powerful, he was dubious about claims to enlightenment. From what I understood, he embraced the fetter model of the four paths. I was thus happy to see him at BG2013, because he had a chance to talk personally to Daniel and Kenneth, although I don't know whether he came away with a different point of view. The one thing I do remember from my 2012 retreat was that he was highly critical of people self-reporting path attainments. I told him that wasn't the way things work, that people describe their sits and experiences, and then a teacher or senior practitioner would make the call. As Chris has said, this was the practice on KFD.

On the subject of teachers: I met with Abre yesterday, and will talk more later on my own thread, but I was reminded of how absolutely necessary it is to work one-on-one with someone who can observe me in real time.

Yes, and you know, that sort of debating is a sort of addiction and really an avoidance of practice rather than a support of practice; for, as you say, it is designed to go round and round rather than being tested. I've gotten enmeshed in it myself, as about everyone active on here knows, and then have pulled out of it and felt like I was on some kind of drug.

Jenny, I really, really get this, as a former addict to this kind of thing, and someone who still slips up now and then. When I get (or used to get) started on something, I'd build up a huge head of steam and then just go blasting on down the track like a freight train. It's scary! I have to say that a lot--not all, but most--of that energy is just plain gone now, thanks to this practice.

It's also an avoidance maneuver, an aversive type's favorite recourse. It gives a person an illusion of power and clarity. All the best to you as you begin to see these things as they unfold.

I don't even know what Sila is. This word has been tossed around so much, and even after all of that, I still don't know what it means. I haven't seen very much of it personally.

As far as I can tell, the only real sila is supporting people in a real practice that will actually give results. The rest of it is quasi-sila.

Ona Kiser wrote: How about a rule that trash talking - even mildly - about DhO, Daniel, or other people (even in the abstract) is simply forbidden? Always. That makes it simple, right? It's important, if there's to be any kind of respectful and interesting conversation here, that you stop doing that. Agreed?

Whoa, hold on just a minute. There is a double standard going on here. I was joking about talking trash, or I wouldn't have said that I was talking trash. Um, obviously? Or do you think I'm that stupid? I did review my post, and I stand by everything I said above. I was characterizing the prevalent culture of that site truthfully, honestly, in line with Chris's equally (or more so, really) critical critique about the DhO, what was wrong with it, and why this forum spun off and away from it. I'm actually a moderator of the DhO, btw, and I've made much harsher statements against it there, in public.

How come others here get to criticize the DhO and by direct implication Daniel, but I don't?

Ona, you yourself, in the thread about Daniel's Powers talk. said he had perhaps gone mad. How do you think that comment would strike him? Because it struck me as quite disparaging, but you get a pass why now exactly? On the DhO, I would have called you out for breaking the DhO's rules about maligning people by way of claims of mental illness and maligning people for their religious preferences. Please explain, as my "elder" and exemplar of sila here, why that was okay but my stating what everyone, including Daniel, knows and publicly acknowledges about the DhO was against this site's rules.

What I wrote was a critique, just as you might critique Actual Freedom. Would a critique of that be disparagement?

Once again, I'm completely bewildered at the double standards here, the lack of sense of humor for anything but one's own jabs, and have to conclude that this site is no place for me.

Please sort this, for it is fundamentally wrong, period.