RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

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Willoughby Britton, modified 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 1:07 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 1:07 PM

RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

Posts: 21 Join Date: 1/12/11 Recent Posts
Here is another description of the stages of Insight from my colleague Ron Crouch.


http://ia600709.us.archive.org/4/items/WhatIsThePath/WhatIsThePath_.mp3


Daniel, I would love to hear your feedback...

How are you BTW? Cheetah House misses you...

PS: Tarin is visiting Cheetah House this week. emoticon
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Nikolai , modified 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 1:46 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 1:46 PM

RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

Posts: 1677 Join Date: 1/23/10 Recent Posts
Willoughby Britton:
Here is another description of the stages of Insight from my colleague Ron Crouch.


http://ia600709.us.archive.org/4/items/WhatIsThePath/WhatIsThePath_.mp3


Daniel, I would love to hear your feedback...

How are you BTW? Cheetah House misses you...

PS: Tarin is visiting Cheetah House this week. emoticon


Will Tarin have a video too?
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Willoughby Britton, modified 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 2:29 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 2:29 PM

RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

Posts: 21 Join Date: 1/12/11 Recent Posts
Hopefully.
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josh r s, modified 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 2:44 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 2:44 PM

RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

Posts: 337 Join Date: 9/16/11 Recent Posts
Will Tarin have a video too?


do eeeeeeeet!
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 12 Years ago at 11/15/11 2:05 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 11/13/11 9:26 PM

RE: Daniel Ingram on video talking about hardcore dharma

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Dear Willoughby,

Hey, good to hear from you. I am glad Tarin is going to be up there: I think you all will get a lot out of him. My best to you and to the Cheetah House Crew. I really enjoyed meeting and hanging out with you all.

I listened to the audio and had these points to make as they occurred to me. Some are picky, some perhaps just small asides, but a few I feel are pretty important:

I kept thinking that he was probably talking to a group of simple young children given his tone and pacing, like he was reading a bedtime story, but the language and topics are clearly sophisticated, so this dissonance, which I may have created for myself, sounded mismatched, but this may be my own quirk.

That said, some version of that tone and pacing is so commonly expected in certain meditation circles and communities, and many people have critiqued me numerous times for refusing to adopt it and pretend that I speak that way during those times when I talk about meditation, so perhaps his way of speaking (regardless of whether or not he actually speaks that way in other areas of his life, as that may just be the way he talks naturally and it just happens to sound similar to the highly-stylized way many dharma teachers talk when giving dharma talks) will reach people that I never could with my more rapid and sometimes frenetic approach.

The definitions of path seemed to include the notion that there were 16 paths correlating with the insight stages: this is his own unique usage, so far as I know, but obviously my exposure to the range of meditation communities and their lexicons is not comprehensive.

The Dark Night was not a term adopted by Kenneth Folk: this comes to Kenneth and I from the original IMS crew: Jack Kornfield and friends, having been used so far as I know long before Kenneth and I got into this stuff, (reference: its appearance in A Path with Heart, 1993, and the clear sense that it had been used long before that by Jack et al.) and perhaps before them, as I can only trace its origin that far back, and not to its beginning in terms applying to the stages of insight formally called the Knowledges of Suffering, meaning specifically that I don't know who first used the term that way, but it was neither of us. Kenneth and I both sat at IMS early on in our practice, and Bill Hamilton had been involved at IMS long before that, and so far as I know we got it from them.

"Physio-cognitive" is just a modern scientific way of saying "Mind and Body" which is actually the name of the first insight stage. I actually feel that this sort of retrofitting of modern science speak over the original terms will probably help mainstream the concepts, which is of value, and I think should be a whole, large, carefully crafted project that is worthy of its own website and team. Anyone want to start this?

Its Vimuttimagga, not Vituttimagga, or whatever he said, and generally translated as Path of Freedom, not Path to Freedom. He is so clear and articulate and careful with language that this double stumble almost sounded to me like a slightly cutesy way of slightly dissing himself for a humbling and leveling effect with his audience, but this could entirely be my own projection and maybe his inability to say that is real and I am making more of this than necessary.

He described the A&P as fantastic and wonderful, whereas aspects of it can be quite scary and disconcerting: wild spontaneous movements, explosions of consciousness, really strange and dramatic breathing patterns, etc.

A few cases: my first time crossing it I was blasted into an explosion of tingling sparks by a witch in a dream: there was nothing fun about it, and in fact I found it quite disconcerting.

A friend of mine walked onto a stage during a play and it hit her suddenly and without warning like a bomb going off, just that and then gone. She forgot her lines and barely was able to keep it together to keep the performance going.

A friend of mine had it rip through her during a yoga class, and she was so disconcerted by the aftereffects that she overcompensated during her drive home when an animal ran out in front of her and ran her car into a telephone pole, totaling the car (luckily she was unhurt).

It struck me one time driving home from Bhavana Society and for about 10 seconds reality was like this explosion of incomprehensible energy and I am amazed I didn't wreck my car, which was traveling at interstate speed, luckily without any traffic around, as I crossed into the other lane before I could figure out which way reality was.

Bill Hamilton was breathing so rapidly and forcefully during it on retreat that he got a hiatal hernia, so he told me. Selling this stuff as always benign is common but problematic and doesn't hold up to reality testing.

Further, the early stages for some people with strong concentration can be way, way beyond what he describes, and the contrast between the first three, which he describes as relatively mundane, and the A&P, which he describes as mystical and otherworldly, can break down.

For instance, I know someone who in Cause and Effect described their practice as these profound fully-formed dramatic visionary sequences of how their family history had played out in dramatic form through generations to cause them to be at point where they were at at that time, whereas for some they may notice nothing like that and all they notice is that their practice is "messing up the breath" and their feet shake when the note them and it is purely physical with little story or insight into anything mental at all.

It is not uncommon in the early stages for people with stronger concentration to see faces and other strange images in walls, shadow, wall-paper, floor tiles during those early three stages. Thus, what he describes if for people of lower concentration ability who are less powers-prone, which granted may be a majority, but for those who are more naturally concentration heavy or those who are really forcing it regardless of innate ability, they can be quite wild, visionary, magical, mythic, etc. even if they are just trying to do insight practice straight up.

On the flip side, for some the A&P is so short, so undramatic, that it can easily be missed. Case in point: the time I crossed it the summer between my Junior and Senior year in college, where it was about a 1 second zap of a quick vibration down through the back of my head and spine and it was gone: no more than that at all, but it lead to Dark Night stuff anyway. No joy or other raptures at all accompanied it.

Obviously in a one hour talk these specifics are way too much to go into, and his simplistic and abridged descriptions may have been more appropriate for that audience, as I am getting this out of the context of who he is addressing and the intended level of discourse.

I like his analogy of the being in and then watching the clothes dryer for the difference between Re-Observation and Low Equanimity.

His description of High Equanimity, however, had so many things that sounded more A&P-esque that I wondered about what caused that: particularly the fine, subtle vibrations, the dropping noting here (rather than in the A&P), and the like. Some of this may be idiosyncratic to him, as many people describe it as being more of a fluxing thing rather than a fine vibratory thing. Obviously, I know of so many people who mistake the A&P for Equanimity and Path that I am constantly on the alert for this, but it may have nothing to do with him and his practice at all.

That said, as the A&P and Equanimity are such common and compelling mimics, this is a point that might have been emphasized, and the general lack of a cautionary statement about the dangers of the maps and their easy misinterpretation and misapplication should probably generally be included with them, or at least this is my opinion, having seen them so misused so often.

The phrase "experiencing nirvana" rang oddly, obviously, as this is an utter non-experience, and that is such an important point, and so many people mistake experienced things for Fruition, that this should be corrected in the audio if that it possible.

Picky technical point: Path comes before Fruition, not after, meaning technically from an Abhidhamma point of view, it is the moment before Fruition that is the first moment of stream entry or the next path, as the moment before it is Change of Lineage.

Not everyone recognized the differences that Path creates the way he says, nor even that Path has occurred, nor the depth of relief and bliss that he (and many) felt afterwards, leading to a group of stream enterers that have no idea they are stream enterers (and this goes also for people who don't know they have higher paths) or that that moment was particularly special, necessarily. Some actually find it somewhat odd, like aspects of them have fallen away and they don't know what to do without them, like old habits and relationships and patterns don't apply or fit quite the same way.

Some of these critiques are a bit picky, obviously, but they were all thoughts that occurred to me as I listed to it, and you asked, so I jotted them down.

I think that it is good that there are simple presentations of the stages, and the only think I would add to them would be something that directed people to the wealth of further variation and technical information that would fill in the details of this simple and very accessible presentation so that those who want something beyond those could more easily find it and to acknowledge that these descriptions leave a lot out. Perhaps that occurs in the context in which this talk occurs and I just don't know it as I see it out of context.

I am glad that people are getting this stuff out there and thus hopefully reaching more diverse audiences with it.

Thanks for the link. It is interesting to see what people are putting out there.

I hope that you and the Cheetahs are well and happy. I am working a lot but well and having fun.

Daniel

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