| | Dear MC,
I have read that review also. It is interesting to see how people read things and interpret them, with that obviously being a really negative way to look at it all. What conditioning on their side prompted that, I have no idea, so it is hard to second-guess them or psychoanalyze them, but I can tell you about this end, which looks very different from how they think it does.
It is true that I cycle, but the cycles are really, really different now from how they were, and the transformation is really, really better than how things were before.
It is definitely not just accepting that my life is worse due to my practice and becoming ok with that. My life and mind and clarity are vastly improved, vastly better.
Let's look at the Three Trainings discussed in the book.
Morality really helps. Kindness really helps. Compassion really helps. Sympathetic Joy really helps. Lessening anger, cultivating balance: these basic things help a lot. They change the way the whole body feels, the way the mind feels, the way reactions go, and all sorts of other good stuff. They make a difference, as those who have trained hard in them will tell you.
Concentration: Deep jhana is wonderful. Even light jhana is nice. They are profound states of consciousness, healing, restful, amazing, and quite profound. Learning them does not increase suffering, it reduces it. Being able to access them writes great things on the mind and opens lots of doors to more interesting things.
Wisdom: Eliminating false dualistic perception through clear seeing of the basic nature of bare sensate experience is a fundamental game-changer. It is the sanest thing I ever did or imagine I ever could do. It rights something that was wrong at the core. Dualistic misperception, the sense of an "I", of a doer, of a controller, of some split-off Subject: this illusion creates needless pain and all sorts of strange reactions to try to get that pain to go away, but no amount of tinkering with anything else solves it like just seeing through it by clear bare perception of the truth of one's own experience. This markedly reduces suffering rather than increasing it.
Whoever wrote that review clearly has no idea what they are talking about. These things I advocate are ancient, time-tested, worthy of implementing, skillful and obviously so, based on excellent premises, perform well in reality, are straightforward, and are not the dark and wrong path the reviewer makes them out to be.
If for some reason you don't like the presentation style in MCTB: find them elsewhere. I like Thich Nhat Hahn and Pema Chodron for training in Morality, Bhante Gunaratana and The Visuddhimagga for training in Concentration, and Mahasi Sayadaw and U Pandita for training in Wisdom, but there are lots of other good sources available from many skillful traditions.
MCTB is available for free on this website and numerous other places, so you can read it and decide for yourself what you think of it. You could also try the practices and see what they lead to and decide for yourself. You can also check the references and see where those practices come from and go back to the original source material and get it there.
Best wishes and practice well,
Daniel |