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Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?

Dear All,

As I sit here listening to AC/DC at high volume and pounding out the text that will finally be MCTB2, I am faced with a question that I wanted to get someone else's opinion on, so please lend yours if you have one:

I have been writing out a longer, more autobiographical, largely linear, very practice-oriented history of my meditation progress with all sorts of little sub-points thrown in as they come up, and the question is: do I include this in MCTB2? It is already over 15,000 words, making it at least 50 pages so far, and I suspect it will grow to be nearly 100 by the time it is done. That is a lot of pages in an already long book. The other option is just to post it on my website and let people find it there if they want to. I am currently leaning towards the later option, as it is just getting to be too much of a hog and slowing me down.

For those about to Rock, we salute you!

Let me know your thoughs on this,

Daniel

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
5/24/14 12:42 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
I think you answered your own question.
There's a limit case where the biography part gets so long the book is "biography, plus a few side thoughts on pragmatic dharma", which is to be avoided.
On the other hand: the case where there is no biography is not so bad, given how easy it is to get MCTB1.

Longer blog essays with quirky asides and side tangents (which are admittedly tons of fun for those who enjoy your writing style), have worked quite well for you in the past. That's what I'd prefer.
Congrats on the forum migration! I hope everything is well with you!

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/24/14 2:43 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
It doesn't matter where you put it...I'll be reading it wherever. If you are thinking in terms of a paper book as in publishing I think it may come down to the editor and publisher opinions on what is most sellable. If you are not going to print then what does it matter if the book is a thousand pages? People will read the sections that interest them or not....
~D

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/24/14 8:41 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Definitely put it in. The personal story of the author brings a book to life and helps people connect with what you're saying.

As for what is too long, I recommend that you have a fresh pair of eyes look at a draft of the more-or-less-completed work. The author is generally too close to it to be able to make objective judgments. I would be willing to serve as a beta reader.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/24/14 8:49 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
put most relevant 10% of it in book and rest on wiki on DhO =)

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/24/14 1:04 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Perhaps you could interlace notable milestones or exemplary stories in between the dharma. For example, after (maybe even before) a few chapters on the samatha jhanas insert a chapter with your personal jhana experience: the first few times, as it evolved over time, what it's like now, and other captivating stories.

I've always admired authors skilled at Information -> Personal Anecdote -> Information -> Personal Anecdote... Your biography could serve to break up the technical monotony and bring the dharma down to earth. Then again, if your target audience is only the hardcore practitioner this structure won't add much.

In any case, please do post it all on your website!

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/24/14 2:02 PM as a reply to Droll Dedekind.
Droll Dedekind:
I've always admired authors skilled at Information -> Personal Anecdote -> Information -> Personal Anecdote... 


Yes, that approach works well.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/25/14 5:38 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Anything that can be practice related and is illustrative of what it took you to get to the destination should be added.  Any examples of "repeating more times than you think" situations, or situations where you perservered through adversity will be helpful.  

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/27/14 3:08 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.

AC/DC is indeed a fantastic rock'n'roll band. This leads me to say the following.You need an editor. Killing one's own babies is the most difficult part of any creative process. But it pays off big time. In a professional setting, (large part of) the killing is outsourced to a producer/editor. I remember when a while ago CCC demonstrated to you in a post that your text could greatly benefit from some external editor's rewriting. Now you are about to add 100 pages of extra blabla (no offence) to "an already long book"!If you post on Facebook 400 photos of your last summer holidays nobody will be much excited. If you post the best four it can be a hit. To get to these four, one has to go through all the photos in several rounds. At the end, you know all of them by heart, and the pain of selection is somehow lessened by the strong commitment to the quota. You know that only the best will stay. For example, as suggested above, you could distillate the four best stories from that 100 pages and use their abstract as a motivation for each section of the book.When commenting on Kenneth Folk's new book, you said something like that it was kinda mainstream while yours was more like "high-end". But non-accessibility is not the same as high-end. Yes, it is more detail, more depth and more advanced stuff. But not less clarity or less easy readability. I guess pragmatic dharma should be, well, pragmatic.From your OP I infer that you must have already heard the name of John "Mutt" Lange...


RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
5/27/14 5:54 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Personally, considering how much stuff there is in MCTB, making it more than one book seems like the best solution. Most regulars of this forum will indeed read all of them, maybe more than once, but we also have to take the perspective of someone that is new to all that stuff. What is nice about MCTB is that it has a very progressive explaination of everything that matter, with a very thoughtful sequence. It serves as both an introduction and an advanced guide. We can tell to someone that is on the ride but hasn't figured out much yet "read that book" and the odds that he will read it from the beginning to the end. If you put your biography somewhere in the middle, you might bore them (no offense, I'm sure you had an interesting life). A separate book with reference to specific chapters in MCTB when using technical jargon seems a better fit.

Another book I would love to see is a troubleshooting book. Basically, going a bit further into specifics advice than what is given in the section on the stages of insight. Giving specifics advices, meditation techniques,etc depending on the kind of phenomena or difficulties we encounter. I like how Kenneth Folk dealt with Equanimity in his book as it give clear instructions. 

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/27/14 12:38 PM as a reply to Zed Z.
Zed Z:

When commenting on Kenneth Folk's new book...




Wow, until I read your post, I didn't know Kenneth's book was out. I guess that's what I get for only being an occasional visitor. Now that I've found it, I'm really enjoying it. For the benefit of other occasional visitors, here's the link: http://contemplativefitnessbook.com/

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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5/30/14 9:24 PM as a reply to Derek Cameron.
Derek Cameron:
Definitely put it in. The personal story of the author brings a book to life and helps people connect with what you're saying.

As for what is too long, I recommend that you have a fresh pair of eyes look at a draft of the more-or-less-completed work. The author is generally too close to it to be able to make objective judgments. I would be willing to serve as a beta reader.

I agree with this. I'd strongly urge you to include it, possibly as an appendix or introduction.

I'd also love to serve as a beta tester!

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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6/15/14 1:47 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Daniel,

By profession, I'm a developmental book editor (ie, I help authors develop their books and new editions). I just read the first edition for the fourth time (it is amazing, by the way, how with each new read different passages illuminate and "stick," so that it is a different book each time I read it). I have a lot of my own personal/professional opinions on what would improve the book for the revised edition. If you want to send me a new outline, or samples of what you are thinking of adding and where, I'm happy to advise (for the benefit of all beings).

I'll go ahead and venture to say what follows. Although I feel I have benefited from the anecdotes already in the book, and those portions add credibility and authority to your more general assertions and descriptions (ie, it is clear that you are very advanced, have been there over and over again), I think I would steer away from very long excursions into your history midchapter. Having said this, I will add that I would really like to have lengthier, more detailed treatments of Fear, Misery, Disgust (where I've been stuck for 6 weeks now), and Desire for Deliverance--how to distinguish them and examples of how one might push through them and how one might get stuck in them. I can't believe how often you say in the book to keep practicing, yet what I have done since February has been to stop all practice except for Fridays when I sit with my dharma group at my workplace. Now that I've reread the book just this past week, all those passages and emphases about how one has to sit with precision and acceptance through all the worst the practice throws at us--they are jumping out at me and making me desire deliverance and resolve to reach it. Perhaps stories, not just of what happened to you, but of what happened to others you know of when they rolled up the mat instead of practicing would vivify and support your pleas to keep practicing through this awful stuff.

The first edition has some unevenness to it, on several levels. The substages of the Dark Night feel rushed through, and your videos from the Cheetah House are much less so (I recommend pulling into your edition the level of detail and clarity you effect in those videos, particularly on the DN, even word for word). The later chapters of the book seem to revisit/overlap with much of what was touched on much more briefly earlier, and I know that is because you are comparing different versions of the maps, but I think more weight and length should be shifted to the first presentation of your own (Bill Hamilton's) map. The other versions are really kind of appendix-like fare for geeks who already know a lot. Think hard, in other words, about your target audience, and then stick with that audience throughout: Beginners may be overwhelmed with more than one version of the maps, and you aren't really writing for the more advanced practitioner who already knows some version of these territories, right? I would actually move the other-map stuff to the Web site, and then lengthen, and slow down, the more basic content (your version of the stages).

The first part of the book on the Three Trainings is clear, even-handed in treatment, and consistently aimed at beginners. In the next part your pace becomes something like that of a runnaway train, and by the end of the book it feels like appendices are being crammed in just because you want to stick in everything you have ever learned "somewhere." Again, who is the audience, and would that audience benefit from silence on some content at their stage? Could you settle sometimes for a pointer to your Web site for more advanced info? I would suggest that you assume you are writing for someone who has not ever reached Equanimity or had any involvement with Formations. Probably most who continue to read the book past Part 1 have crossed the A&P, but my guess is that many of those people, like me, are stuck in the Dark Night and need something more like a technical manual for getting out of it, past it, to Stream Entry. Those past SE are fewer in number, and most of them are probably here on this forum already!

The other unevenness, besides pace and practitioner level, is tone and personna. You fling a lot of anger down on those pages and seem bent on an almost deliberate looseness and breeziness, both of which stand in stark contrast to the way you come across in private exchanges, on these threads, and in your videos. I suspect that the vitriol in the first edition was a deliberate choice born of your goal of uncloaking the Mushroom Factor. However, realize that the tradeoff is that you will alienate, right out of the gate, many beginners who are coming from a Western, psychologizing, emotional model of everything, including whatever dharma practice they've started. I saw this happen in a reading group I was in that tackled this book. All but two of the people in the group, one of them being me after I too got past initial resistence, just quit reading the book. They were put off by the tone. I think you can crush the Mushroom Factor without resorting to any of that tone. Your perspicuity on these threads has taken my breath away emoticon many times, more so because you answered some highly agitated comments by others with calmness and clarity, with a lot of silence and space around your statements. I would encourage you to mine many of the explanations and responses you've given on this forum and put them in the book, maintaining the same voice you do here. 

I've also been thinking about your question months ago about whether to go into more detail about the powers. I think I would NOT if, again, you are trying to reach as many people as possible out there who need help recognizing and traversing the Dark Night. My college-aged son may read the new edition, but I can imagine that anything smacking of magic will put him off. Since the powers are not necessary for getting to SE, again, I think I would consider that stuff advanced and ancilliary and think hard about how to keep beginners in your pocket until Stream Entry. 

Consider writing a new preface that lays out your motivations and aims for the book. This would be the place to put all that stuff about the Mushroom Factor. It would also anchor you to have a statement at the outset about why you are writing this book, for whom, and what good it should do. You state well into in the first edition that your primary motivation is to prevent practitioners from getting lost in the DN for months, years, or decades. That is THE purpose of this book, along with helping people to SE because of the ripples of gratitude you felt when you reached it. Even if the Mushroom Factor retains some qualities of a rant, it will work better as something worked into a preface, where it won't distrupt the more measured tone/pace of the book proper.

I agree with Simon T.: MCTB has several competing books within it. Consider taking out alternative versions of maps, Fractals, and any other lengthy treatments of stuff beyond gaining SE, and save them for another book. That will give you more needed room to spend on descriptions, detailed techniques, warnings, and anecdotes pertaining to attaining First Path.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
6/15/14 1:53 PM as a reply to _.
PS: Please add an annotated bibliography to the end of the book. You have a reading list on the site, but I would like to have this handy in the book so I know what resources to consult for additional information in a particular direction. Here is where you could point to other "maps" too. By the way, do you know the out-of-print book by Ken Wilbur and Dan Brown, Transformations in Consciousness? A buddy of mine lent this to me, and there are detailed descriptions of maps in that book! One interesting detail I read last night is Dan Brown's statement that all Southeast Asian traditions agree that to go on to Second Path one must formally and strongly resolve to do do--after which Fruitions will never arise again from First Path! That isn't what MCTB says--sorry, I know I digress.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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6/15/14 2:50 PM as a reply to _.
Seconding everything Jen said. This is superb advice. It's definitely possible to make MCTB2 more accessible and palatable to beginners without losing the "core".

I would recommend leaving the mapping discussion out of the book entirely because the section comparing various maps doesn't contribute much to practice up through 1st path, and this section alienates many people whose first exposure is to other traditions.

It would be more effective, in terms of convincing the max number of people to practice, if you provide the following pieces of information: 1) that a senior monk diagnosed you as being at "4th path" according to his system, 2) you know from experience that developmental shifts can continue to occur past that point, and 3) no endpoint to development is discernible. This approach isn't disempowering or mushroomy if you clearly explicate the characteristics, benefits, and accessibility (i.e. anyone can attain it) of your current baseline, then let people pick a label for it themselves.

As a side note pushing my current viewpoint about these maps, it might be worth writing and publishing a longer, in-depth treatment of the maps online, interviewing Chuck Kasmire, Omega Point, and Thusness (Eternal Now's teacher) to see what they have to say about their experience beyond sense desire. I find their claims credible and their perspective could be illuminating.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
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6/15/14 4:20 PM as a reply to Matthew Horn.
I agree with the ideas of toning down the acid tone a bit.  Maybe part of it depends on your ultimate goal.  If your goal is to be you as much as possible, like on a blog, then that tone makes sense.  In order to sell yourself as a personality, then personality needs to be evident and it's darn hard to sell a personality that is not very close to the real you.  But if your goal is to help a lot of people with a professional type book, I'd suggest more politeness is more professional and distracts less from other aspects of what you are explaining. A slight variation in how some things are worded would be enough.

I also just got tired of reading after a while all the different versions of the maps, could be that section could be shorter and more to the point. After I read about the 4 path and the simplified models, I didn't have much interest in the rest overall, at least not at first.  After the 4 path, it might be enough to just do a quick few paragraphs saying there are many models and descriptions of enlightenment and just glance over the rest of them, just so people understand that the 4 path model is only one of them, but since you didn't go much into the others that much anyway, I don't think they deserve their own tons of sections.  Vague impression is you don't seem to be much into them and IMO, that lack of enthusiasm really shows.     

I also found myself longing for a bit more in some areas that seemed a bit short, some of the jhanas, A and P, etc, although not sure if you have more to add in those so I don't have clear opinions on best course of action for those but if you had more info on some of those, would be nice.  Some areas with hard to understand concepts like effortless effort and nonduality might benefit from either more explanation and/or some other's peoples way of explaining those besides yourself in addition to what you said.  Some things are easier to understand if they are explained in many different ways from different perspectives.  If critiques are seriously wanted, I'll pay more attention in the future to that kind of thing.  As much of a %#%$% stirrer I can sometimes be, I usually don't read free internet content with intent to critique writing style and layout.  ;-P  

As for things you may chop out, any babies you may decide to kill, I'd personally just put them elsewhere but link to them in the online book as supplementary material or supplementary essays on specific topics.  That way people can read them when they are ready but they will not muck up the flow of the book. 

Overall, one other thing I noticed is I was just overall confused about what was available here. It took me a while to figure out that there was a whole book called MCTB in addition to a wiki, only discussion and wiki are mentioned on the home page.  I had clicked on many parts of wiki and many are not done yet.  Did not realize there was a whole book until someone's post linked to a page from there which was in the later part of the book.  Then since the way the interenet version links only to the next page, it was a while before I realized there was a part I and part II that was before that.  I didn't find the start page for the book until I had to look for the book via Google.  Maybe all that is well known by long time members but I didn't encounter any places that spelled it out or had the links.   I suspect it's the nature of the beast that websites like this are usually personality based and people will naturally want to know who is Daniel.  Normally, you'd expect links for the book, the Daniel blog, etc at the top.  In the past, I've known people who did not want their message board to be too personality based so they left all that out, that may be the case here and I totally understand the sentiment, but in the end that is how almost everybody tried to make sense of things and so personality always comes into it.  Not saying I advise to just give up and go with it, I want to be clear that I agree with Buddha's original idea that he tried to tell his followers to NOT make it about him but about themselves, but I'd also like to point out that overall, IMO Buddha seemed to fail in that attempt to get them to think that way.  ;-P  And an intuitively natural website layout that has all likely interesting tabs in the normal place at the top or to the side is easier to deal with for most.  

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
6/15/14 4:57 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
My gut instinct is to have the pages of personal history outside MCTB2.  Your website sounds like a perfectly fine place to post it.  Perhaps you can refer to the material in MCTB2 so readers know where to find it if they are interested.

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
6/15/14 6:36 PM as a reply to _.
I am myself very interrested in what Daniel have to say about 'powers' and while it wasn't that way at first now I think it will be most interresting part of the book. It might not be for everyone taste but does it even have to be? If Daniel think it will be helpful for people who enter those territories then he should write about it, especially that basic mediation instructions are already covered in MCTB1 and second part is supposedly about more advanced topics.

By the way, do you know the out-of-print book by Ken Wilbur and Dan Brown, Transformations in Consciousness? A buddy of mine lent this to me, and there are detailed descriptions of maps in that book! One interesting detail I read last night is Dan Brown's statement that all Southeast Asian traditions agree that to go on to Second Path one must formally and strongly resolve to do do--after which Fruitions will never arise again from First Path! That isn't what MCTB says--sorry, I know I digress.

very interresting stuff
resolve to do which 'do-after'?
can you point to some easily available preferably free source?

imho fruitions are to be used as last resort measure to get through something all other methods failed or are even less skillful than fruition. And when that goal is met then fruitions should be marked as unskillful and avoided by avoiding any thoughts of 'release' cause it will make cause of need of release to reborn making fruitions but a pointless addiction without any lasting end result. Mind have to find other methods of dealing with whatever its core issue is and because there are better methods of doing that than fruition it should seek those and not iterate endlessly between reborn of what make fruition possible and actualizing it for n-th time

Is that something along those lines?

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
6/15/14 8:55 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
1. The ultimate guide to the insight stages
2. The ultimate guide to master the jhanas
3. The ultmate guide to the powers
4. Enlightenment in daily life: how to cope with the ups and downs of the path as a layperson
5. Buddhism Theory Fundamentals
6. The Complete Contemplative Handbook: cross-examination of every mystic traditions
7. Enlightenment Phenomenology
8. I'm done. An Autobiography by Daniel Ingram

RE: Put Personal Meditation History in MCTB2?
Answer
6/16/14 12:46 AM as a reply to Eva M Nie.
Eva M Nie:

I also just got tired of reading after a while all the different versions of the maps, could be that section could be shorter and more to the point. After I read about the 4 path and the simplified models, I didn't have much interest in the rest overall, at least not at first.  After the 4 path, it might be enough to just do a quick few paragraphs saying there are many models and descriptions of enlightenment and just glance over the rest of them, just so people understand that the 4 path model is only one of them, but since you didn't go much into the others that much anyway, I don't think they deserve their own tons of sections.  Vague impression is you don't seem to be much into them and IMO, that lack of enthusiasm really shows.     

I also found myself longing for a bit more in some areas that seemed a bit short, some of the jhanas, A and P, etc, although not sure if you have more to add in those so I don't have clear opinions on best course of action for those but if you had more info on some of those, would be nice.  Some areas with hard to understand concepts like effortless effort and nonduality might benefit from either more explanation and/or some other's peoples way of explaining those besides yourself in addition to what you said.  Some things are easier to understand if they are explained in many different ways from different perspectives. 


I agree with all this.