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Goals for the DhO

Hey, my name is Daniel Ingram and I founded this place with a lot of help from a lot of people.

I hope that the DhO does a number of things, but primarily I hope that it will:

  • Help practitioners at various stages to help each other learn what they want to learn, share what they want to share that is helpful, and contribute to the growth and development of each other as practitioners, learners, fellow adventurers, friends, teachers, and innovators in the work of bringing the technologies from across the traditions together to make something that has more of their strengths, fewer of their weakness and shadow sides, and helps people to accomplish what they wish to accomplish with more speed and less pain, more empowerment and less secrecy, more clarity and less confusion.
  • To build a written record of this process and the discoveries, fusions of technologies, failures, side tracks (good, bad and otherwise), and surprises so that future adventurers in the meditative and spiritual arts and sciences can collectively learn from what the DhO members have managed to do, discover, rediscover, and synthesize.
  • To spread the culture of open, honest, and straightforward discussions between friends about real depths of meditation, concentration, insight, energy work, morality, and all other related topics to show that it can be done, can work, and to help this serve a model for how this can be accomplished, what its downsides are, and how to work with them.

A few things of note:

Given the history of this place, the emphasis has started out being relatively Burmese Mahasi Sayadaw Theradadan based. This has the strength of providing some sort of cohesion around some core terminologies, technologies, and has lead to a some great progress on the part of various members. The down side of this is that it may by accident or oversight (hopefully never by intent) exclude or put off members and conversations that might draw on other technologies, conceptual frameworks, and points of view from various other traditions or just from people who for whatever reason don't connect with some of that vibe that, were they to happen, would benefit everyone involved, but, given this place's cultural intertia or baggage, they haven't or won't.

How to keep a core cohesive group that has enough of a similar language that they can have coherent conversations without always needing to translate everything while keeping an open, accepting environment that can accommodate the sort of fusions of traditions that I find so interesting and such a source of strength and benefit is not always clear, and it is my sincere wish that the DhO shine in this regard despite whatever difficulties. Obviously, this is not easy, or everyone would be doing it (well, maybe not), but regardless, I hope that we can make some of that happen.

If you personally feel that there is some aspect of this place that is making it difficult to have a conversation about something relevant, useful, or otherwise important, then please let me know: that is the last thing I want, and I will see what can be done about it.

May the DhO thrive and accomplish its mission and may all who wish to share in the benefits that I hope such a vision can bring do so.

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