Hi all,

New edition of Awake!-ebook is now available for free! It has 50 pages more materials and fixed English throughout.

This book, as the name suggests, is a handbook of awakening, including 15 awakening dialogues, photos, statistics, articles and loads of extra materials. It  also gives detailed practical instructions of how to attain awakening through The Two-Part Formula, as defined in buddhism and hinduism.

Thank you Kim.  I just read your other book which was great.  I had some questions about the dynamic concentration bhumi practice, but will read this one first in case it has the answers.  Then maybe we can talk later in the year, on the basis outlined on your website.

Also, have you seen the following tranlsation?  It seems to show a higher level of insight than is evident on that person's face (particularly in the explanation at the end). 

https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/

What is the basis of judging insight on facial appearance?

Hi,

I discuss dynamic concentration in What's Next. You can also find a couple of video demonstrations from here.

I read the translation and the commentary. I liked it. I shouldn't have implied of my impression of Thay in the other thread since I don't discuss bhumis of other teachers in public no more. But thanks for the link anyway.

From pg 27. http://www.en.openheart.fi/35532

Has there ever been a test done where two or more people who are considered to be accurate at these photographic readings are given sets of photos of people they have never seen before and are asked to read them?

No. And even if such an experiment were carried out, internal coherence of the assessment would not prove that what Kim is assessing is actually insight. Say, for example, that someone came up with a system that assigns attainments based on dilation of the pupil in standard lighting conditions: such a system would obviously be internally coherent, but also extremely unlikely to be correlated in any meaningful way with insight. 

For extra clarity:

1) I am not implying in any way that Kim's method is as silly as the example I have given of pupil dilation.

2) In addition, in defence of Kim, no such test has ever been done for any criterion for assessing attainments, including e.g. the MCTB paths and ñanas, the TMI stages, Leigh Brasington's jhanas, and so on.

What would be interesting would be taking a bunch of practitioners, have them evaluted by a bunch of different methods and teachers, and then compare the results. I suspect that there would be much less correlation between the evaluations of attainments than anyone would like.


But say that Kim's assessment (based purely on a picture taken in standard conditions (no garments visible, standard lighting) and no interview or knowledge about the practitioner's bio) proved to be even slightly correlated to any other interview- or (even better) questionnaire-based assessment performed by someone else without looking at the interviewee's face: That would be super interesting.

Yes but only within OH teaching staff. We're about to among OH sangha members. You need to understand that learning bhumi analysis takes at least few years of in-depth study, even though the concept of it is simple to understand. Bhumi analysis is not that extraordinary, actually. It's just reading the energy of a person and its subtle nuances.

For a few times I've been about to ask DhO'ers to photograph their path attainments and send them to me for checking but then I didn't. K. Folk and his student published a video of jhana arc in YouTube several years ago and I wanted to map it by using the OHBM but I never heard back of Folk, when I emailed him for a permission to use the video. I/we also tried contacting Shinzen Young to do some sort of collaboration about meditation/attainment related photographs because of his talk in YouTube but he didn't get back either.

I have done really extensive analysis of bhumis of thousands of people, practitioners and teachers, incl. some of the people on this forum or related Facebook groups. Yup.

Kim, if you are open to it I would be willing to do the leg-work to gather new photos and to construct an experiment that would be able to measure the consistency of readings by two or more of the teachers or sangha members. I am not interested in proving or disproving what you say, I honestly don’t have a belief either way right now, but think an internal study of this is not as valuable as one done by an outside, impartial party. I’m a writer by trade and would be willing to write up an article on the methods and findings and see if it could find a home for a larger audience. Let me know if you’re interested!

When you say "two or more of the teachers or sangha members" do you mean folks from Open Heart staff or sangha? Or other teachers who would do their analysis of the same people who provide photos?

Quick comment - if you're serious about doing this please use proper experimental technique, collect a large sample, have a control group, and use the right statistical measures. Otherwise, the results are unreliable and will be less likely to be believed.

Thanks for listening.

I'll add to this: the results will be less likely to be believed by people with an education in scientific methods. Those without a significant degree of scientific literacy are likely to believe it anyway, which is the problem with any poorly executed study. 

Good point. Measles outbreaks and such as evidence.

I meant people within your group, ideally whoever you feel is the most skilled and accurate with these readings.

As far as controls and proper application of the scientific method, I am aware of the most important aspects in structuring and executing something like this and would apply all reasonable efforts to make sure the results of what is being tested are accurate and trustworthy. It would be structured in a way that would be assailable only by the same means which every other experiment can be assailed, means which our present cultural climate demonstrate exceedingly well and often.

To put this into other words, you cannot expect results of an experiment conducted by a person named magpie on an Internet forum dedicated to practices which most people consider fantastical at best or fictitious and delusional at worst to be respected to the same degree one might respect results from a prestigious university laboratory, and yet, keep in mind that even the prestigious university laboratories cannot defend against the accusation that they are fabricating information or have hidden biases.

I'm sure you'll do your best, magpie, to avoid the obvious mistakes and to provide reasonable and reliable results.

Right. I have a couple assistant teachers but their training is still unfinished, i.e. they haven't done enough study to gain confidence of OHBM. For this reason, it is too early for this kind of experiment. It's a great idea, just too early. In 2-3 years from now it'll be a different situation.

I hope I didn’t come off as being too harsh there, Chris!

Let me know if you’d ever like to follow through on this Kim. I’ve been reading parts of your site and find it to be very interesting.

I don't take these things personally. No worries.