there has been, over the past two years on the dho, far more than merely the asking of questions about the relations between the actualism method and practices found in buddhism, or complaints about actualism's influence on a supposedly-buddhist online community; there have also been individual, independent investigations into the practices themselves, enabling understandings of possible relations, and there have also been skilful adapations and uses of whatever resources have happened to exist in order to further practical inquiries and develop their results. this has been very much in the spirit of the dho's stated purposes.

yet during this time, no consensus has been reached on the topic of actualism's relation to buddhism. this is immediately understandable: there are numerous differing yet each strongly-justified ways of reading buddhism's foundational discourses. there are even numerous ways of valuing and validating readings of buddhism that don't make use of those foundational texts or which use them to demonstrate the texts' shortcomings. these differing readings and purposes make cooperative comparison difficult, because differing assumptions and divergent emphases continually arise. but the difficulty in agreeing on the meaning of buddhist texts is not the only reason no consensus has been reached. for as precisely delineated and clear as the founder of actualism has attempted to make his presentation of it, readers have still come away with many varieties of ideas. to entirely attribute this diversity to 'imaginings' or 'distortions' or 'careless reading' on the parts of various readers would be to overlook a contributing circumstance not addressed by that attribution: that idiosyncratic readings are produced by idiosyncratic individuals, with idiosyncratic faculties of memory and language, and so, to a notable extent, diversity is inevitable. differing readings and understandings can result in opposition, however, and in this way can cause purposes to cross, which may preclude consensus. a lack of consensus, though, need not necessarily have a detrimental effect on the individual practices reported to, and informing discussions at, the dho community. it has seemed to me, rather, that the plurality of understandings which have been put forth has introduced elements and emphases which have very likely fostered these individual practices, aiming them towards greater goals. this too seems to have been in keeping with the dho's purpose.

however, the endorsement of this plurality is not everybody's purpose, nor is it compatible with everybody's purpose. it is not the purpose of the actual freedom trust, for example, to have practitioners of the actualism method simultaneously experimenting with buddhist methods. this is understandable, for they hold that the aims of actualism are entirely inconsistent with and unsupported by whatever can be gained from practising buddhist methods. on the other hand, i am not convinced of this, for i have seen, for quite a while, quite a few buddhist practitioners make further advances in their practices aided by the actualism method, and also have seen quite a few practitioners of the actualism method enabled to apply it more fully by having made progress in buddhist meditation.. and so i have valued the confluences and cross-pollinations that have occurred on the dho these past two years.

owing to this, i have also been attentive to the possibility that buddhist practices, when guided by the pce, may produce similar or identical types of results as those produced by the actualism method. the claims of accomplishment made by other participants here are strong evidence for the case. i cannot also but have noted, during this time, strong resemblances between many of the things other practitioners here, and elsewhere, have said of their practices, results, and reflections and the practices, results, and reflections that i have known. further, i have observed, in person, the conduct of several other practitioners, and have noted strong consistencies between their conduct and what they have said about their practices, results, and reflections. i have taken these similarities to be significantly indicative of the likelihood that they and i have achieved similar or identical types of accomplishments.

the progenitor of the actualism method has informed me that i am mistaken about this, however; he has stated that, of the practitioners on the dho i have indicated to him as having possibly become actually free, several have certainly not done so, despite my impressions. further, he has stated that i, at my current stage of actualism development (being only 'newly-free of the instinctual passions'), cannot gauge whether another person's condition is that of an actual freedom or not... not even from extensive direct contact and conversation. evidently, then, i have no reliable way of recognising an actually free person at all. essentially, what this means is that the criteria which i've so far used to determine what an actual freedom is, is actually invalid for the purpose.

this invalidity raises two questions interesting to me: firstly, about my suitability for facilitating or guiding practitioners of the actualism method when i cannot tell whether or not they actually achieve its purpose; and secondly, about the suitability of my making a claim to a condition which i cannot recognise for myself.

the answer to the first question is complex, but put concisely involves perhaps not guiding practitioners of the method who seek guidance with any authority, not even that of technical expertise; for anything i ever knew, i knew not as fundamentally correct knowledge but simply that it happened to work to know it.

the answer to the second question is simple: i do not find it suitable for me to make a claim of a condition which i cannot recognise. for this reason, i am relinquishing any claim of an actual freedom, whether on my behalf or the behalf of any other.

this is not to say that i am renouncing my claim of being free of malice and sorrow (which is what all this has been about for me anyway); i am not. what i am indicating is that i no longer have sufficient confidence that what i mean by this claim and what i find it to entail and imply is similar enough to what richard means and what that entails and implies to state any kind of equivalence. accordingly, i no longer find it suitable to use the terms that richard has put to his experiences and observations to describe my experiences or observations. without doing so, however, i find that i cannot participate very meaningfully in the conversations concerning actual freedom (which is essentially whatever richard says it is); as i cannot be sufficiently certain that what i have in mind is closely coherent with what richard does, i rarely find it purposeful to present my thoughts on these topics. conversely, it seems more appropriate for me to retire from any statement or claim of authority or authoritative understanding on these matters, so that it is understood that any further thoughts i may present on an actual freedom and related topics are to be understood in light of this retirement.

so that there is no unnecessary confusion, i have written to the af trust suggesting that my announcement be removed from their website's 'annoucements' page. i previously renamed the 'actualism/actual freedom' forum category here, which i have been responsible for moderating, 'practices inspired by actualism', and so opened it up to discussion on the buddhist-actualist hybrid practices that have been innovated by dho participants. not only did this bring the category more in line with a use that dho forum participants have tended towards anyway, but it also spared moderators much of the task of keeping the category focused on discussion of the practice of the actualism method. further, as the renamed category is subtitled 'but not necessarily either approved or endorsed by the actual freedom trust', the category's discussions can be considered independently of the actual freedom trust and their statements, and as such, is now able to include a greater variety of approaches to practice than is directly conducive to retaining the methodological integrity insisted on by the af trust.. and, for that matter, is able to do so without relying on the authority of an actually free person to oversee the discussion (for example, to determine for anyone else whether or not the practices they are considering will lead them to their desired results).

i look forward to continuing to see what we all continue to come up with.

tarin