So a few minutes ago I thought I'd check whether the new Guru Viking episode that will air in one and half hours is gonna be of interest to me. 

Ep280: I Renounce My Attainments - Delson Armstrong

I hope it's ok to quote Steve's summary of the discussion:

"In this interview, Delson renounces all of his previous claims to spiritual attainment. Delson details recent changes in his inner experiences that saw him question the nature of his awakening, including the arising of emotions and desires that he thought had long been expunged. Delson critiques the consequences of the Buddhist doctrine of the 10 fetters, reveals his redefinition of awakening and the stages of the four path model from stream enterer to arhat, and challenges cultural ideals about enlightenment. Delson offers his current thoughts on the role of emotions in awakening, emphasises the importance of facing one’s trauma, and discusses his plans to broaden his own teaching to include traditions such as Kriya Yoga. Delson also reveals the pressures put on him by others’ agendas and shares his observations about the danger of student devotion, the hypocrisy of spiritual leaders, and his mixed feelings about the monastic sangha."


I think this one's gonna be "very interesting indeed", to insert a Steve-ism. 

Yeah I recall Daniel gently pressing him on a number of these topics when they were both on the podcast. 

May listen over next few days. Do share your thoughts. 

I haven't watched this new one yet, of course, but I think one of the remarkable things here is stepping back from claiming the Full Theravada Arhat Package Deal. Adhering to the ten fetter model and being a sutta head is rather common. Going back from that after claiming it - that can not have been an easy thing to work up to. Cudos in advance. Hanging on the edge of my zafu for this one. 

Yes it strikes me as the kind of radical authenticity that comes about through hard earned wisdom. I like Delson but he's one of those teachers that always seemed to have a bit of a spiritual veneer when I've seen him speak in the past. Though I have every confidence he's a skilled practitioner. 

Wow! This is a big deal. I feel excited and proud of this young man. He could provide so much insight into mental processes that make numerious teachers claim they have no emotions, no suffering etc.

Much respect for Delson! This is a brave thing to do.

Being honest with yourself about the fabrication of an "Enlightened Self" is a profound realization. We are human and do human things, like, having emotions and thoughts. I don't know if these ever fully go away, but our relation to them definitely changes. I look forward to watching this interview.

"I have come to believe that the entire concept of attainmants and gurus is causing more suffering than good... One of my intentions is to end the infantalization of both students and teachers, and to help people come out of this tired model of guru worship and student disempowerment."

This seems like as good a place as any to mention how grateful I am for DhO, and the generous and down-to-earth mods who teach freely here. Although Delson's statement differs from Daniel's approach to discussing attainments in the original MCTB, it reminds me of the impact of the open-source attitude, without which I might never have had the nerve to really practice.

I expect Delson will get a lot of praise for this, and he should, and I hope he helps a lot of people this way. But I have to wonder if it would be possible without DI having taken all the sh*t that he has.

Hm... Now that I've seen the interview I find a lot there that that I think is quite problematic in my personal world of ideals and aestethics, and it comes down to pretty much the same thoughts I had about TWIM and Delson Armstrong before. But it will take some time to write that out and try to get the nuances right (english is a second language for me), since it's not a black or white thing. It's the mixture I take issue with, once again. Flowery words, appealing to emotions rather than rational thought, I just can't help thinking that this is (or could very well be) a very savvy marketing thing that is updating the TWIM approach to be more in accordance with modern new age social media marketing narratives like you see on instagram, for example, to reach a wider audience. Something that rubbed me wrong from the beginning upon encountering TWIM was the way it mixed useful technical approaches with emotion over ratio narratives, wich I think is a very sneaky thing to do if it's by design, and certain things I heard TWIM teachers say in interviews fed my suspicion that it is. I'll come back to this in a few days with a longer post.

But again, 

very interesting indeed. 

(Wich should become the official Guru Viking drinking game. )

Very interesting indeed, Pixel! I'll toast to Delson using this tonight.

On the whole topic of cultural incompatibility and outdatedness of these old spiritual ideals/systems/social hierarchies, this documentary by Chögyam Trungpa's kid, is very good as well.

Fascinating! Delson has leveled up as a dharma teacher in my mind. I hold him in high esteem.

I'd like to attempt an explanation of the value of devotion from a Vajrayana perspective, to counterbalance the negative views expressed in this interview. I applaud his candidness about his experiences in recent years. I'm sure he's right to warn spiritual aspirants about the dangers of devotion generally (one excellent book on this is Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's The Guru Drinks Bourbon?). The metaphor used in Tibetan Buddhism is of a snake entering a bamboo tube: the only outcomes are either final realization or a kind of "vajra hell". Entering a devotion-based relationship with a guru should not be taken lightly at all.

Vajra hell, as I've come to understand it, is a state of mind resulting from a kind of shrinking back from devotion and Awakening. It's where one falls to the extreme of reifying "relative truth" (i.e. total illusion) at the expense of an opportunity to realize "ultimate truth". So even as one may be coming up with all kinds of justifications for the foolishness of seeing any human as a Buddha, in the deepest recesses of one's heart-mind, one knows that some utterly profound mistake has been made, and this haunts the practitioner potentially for the rest of their lives (and beyond).

However, if one manages to persist in crawling up the tube, it becomes clear that it's an utterly direct and profound method (guru yoga is considered an essential practice of Vajrayana Buddhism for good reason). To the extent this can be explained verbally, I think it has to do with how it forces the student to go to the essence, the essential nature of both the guru and (crucially) the student. And actually whatever shocking behaviors the guru engages in reveal themselves to be beneficial spurs for one's practice. But there's no question one can be thrown into profound turmoil over and over (and over...), and few can be expected to leverage that effectively to deepen their practice. 

There are some crucial foundations for success in this method, the absence of which is probably the main reason for problems arising for spritual aspirants. One needs to have some realization of emptiness primarily, because it's really all about seeing beyond the mere appearance of things. There are also complementary practices such as deity yoga. A key point here is the non-duality of the five poisons and five wisdoms. Instead of fixating on the view of the five poisons as something to be renounced, or even transformed, one uproots the underlying assumption that they are in essence distinct in nature from wisdom. And consequently, through non-reification, they begin to subside on their own.

Vajrayana contains within it the means to integrate and transcend the shadow sides arising from idealization of Awakening and so-called Awakened beings. That's because one comes to see the perfection in the everyday: Buddhahood is already perfectly achieved--while you're trying to quit smoking, while you're continuing to practice the dharma--and at the same time as a mere concept it falls away. By accelerating the process of realizing Buddhahood, one is freed from the self-imposed tyranny of striving on a path, or conversely the tyranny of ordinary samsaric reification of appearances and concepts. And actually the apparent worst-of-all tyranny of being a disciple of a guru can be short-lived.
 

I actually like Delson's redefinition of the four paths at around 57 min. That seems to be the higher, meta-level understanding that many are converging to nowadays 

I've had some interesting thoughts about the different models lately, too. My thoughts have been that when you're spiritual, things happen, and reality starts to sync up in deep ways. Sometimes these things synchronize and come together (what you might call a package), but they can be out of sync at some level too (or even deeply out of sync where they happen very "out of expected order").

For example, I had my massive A&P sparkle firework show the day before, a huge amount of desolification/removal of suffering. One map is the Buddhaghosha map, the other map is the liberation map, and in this particular instance they were almost aligned, but not quiet. I've had big drops off suffering come from nowhere. There are ways to have the "this is it" realization before you are deep in traditional paths. There are also parts of other people's paths that will just be straight up missing from yours, everyone's different.

Like no map is the territory, and everyone's enlightenment must be different (because it isn't a thing with any fixed properties). But then a huge amount of problems come from trying to make it be a thing (SE must look X way, Arhants must be Y, this is what must happen if you're doing it "correctly", etc).

Oh, and then reality is always continuously syncing up more and more, so there is no real finish, just continuously going deeper and deeper.

Clinging to the expectation that anything has to be a particular way is not a good idea.

Edit: I would suggest not coming to firm conclusions too quickly 

It's not really a conclusion, simply the words that arose at the time.

This is a good interview. I had the chance to do a retreat with Delson via TWIM. What I remember was a massive disconnect between his talks and his 1-1s. I remember his talks felt extremely stilted and he kinda just read the suttas, but in his 1-1's being like "oh holy shit this guy is good and gets things at deep level"

Yeah, appreciating his journey, the interview, thankful to him and Steve for creating it, hopefully it will help the ongoing conversation with a few more data points.

Bill Hamilton used to warn a lot about this stuff — scripting from revered traditions so powerful combined with the auto-hypnosis of meditation and potent social reinforcement and longing for perfection to make it appear that we had attained to some emotional perfection model when, in fact, we had just buried parts of our humanity, at least from ourselves. Heady and compelling stuff, a trap I also also got to learn about the hard way, just in late 1996, before the days of social media, hence me warning about it in MCTB2.

Wonder what he would think of Chapter 37 of MCTB2 now and what he would add, modify, or subtract were he to critique it?

Best wishes for you all in your own practice and honest journey of inquiry,

Daniel

​​​​​​​

That must be great feeling for Delson! Even I feel strong relief by just reading about it! 

​​​​​​​Well done Delson! I will find time to hear this podcast. 

I am a really big fan of pragmatic dharma and the approach to meditation popularized by himself above, I think this is an obvious statement to make and also obviously, that means, I like maps and paths and stages and attainments. 

While I believe the idiosyncratic spiritual experience of an individual person is a journey of discovery that likely began long before they started meditating and has deep symbolic, traumatic, emotional and spiritual significance, I also reckon when you're the kind of person whose going to put a decade or so into serious practice, high standards in technical phenomenology can really, really come in handy. 

There are of course times throughout our meditative growth where paths and attainments and stages become hindrances and our identification with them needs to be seen as transient, impermanent, empty, changing, etc. (People who haven't should really read Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa)
I feel for Delson, Radical changes in worldview are, in many respects, one of the most challenging aspects of meditative development, particularly if one is playing, to whatever degree, at teaching or leading. After all we are imperfect beings and even supreme wisdom can't save us from the desperate political shenanigans and power struggles that are inherent to human relationships. 

This may be an odd take given the context but I have always seen the paths as a remedy to the trip of Spiritual Materialism and Cultism not a cause of it. Rigorous phenomenology presents us with an opportunity to hold ourselves and one another to high standards, to keep bad actors in check and to prevent people who may be otherwise unaware from engaging in bad activity. (For example misrepresenting your attainment in advertising, on social media, to your students, etc)

The beauty of the paths, the beauty of those who use them in teaching, the beauty of these random Internet weirdos who share in detail their meditation journeys is that it's right out in the open. It's in dialogue. You can read somebody's words, in a regular casual way, and determine whether or not you think they're a nut job and we can gather as a community and say "hey, we know so and so to be a great master of concentration, perhaps you should practice with him" or "Billy Bob, has been on such and such a retreat, has demonstrated mastery of first path, why not go talk to them."

The opposite of this, which is gatekeeping and vaguery, has been the norm in western spiritual culture and it sucks. There's too much mystifying, too much unwarranted reverence, too much polite deferral of rigorous investigation. It plays on the seductive allure of orientalism and religiosity. 

I think sometimes it's helpful to reframe the paths. 

For example one might have a profound relationship with the divine, say a deity or whatever, that is something I personally know to be a very moving and beautiful thing, one might also observe in a lab the neurological activity that underpins divine experiences, for example, one induced by certain chemical compounds. 

Here we have a mystic reality and a scientific or neurological reality. I believe the paths are a neurological reality and I think they ought to be framed as such. When people's spiritual trip gets too wrapped up in attainments that's often problematic but it's not a reason to deny the underlying neurology. 

You may not want to be diagnosed or reduce your spiritual experience into cold neurological/phenomenological language, that's eminently valid, a totally justifiable position, but it doesn't change that we can observe these patterns play out person by person, time after time. The map is not the territory, the stage is also not necessarily the effect but suffering is suffering. If someone reads the Buddha's claims and decides to walk the path to the end of suffering the Buddhist community should be able to earnestly present those who have walked that walk as teachers and guides. 

One may also want to claim "I'm an Arhat, I can teach you XYZ" but if these sorts of claims aren't backed by rigorous phenomenological peer review then there's the potential for earnest spiritual seekers to be misled. It is in these situations that divine vaguerys are frequently used to mislead people. It is in these situations that earnest seekers waste years of their life following pretenders. 

If you're going to teach, if you're going to get out in front of people and say "I know the way" then you should be at least showing as much of your work as I do of mine. You should at least get involved and get peer reviewed by some creditable peeps. Your dharma and teaching can unfold with whatever aesthetic is appropriate to you, however divine or mundane but you have to be able to ethically account for states and stages and paths because they will happen to people whether you believe in them or not. You have to be able to speak honestly about what this practice did for you, why you did it, where it led, what challenges you faced because otherwise what is it you're teaching? 

The Buddha and the early Sangha really emphasized the reproducibility of attainments. They really stated it as regularly as they possibly could, it is thus not unreasonable, to one investigating the Buddha's claims, to pursue these attainments. Wanting to awaken is a very natural and obvious reason to practice. 

We live in a time when we can actually start tracking the neurology of this stuff. We can potentially use science to cut through the Spiritual Materialism of attainments. We can thoroughly demystify awakening such that more and more people can reproducibly appreciate the mystical.
​​​​​​​
The age of the guru is dead and it's time for dharma teachers to submit themselves to rigorous, public peer review.
​​​​​​​
No more shenanigans. No more sex pests. No more spiritual charlatans. Put the wires in your brain, leave your heart in my hands and show me your fucking God chemicals. 

The argument that paths are a source of obsession for students is a moot point. Something will obsess a meditator. End of story. The practice is recognizing and disidentifying with that obsession. That is the self. Saying the paths lead to obsession is a cop out. Meditative practice makes us more aware of the ways we are obsessive. 

​​​​​​​Reframing the paths, is, as I've already mentioned, definitely the right move. Strip them down. 

While I was initially a bit annoyed at the scrupulous avoidance of the conversation on Guru Viking with the three of us 2 years ago, or of the warnings and similar conclusions he comes to presented in MCTB2 (which I have no idea if he knows about or has read).

But, on a few more hours of further reflection this morning, I do think that it is very good to have someone out there in the younger generation who has gone through this freshly so that they know it in their bones and gut rather than through book learning, so perhaps this is best this way, to do it without acknowledgement, without drawing on the wisdom we here at the DhO went through some decades and more ago (see debates about AF, etc.), but, instead, with it vivid and embodied in a new group that apparently missed all of that, or wasn't in a place to listen to it if they did know about it, and is having to rediscover it the hard way for themselves, and can translate it into their own language, (and then likely fail, as we did, and despite their own best efforts, to transmit it to the next generation).

We all wish we can spare those who come after us the same mistakes we made, but, as, for example, parents learn with their teens, this almost never seems to actually happen. ;)

You forget people are still actively practicing on here

This whole thread is quite funny, I have been working things through lately on my practice log, and I've started to come to a similar conclusion. You may want to check it out sometime...

My second log, not my third. Just look for what I left you.

May all fabrications lose their grip on all of our minds 

love to all 

​​​​​​​Malcolm 

Ha! Yes, obviously I know people are actively practicing here, but they are doing so in a community where, at least for those who have been around a while, we got to go through, sometimes ourselves personally, something like what Delson is going through, or at least see our friends go through it, so it is no longer novel at all, and, in fact, now kind of expected to occur in those who care about maps and serious practice and determining for themselves how the old ideals, texts, models, promises, etc. hold up or don't.

Daniel, 
you signed your book " by the Arhat Daniel Ingram".

So, you passed through the other attainments traditionally presented in terms of rebirth (eg once returner) in one lifetime.

​​​​​​​Do you then interpret rebirth as something else than reincarnation? What?

Todo, I know this wasn't addressed to me and I hope Daniel doesn't mind my jumping in ... but it touches on an interest of mine, explaining the dharma in scientifically tractable terms :-)

My answer to your question would be that rebirth is a fractal combination of a number of concepts, so it can quite validly mean different things in different contexts. However, the aspect of it that interests me is the 11th nidana, Jati, or birth or becoming, in response to perceptual processing. This is the arising of the qualia of self - the felt sense of a personal enduring identity that has a particular reocngisable flavour that is 'us'.  Like any other qualia, it can be observed arising and passing away over a few seconds (say 10 seconds) and can occur with varying strengths. I have been lucky enough to observe this with great clarity.

This form of rebirth seems to manifest when we wallow in our desires or hatreds (upadana) resulting in the arising of inadvertent behavioural programming (bhava, the process of creating karma). As rebirth props up our sense of self, we then have something to lose, so we get jamarama, the fear of loss. My hypotheses is that these fleeting occurences of jati or rebirth are continuously updating our prior expectations of a sense of self. So even when the qualia of self is not present, the prior expectation and memory of past rebirth (e.g. the arising of the sense of self we experienced last week) steps in to prop up our identity. 

There are practices that can directly vacate jati, stopping that arising, and eliminating the prior expectation of a sense of self. These can be challenging if you are not fully ready. Or, if you just stop wallowing in emotional reactions, then over time jati will happen less often, and the priors will attenuate. As the priors evaporate, we stop regarding ourselves as enduring separate beings, but rather see ourselves an intedependent evolving process with porous boundaries (still a self, but the components of the system are all not-self). However, even with this realisation there may still be some duality and grasping, so it is not the end.

Just sharing in case anyone is interested. Daniel may well come at this from a different perspective and so have a completely different response.  :-). Also, this view does not rule out reincarnation, but reincarnation is not necessary to understand the path of insight.

Love

Malcolm

EDIT:  Todo, I see I didn't address your question on attainments in terms of number of rebirths. I don't have a view on that, although I was amused by the idea that potential number of rebirths really indicates the your potential number of remaing major spiritual crises/f*ckups. :-). That does make a bit of sense to me.

But I do find that other aspects of the four path model accord pretty well with contemporary experiences, in terms of reflecting the changes that occur during the path of insight. I suspect different types of people progress in slightly different ways (and this is recorded in the suttas, actually), likely contributing to disaggreements about the four path model. Also, for at least some, there are so many layers of the onion between starting 2nd and finishing 3rd that people can get disoriented about where they are on the map. 

I think it can really, really be quite helpful to actually read the book that Daniel Ingram signed as the arhat Daniel Ingram to learn about the views on arhatship of the aforementioned Daniel Ingram. 

I liked this part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMwZWQo36cY&t=3006s

50:06
Nirvana is not something you attain in future it is something you find in the present moment.

Awakening doesn't automatically clear up all your emotional baggage.

Focusing your practice on attaining awakening is an impediment to progress.
​​​​​​​(My opinion is that you should focus your practice on cultivating samatha and vipassana.)

 .... AND ANOTHER THIING !!!

While I agree with Delson that we should be careful with Guru relationships and that a lot of spiritual teachers would do well to renounce their guru trip. It is also obvious to me that one gets to a certain depth of practice where one needs to be in dialogue with a teacher, friend, whatever who is awakened in order to become awakened. If a few years ago I went to sit with Delson and he couldn't give me a straight answer on the Arhat question then I wouldn't sit with him (I nearly did but I didn't find his claims convincing, to put it politely). If I'm going to put years of my life into hardcore dharma practice, that's not something someone does for vague reasons, it's something someone does because they want to wake up. Thus hand waving away the desire for awakening is a red flag from anybody who teaches Buddhist meditation. Saying "because experience is impermanent there is therefore no need for measurable attainments" is just a bit of a poorly integrated take. The discovery of Quantum mechanics does not invalidate the study of Physics though it obviously brings into question many assumptions we held about the nature of reality, the same is true of radical experiences of impermanence and no self. Not forgetting that these radical experiences are very likely made possible through measurable neurological transformations. Saying everybody is already awakened here and now is very beautiful, maybe also true in a Zen sense, but it doesn't help anyone who is legitimately suffering. The power of the Buddha is he would say "Bobby sat for three years and attained Arhatship", when asked what Arhatship was, when asked what practices Bobby had to do, he would give an answer. It serves no one to be dishonest about suffering and awakening. 

It's unfortunate because some aspects of Delson's reframing of the paths are generally in alignment with some of our views, others really aren't and struck me as superficial, wishy washy, not easily measurable or reproducible. 

I will reiterate on the off chance that any of these masters ever deign to pay attention to my lowly badgering... If you're going to teach meditation it is unethical not to openly discuss the realities of awakening and whether or not you have got it and the more vague and hand wavey your answers, the higher the probability that you are misleading people (and also maybe yourself). 

Dogen: 
In the buddha way, you should always enter enlightenment through practice. A worldly teacher says, "Through study one can gain wealth." Buddha says, "Within practice there is enlightenment."

It is unheard-of that without studying someone should earn wealth or that without practicing someone should attain enlightenment . Though practice varies—initiated by faith or dharma knowledge, with emphasis on sudden or gradual enlightenment*—you always depend on practice to go be-yond enlightenment. Though study can be superficial or profound, and students can be sharp or dull, accumulated studying earns wealth. This does not necessarily depend on the king's excellence or inability, nor should it depend on one's having good or bad luck. If someone were to get wealth without studying, how could he transmit the way in which ancient kings, in times of either order or disorder, ruled the country? If you were to gain realization without practice, how could you comprehend the Tathagata's teaching of delusion and enlightenment?


 

I know some things with certainty. One of those things is that I do not live inside other people's heads.

Is Delson an Arahant? is Delson not an Arahant? Was he wrong before? Is he right now? Will he reach Arhatship in the future? Was he misled by the TWIM folks? Who is this mysterious interviewer who manipulated Delson? When will I get to see these mysterious recordings of Delson being manipulated?

These questions are super duper exciting

Those of us who have practiced a lot, those of us who are currently learning how to practice will find out for ourselves what dukkha is and hopefully also what dukkha nirodha is. So what  is a sutta arahant, what is a commentary arahant, what is an MCTB arahant, what is a TMI arahant, what is a WUTYL arahant ..... who cares? One can only be an arahant for themselves. One can tell other people about it. Saying this is what I achieved, this is how I did it. But one can never be an arahant for other people.

For other people one can certainly be an inspiration, but then some people get inspired and others get disgusted - this is a part and parcel of life.
For other people one can be a generous giving fellow human being freely sharing one's knowledge in an open fisted way. Some people accept and warmly shake a hand extended in friendship and others slap it away.

Regarding my view on the general topic of attainments:

1. Arhatship is possible in this very life
2. On attaining arthatship you will not experience suffering
3. On attaining arhatship afflictive emotions will be gone! Finito!
4. On attaining arhatship you will not cycle through the dukkha nanas for ever and ever, dukkha will be gone! finito!

Work in a very systemtaic structured way, keep your eyes on the prize, and there most certainly is a prize. There is an other shore, where the water is warm and the beer is chilled. And ... I hope to meet you there! Soon!!

Find out more on next weeks installment of Dharma Drama !!

Honestly, I am curious... 
Very enticing stuff, we could do with some more drama, at this point I'm rewatching guru viking pod on Bikkhu Analyo just to get my fix.

"So what  is a sutta arahant, what is a commentary arahant, what is an MCTB arahant, what is a TMI arahant, what is a WUTYL arahant ..... who cares? One can only be an arahant for themselves."

Doesn't "arahant" mean : worthy, deserving. Deserving respect but also offerings.
if this is so, someone claiming arahatship is saying something to the community.

Also included in the concept of Arahatship, a view on the doctrine of rebirth. A doctrine the Buddha himself may not have accepted nor rejected.

Some of the problems with the four path maps is that they are too precise to cover a huge shunk of spiritual experiences.
At the same time, these maps are too vague to be really diagnostic of anything.

Finally, the final result is really, really, really controversial to say the least.

Personally, my current understanding comes down to:
1. "There is a methodology centeed on 'Attention/Concentration/Mindfulness' with a non-judgmental attitude that is helpful".
2. "There are many pointers to the intrinsic nature of mind". The change of perspective is readily available to anyone who gives it a serious shot.
3. So, just go ahead and try some of these and see what happens for you personally. Not what anyone else (alive or dead) claims.
4. You may not have a choice in the matter, either in the beginning or somewhere along the lines. My personal experience tells me that most people interested in these matters HAD to get on this train and once onboard there is no getting off it. Over the years, work and family have exercised strong pressure on me to leave this stuff alone.i was never able to do that.

My takeaway is that Steve is still the best interviewer ever!<br /><br />My experience with TWIM is that the meditation technique works and has the advantage of being easy to learn but, from my point of view, the theory that is taught as part of the package is&nbsp;wrong (counterproductive) in many aspects. I have similar thoughts about this interview with Delson. It's great to see someone being public about reconsidering their practice. It is a fine example to set. The new theories and maps that he advances, however, don't make a lot of sense. For example, if the tenth fetter (ignorance) is just a lack of mindfulness, how can we use mindfulness to observe suffering? Ignorance is a precondition for suffering. If ignorance were absent when mindfulness is present, then suffering would not be able to arise when mindfulness is present. As such, you could not mindfully observe suffering, which would really throw a spanner in the works. To be sure, you can take the position that all you need is mindfulness, but why start talking about fetter models if that is your position? It is not well thought out. And that's fine. I don't think Delson owes me a perfect theory. I wish him continued success in his journey.&nbsp;

Listening to the podcast, I was struck by thoughts of Transcendental dependent origination:  Suffering - Committment - Gladness - Rapture - Tranquility - Happiness - Concentration - Knowledge & Vision - Disenchantment - Dispassion - Liberation - Review.  Looks like Delson has moved on to Disenchantment and now Dipassion (fading). Getting close.

But trying to stay absorbed in tranquility (non-arising) rather than moving on to equanimity (non-grasping) does seem to be very common trap - not realising that you can get rid of the second arrow, but not the first arrow. And that tranquility is just a thing that arises and passes away, it is not you, and becomes a source of suffering if clung to.

On Delson's comment on already being enlightened. I think this is unskilful. I might accept that we have this nature, and simply need to remove things to gain/regain it. Yes I could tentatively buy that. But I think Delson is mistaking peace for awakening. They are not the same. There are stages where you try on different views to try to make conceptual sense of what the subconscious is telling you, that is ok as long as you don't cling to them, but instead allow yourself to surf between realms and views without clinging. Otherwise, trying on a new view can allow the residual conceit of self to throw up some fresh defence mechanisms to avoid obliteration from the rooting up of ignorance. The new conceptual understanding is a new clinging, a new support for the enduring separate self, a new form of ignorance.

Delson, there is still a subtle non-acceptance in your approach. But you are making progress!!! Keep going!!! The road to fourth is littered with good vibrations!  Look inside!!  Find what is supporting the subtle Avijja that remains. Relinquish it. Truly relinquish it. This can be both the hardest and the silliest of all things. And if you can't see it, then first excavate the three characteristics of the concepts you do not even realise you are clinging to, not just tranquility, but ethics, movement, shape, number, location, life, pride, shame, and the rest.  You don't have to do all of them, just enough of them. See through them and accept them, don't resist them, accept them as dependently originating perceptual fabrications that are neither good nor bad. And if necessary, study five aggregates again very closely and see how their operation is described by the 12 nidanas.

Much Love to an extraordinary and talented dharma-follower. Step off the raft and join us.  I summon you.

Malcolm

Malcom, I'm working with the 5 aggregates as my main focus at the moment, can you point me to an explanation of "see how their operation is described by the 12 nidanas"?

For the 12 nidanas see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da. 

There is something of an overview of the interplay of the 5 aggregates with the 12 nidanas in this paper (open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-023-02101-y. 

Think of it as the following (but fractal and interrelated)

1. Form - part of namarupa, but also actually a shorthand for the subset of mental formations related to mattter
2. Feeling tone - vedana
3. Perception - the interplay of namarupa, vinnana, salayatana, resulting in phassa - discrimination of concepts
4. Mental formations - sankhara or behavioural tendencies, but also perceptual frames arising from the interplay between sankhara & salayatana (e.g. visual computing, successively processing raw data into shapes, features, faces, people, visual frames etc)
5. Consciousness - vinnana

So the five aggregates are a sketch of the psycho-physical being, and the 12 nidanas explain the default emotional processing of this being, unskilfully autonomically operating to create karma and suffering as a result of ignorant expectations about the world and ourselves.

Thanks, Malcolm. That's great!

I have already said this above but I'll say it again just for fun I suppose...

The paths are not for mapping spiritual experience. They are a way to understand fundamental neurological changes that can occur and which often give rise to spiritual experience but they do not, absolutely do not, "govern" the meaning one ascribes to spiritual experience. Nor do they provide any information about spiritual experience, or how they should be interpreted, other than basic, raw phenomenological data that may be useful for indicatinng depth of insight to one who is familiar with the terrain. Maps are a phenomenological tool, they're used for measuring ones progress through the paths. They are somewhat effective at doing so and this community is, on some level, centered around showing the reproducibility of their use. 

They are not a spiritual model. They are not the tree of life in Kabbalah, or Teresa of Avila, or the Bardo's, or Neoplatonic theurgy or Journeying or Jungian archetypes or any such thing.

They are also not vague, they are in my experience quite precise, reproducible and reliable, all be it one must use them with the understanding that things get pretty damn fractal. Paths are real, attaining them has discernible, reproducible effects. That's the argument the Buddha was making and he seemed to make it quite regularly. If I have to make it half as regularly as he did I will but most of us have heard it all before.


A classic example, the dukkha nanas, the "dark night"... One may have experiences of their own neurosis overwhelming them with intrusive thoughts. The paths do not tell you anything about what those intrusive thoughts will be about but they can prepare you for the potential of the arising of intrusive thoughts or the feeling of harsh painful vibrations. This is a common enough experience for meditators and being able to prepare for or even diagnose it has obvious clinical benefits. 

Another example, I am baptized Catholic, Catholics love Saints and dead people (saints are obviously just holy dead people). When I am at home, in the rugged wind beaten West of Ireland, I take a set of rosary beads that belonged to a dead relative and walk for many, many hours to a Holy Well. The well was the hermitage of a medieval, magic, renunciate who became a Saint. When I arrive, I bless those Rosary beads in springwater, pray for my family, my ancestors and the spirits of the land and walk miles and miles and miles back home. All of that is profoundly spiritual and moving. I've done it many times. It is an extremely significant ritual for me and one through which I find much deep meaning.

But... it has absolutely nothing to do with the paths. 
 
As I attained paths, the vibratory quality of that experience deepened, I came to appreciate and understand it in deeper ways but nothing about the paths prescribed any kind of meaning to it. 

Hi Todo,

 I'm jumping in here too because it seems to me that there is a very simple answer to your question (unless I am misunderstanding said question, of course). The paths are described in the sutras in terms of number of lives "at most" that you need  to experience to advance to the next path. A sottapanna therefore has "seven lives at the most" before he/she becomes a sakadagami. 

​​​​​​​Conal

 Also, just to add to the confusion





And from Traversing the grounds and paths:

"b. Divisions
When those [Hearer paths of no-more-learning] are di-
vided, there are two: exalted knowers of Foe Destroyers
who have simultaneously [abandoned] the objects of
abandonment and exalted knowers of Foe Destroyers who
have gradually [abandoned] the objects of abandonment.
གཉིས་པ་[དེ་བ་]ནི། [ཉན་ཐོས་ཀྱི་མི་ོབ་ལམ་]དེ་ལ་དེ་ན།
ང་་གཅིག་ཆར་བའི་དགྲ་བཅོམ་པའི་མཁྱེན་པ་དང་།
ང་་རིམ་གྱིས་པའི་དགྲ་བཅོམ་པའི་མཁྱེན་པ་དང་
གཉིས་ཡོད།
A Foe Destroyer who, prior to attaining that state, actualizes the fruit of a
Never Returner is a Foe Destroyer of simultaneous abandonment, whereas
a Foe Destroyer who, prior to attaining that state, does not actualize the
fruit of a Never Returner is a Foe Destroyer of gradual abandonment.
When [Hearer paths of no-more-learning are] divided by
way of faculty, there are two types: [exalted knowers of]
Hearer Foe Destroyers of sharp faculties and exalted
knowers of those of dull faculties.
[ཉན་ཐོས་ཀྱི་མི་ོབ་ལམ་ལ་]དབང་པོའི་ོ་ནས་དེ་ན། ཉན་
ཐོས་དགྲ་བཅོམ་པ་དབང་ོན་[གྱི་མཁྱེན་པ་]དང་དབང་
ལ་གྱི་མཁྱེན་པ་གཉིས་ཡོད།
According to the Great Exposition School, those Foe Destroyers who have
dull faculties can fall from the fruit of Foe Destroyer. However, according
to the higher systems, there is no such thing as falling from the fruit of Foe
Destroyer, although there are cases of the mere temporary degeneration of
their meditative stabilization of bliss in this lifetime. Still, for both the
higher and lower systems, there are no cases of degeneration that are not
“repaired” within that life. Hence, even in the system that asserts a Foe
Destroyer who falls from that fruit, it is re-attained in this lifetime. Simi-
larly, in the upper systems, where there are cases of Foe Destroyers who
fall from the meditative stabilization of bliss, it is necessarily the case that
that meditative stabilization is restored and they do attain it again in that
very lifetime."

​​​​​​​You're welcome.
 

 I would like to preface this by appreciating the amount of courage it must take for a public and popular teaching figure to renounce their previous claims of attainment and basically take the axe to the dharmic pedestal they had climbed/been put on by their students and peers. I was touched when he described a sense of relief that has come from his own community as a reaction to his announcement. A possible relief of being able to let go of what were probably always unrealistic expectations that must have caused a lot of pain to both himself and his community.

On that note, however, I was struck by the tone of his reckoning with his own role as a teacher propagating a practice which aims at the eradication of human fetters.

„I don’t have a condemnation of TWIM, I don’t have an endorsement of TWIM either, I’m just teaching what I know works for me and if for whatever reason because of my experience at the time I might have mislead people into TWIM because of that reason, I take full accountability for that and I would apologise if they felt that way.“

I don‘t really come away with an idea what „full accountability“ means here. To be fair, I am not sure I know what it should look like either. I know what it‘s not though and saying that he „would apologise if someone felt that they might have been mislead“ certainly isn‘t it. I would expect to read an apology like this on the twitter account of a B-list celebrity that had somehow put a foot in their mouth. There is the typical emphasis on the conditional and the way the other feels about a trauma. There is a clear lack of authentic acknowledgement of the mistake made and the damage done. I understand that courage may come piece-meal and owning up to ones responsibilities is hard, but the tone he chooses for his apology cheapens its impact.

This incomplete reckoning with the responsibilities of a teacher comes back with a vengeance later in the podcast. When Nelson is asked by the Guru Viking how he would deal or advise someone to deal with their subconscious traumatic material, he replies:

„I think the way to look at this is there’s are all kinds of modalities that can help with this process and you just have to find what works for you and so I can provide what works for me and if it works for you you try it out and see for yourself […]“

So here is a clear shift of responsibility from the teacher to the student. The teacher only provides tools that have worked for them and it‘s up to the student to try them out and see for themselves. On the one hand, giving back autonomy to the student is probably a good and necessary move, coming from the kind of strict monastic systems that Delson operates in. On the other hand, I believe that an important sense of responsibility still remains with the teacher and needs to be acknowledged. Part of that responsibility should be a restraint from vague maximalist expectations and sweeping statements without cautionary qualifications regarding possible side-effects and adverse outcomes. Which is why it‘s slightly vexing when he follows this up with

„What I would just say when it comes to facing the shadow, one of the things that is very helpful is to lean into it. Whatever it is that you‘re afraid of, whatever it is that you are anxious about, whatever it is that you find anger towards, whatever you find resistance towards, the more you resist, the more the shadow grows, but the more you lean into it, the more it sheds light onto the shadow and therefore it becomes more manageable and easier to navigate through.“

Without any shred of qualification or caution, this is pretty horrible and potentially damaging advice when it comes to shadow work. In a world where institutions like cheetah house are a thing and resources on trauma sensitive mindfulness are publicly available, anyone who has any business helping their students deal with subconscious traumatic material should know better. They should be expected to point out that it‘s very much not always advisable to "lean into the pain, whatever it is that you‘re afraid of, and expect everything to become more manageable and easier to navigate through". If this is your unqualified recipe in dealing with trauma through spiritual work, then your recipe is going to really fuck up some people up.

There seems to be a direct line from the old Delson, who as a teacher seemed so intoxicated by the temporary bliss of his spiritual peak experience that he propagated unrealistic and potentially harmful practice advice to this new Delson, who seems so moved by a partially digested encounter with his own shadow, he now propagates another iteration of unrealistic and potentially harmful practice advice. Which kind of brings us back to the question of accountability. What would it mean for Delson to take future „full accountability“ as a public teacher for a statement like this?

Writing this sounds pretty harsh to my own ears, so I feel the need to differentiate a bit more. There is Delson, the public teacher, whose teachings and style I find pretty problematic. On the other hand, there is Delson the practitioner and seeker. I can sincerely appreciate the latter’s honesty, courage and strength of conviction, especially regarding the scale of overcalling his own attainments. I think the paragraph in MCTB that Daniel wrote on this is one of the best things he‘s ever written and it serves as a good moral compass here. Delson deserves compassion, recognition and respect for the step he took so publicly. I hope to find similar courage when I need it and I hope he finds the continued support of his peers and students. May this be only a step in a continued and fruitful re-examination of how he and his community can both live and pass on the dharma. 

Raphael, you'll also like this thread: The Isolation of Blowing It

Awesome, thanks! Daniel's head post of this thread is indeed the piece of writing I was on about. Turns out my memory just lumped it together with the rest of MCTB. 

I work as a critical care physician and in the medical just like in the dharma world, "the isolation of blowing it" - or our fear of that isolation - seems really the greatest obstacle to the mature error culture we all want. 

To maybe push back on it and give my perspective on this a little - Delson always struck me as very spiritually talented (listen to his siddhi tales podcast episodes), and always actually shocking authentic (listen to his siddhi tales episode).

I say this in part based on his guru viking podcasts. Like on his podcast with Daniel, I thought both of them were telling their truths, and the back and forth then back an interesting thing to think about why it exists. You can ask "who has the right answer and why" and it is good fuel for the fire.

Secondly, I say this in part based on my personal interactions with him, alluded to somewhere else in this thread. Like when I heard Delson say, "yeah all the answers you need are in the Suttas, and the Buddha basically got it right" in private (our 1-1), and then for the dhamma talks go on to just read the suttas, he is a man true to his word there (sounds like unshakable faith if you ask me).

It seems to me he went deep in the supramundane, had lots to figure out, and is now going deep in the mundane.

"Maps are a phenomenological tool, they're used for measuring ones progress through the paths. They are somewhat effective at doing so and this community is, on some level, centered around showing the reproducibility of their use. "

Bahiya, 
This quote of yours just showed how you & I inhabit totally different worlds:
- when you say that the maps are phenomenological tools after affirming earlier that they correspond to neurological shifts; You just solved the mind/body problem without breaking a sweat.
- when you talk about reproducibility of phenomenological conclusions; You just solved the qualia puzzle to boot.
- When you define "this community" as having the goal to prove this reproducibility; You just sent scientists & philosophers to go play elsewhere. Mind you scientists never try to prove anything, what they actually love to do is kill their sacred cows.
​​​​​​​Salam

I appreciate the pushing back in regards to him being very spiritually gifted. I would push back against the push back in regards to what you perceive as „going deep in the mundane.“ We may have different appreciations of depth or you may see something there that I cannot. As I said above, his mundane reckoning with his role as a teacher cuts fairly shallow. So does the part he offers about shadow work. And it‘s baffling to me that he is on the Guru Vikings podcast, renouncing claims he made there in the past, without any trace of acknowledgement towards the position of the person he passionately debated on that very same podcast.

Yeah, you're not wrong, but I would say that at any point along the path there's going to be topics/areas/techniques/etc you're talented/interested in and things that you're bad at. The things that you're talented/interested in have a way of pulling you deeper and cultivating certain things, and the areas that you're weaker in have a way of causing suffering, in ways that can often be confusing, and figuring out the source of that suffering is how you cultivate wisdom and find liberation.

You forgot my favorite flavor of arhant, the mahayana arhant (the bodhisattva)

Love this!

How far from dry Vipassana! 

yeah, life's difficult, absurd even. We find ourselves aware & aware of being aware & aware that this will come to an end soon for us & see that it has already ended for people we loved, for our parents and ancestors.

humans have thus tried since the beginning to find solace wherever they can: gods, saints, magicians, shamans, psychotropic substances, etc. etc.

​​​​​​​the sad truth is that all this is just BS.

​​​​​​​Agreed.

"How far from dry Vipassana!"

​​​​​​​I'll have you know im probably the greatest dry vipassana practitioner on earth. I'm certainly the dryest. Ask anyone here. They'll tell you. I do a little wet vipassana too as a side hustle but I don't know if you're the right type of fellow for that premium member content. 

I've vipassanized objects you people wouldn't believe, Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tannhauser gate, All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain

Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving
And you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin'

"Its all fart in the wind" - Papa Che of the Barking Cloth

Delson is saying that the mind is already liberated "under" all that unconscious trauma and all that inner stuff, and as soon the mind is "still" the mind is liberated in "that" moment ... hm ... yeah ... dunno about that  

So Delson was an Anagami during his teaching years? Makes sense. The understanding of the Dhamma is likely strongest at that "stage". 

Sorry Im commenting as Im listening to the interview  

Oh interesting! Delson had experiences with astrology! Me too! So far everything the astrologist told me some 25 years ago has come to be. And she told me some strange stuff at that time I was absolutely not even interested in, and was even afraid of. But yeah ... strange stuff that astrology is!  

It has been interesting to see this unfold. Delson's discussion with Daniel on GV was my first exposure to him and my intuition was that there were some layers on top of his selfie-ness that were artificially smoothed in the image of the ideal of his tradition. Even in his occasional humility it seemed a bit like a hat he was wearing. &nbsp;Even so I was surprised by this renunciation of attainments and I agree with much of the sentiment here that his courage in that respect is admirable.<br /><br />On hearing this new interview it seemed to me that basically he failed the hottie in a hot tub test and also perhaps became a bit worried about being associated too firmly with twim, a community whose integrity seems to be in question (my only exposure to all that is the youtube-iverse). Also that he felt the need to get out ahead of whatever this video/documentary was that he was refering to. To be public is to be political I suppose.<br /><br />I wonder about his claim to the 6 day narodha samapatti...it is also surprising level of self delusion in the context of the apparent meditative accomplishments - even through the lens of the persistence of humanness in the wake of accomplishment that Daniel is careful to emphasize.<br /><br />In his YT videos I also had the nagging red flag of the that kind of habitual dhamma humor that presents a teaching about emptiness or no self or something with an air that imparts the feeling of 'arent we all so clever and arent i so wise'... to me this is usually a kind of nudge-wink that suggest understanding without having to demonstrate it. It was this vibe that kept me away from mainstream buddhism 20y ago when i was in the path searching phase. (Eventually I went down the Daoist path, and later the Bon Dzogchen path, and only now through Daniel's work I am reading into the Theravadan body of knowledge and practice).<br /><br />Anyway, I appreciate all the thoughtful and insightful responses here and in other parts of DhO.