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

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!

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

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.

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!

Yes, that approach works well.

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.  

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...

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. 

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/

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!

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  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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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

I agree with all this.

You seem to be assuming that MCTB 2 is supposed to be limited to pre-First Path issues. Sure, there could be many different focuses for dharma books, but Daniel has said he wanted to write the best dharma book available, not to dumb it down for people. If he followed your suggestions, the book would be "partially castrated" (as Daniel memorably put it in a different context) and it wouldn't be the best dharma book out there. It'd be missing all its meat, all the stuff that gives it its flavor, any encyclopediac characteristics or claims to being complete.

I can see the advantages of having a mini-MCTB that's specifically geared for dharma groups or beginners only or something like that, sort of an introductory brochure. But I don't think MCTB 2 should be that. Maybe Part I of MCTB 2.

Please include it.  Some people will have access to only this book.  I wonder if such decisions led to the tripitaka as opposed to the quadrotaka.

imagine if all of these questions and controversies that have fueled so much confusion over the millenia have arisen because someone chose not to include some seemingly obvious but critical information.

more please.

I'm not simply "assuming" that the book is for beginners: That is how the book positions itself up until the later chapters that treat fractals, competing maps, advanced paths, and so on. I was speaking from an editorial and publications-marketing viewpoint. Encyclopedic tours at this time in history simply will not sell to beginners, and lack of sustained clarity about exactly who the audience is never improves any publication. This is just book writing 101, about which I do happen to know a good deal professionally.

If Daniel wants to help novices, those stuck in the Dark Night, which is what the book states its purpose is, then I think it would be fine to collapse all the "advanced" stuff into a coda or conclusionary chapter and then give us a more detailed, measured treatment of DN substages, EQ, specific meditation techniques (please!), and Formations. That coda could also point to the Web site or a future sequel. Alternatively, if Daniel is in fact writing for advanced practitioners, then the positioning of the book as it is now would need to change, and  the whole of Part 1, at the least, is likely a superfluous summary.

As a dharma practitioner, I would like to have access to everything Daniel has to teach; as a professional book editor, however, I'd like to see MCTB succeed as much as possible to reach as many new readers as possible. For the latter to be possible, the treatment should be improved in terms of audience targeting and evenness of level of detail and tone. This is my professional opinion.

I understand you're speaking from a marketing viewpoint, and I'm sure you know what you're talking about from that viewpoint. I just don't think that viewpoint is especially relevant for current purposes. Daniel has stated that he wrote MCTB for himself, to be the book he wishes he had, and to be the best dharma book out there. So I would suggest thinking of the "target audience" as Daniel himself, and the posters on the DhO.

As far as I understand, Daniel isn't planning on making money off of MCTB 2 or on marketing it widely, so I don't think the marketing viewpoint is particularly helpful. We're not trying to "sell to beginners," or really to sell to anyone.

I think you're correct that there's a need for a beginner-friendly book that should be geared towards a wider market, and I'm all for Daniel writing one - but that book is not MCTB 2.



I don't agree with this at all: part 1 is extremely helpful and very clearly written and it takes a perspective not found in many other dharma books. I don't see how cutting it out would make MCTB better. Where else are people supposed to find that information? MCTB should have everything a practitioner needs from the very basic stuff all the way through to post-arahat stuff.



I'd personally rather MCTB be exactly what 100 people need, rather than to reach thousands of "new readers" who won't actually do anything after reading it. I don't think your suggestions about cutting out large parts of the book as part of some exercise in targeting a very specific topic or group of people, or watering down and making the tone bland, would actually improve it.

(As a side note, this is helping me understand what's wrong with the publishing industry. No wonder so many books out there are poorly conceived and organized - some marketing exec is cutting out "poorly targeted" parts!)

Um, probably not a good idea to take any advice too personally or get too worked up over differing opinions.  I think you both want what you think is best and are trying to support Daniel and his work so that's a good thing.  Professional advice is also very nice especially when freely given and I am sure Daniel is quite capable of deciding if he wants to take that advice in exact form, only take some of it, take none of it, or just think about it more.  Personally, I do think there is a strong need for something like this and the book could be amazingly great even for those just starting out.  Because there are SO many competing opinions out there about what to do and how to do it and a lot of it is really rigid and a whole lot of people are out there without useful guru guidance.  Even online, you have to look really really hard to figure out even simple things unless you manage to find this place where it is written out clearly in English.  Think of all the flailing that could be avoided if lots of meditators could find this resource and perhaps set themselves out on a more efficient path from the beginning.  Sometimes or often, one starts out doing something for some reason or another and then the end result turns out to be much more than consciously intended at the outset.   I could be very interesting to see where all this goes in the long run and the way I see it, there could be multiple very interesting directions to take it. 
-Eva    

JC: 
I'm not a marketer. I'm a published writer and senior editor; I'm a former college Engish professor. I'm speaking from the viewpoint of effective writing, as opposed to ineffective writing. Writing a book for oneself will appeal to exactly one person: oneself. Writing needs to be sensitive to the audience, first and foremost. Its purpose needs to be driven by target audience needs and assumptions, and scope needs to conform to that purpose. I have a draft here that is a baggy monster bordering on 600 pages. This is encyclopediac in scope and lacks sufficient focus and audience definition. I will do my best to address these issues, which really do need to be addressed, while respecting Daniel's final decisions.

I reiterate: Only amatuers write for self-expression instead of from a need to have a message effect change in the real world. You can choose to call that a "marketing viewpoint," but I'm speaking of a rhethorical viewpoint--which is to say the viewpoint of someone who writes well, writes to achieve change in other people's minds. I'm well aware (keenly!) that Daniel has personal affection for his creation. He'll need to decide for himself whether his goal is to dump everything he knows and put his personality on display in MCTB2, or to have his content actually be transparently received and used by a broader audience. He has told me that he really wants people to "get this stuff." He's not talking, therefore, about preaching to the choir. The DhO is the choir.


So you want a content dump so that the DhO can have a sequel and orginal rolled into one, to the tune of a baggy 600-page monster. That's an interesting preference, but not one that under any circumstances I would think a wise one for any serious author to adopt.
The reason that so many books out there are poorly conceived and organized is because so many people today are self-publishing without benefit of a developmental editor to save them from their undigested, unreviewed worst impulses. It is odd that you would think that focus and editing would somehow equate with poor conception and organization: exactly the opposite is true.

I have always really wished that more meditaiton books had personal experience. This would let people understand why teachers say what they do, and as a result, find teachers that have had similar experiences to their own. 

I'm sure there are many here who would enjoy a bootlegged copy of MCTB2. Some would read the 600 pages. Still, dividing this in more than one book seems to be essential at this point. I would rather see the whole thing published, with your editing for improved clarity but leaving everything that Daniel has written. So, I don't see that it's 600 pages long as a good argument to not publishing a draft, as it suggest that the final book will be reduced in length.  Does that include the biography? Maybe completing the edition of the biography and releasing that part online would be a good idea. It would appease the impatient. I consider it to be important for a biography to be as close as the person tell the story, and not over-editing it to fit some format.

If the book was to be released in two or three volume, I think the content would have to be re-organized so that we would have:

MCTB2 vol. 1 Core Teachings
MTCB2 vol. 2 Supplemental/Advanced Teachings 

It's the only logical organization but maybe it would break with the progression and logical order Daniel had in mind. You talk about the target audience. The problem is, the target audience is ridiculously vast. MCTB target both beginners and advanced meditators. Basically, anyone that as crossed the A&P is in the target audience. 

An alternative is to see MCTB2 as specifically an advanced book, and plan for a distilled version targeting beginners. 

Beside releasing online the biography, release online sections that need to be refined would allow for community input.  I don't think the usual editing and publishing process is appropriate for such book. I'm pretty certain Daniel don't looks to be a NYTimes best seller author. So, a more open source approach make much more sense.  As an example, you asked for input on the 3 doors and formations. Why not release the existing material pertinent to those discussion in those threads? If we are to discuss what is to end up in the book, providing the material to be discussed seems the logical thing to do. 

I think this is the wrong way to approach this and will only lead to the book being dumbed down. MCTB is already one of the most well-known dharma book that actually deal with technical stuff. Let's take a book like A Path With Heart. The writing style and the content reach a much larger audience but the actual teachings are kind of loss and hard to be used as a reference because of that. The Dharma is a difficult practice to begin with and the people that get serious about it are often quite educated. I don't see either was evenness of level of detail can mean considering that the book deal with so many different aspects that might very well need different level of detail. Should the section on dissolution be has long and detailed than the section on equanimity? Is that the kind of evenness we are talking here? If so, that doesn't really make sense. If it's something else that indeed help the reader to grasp the content in a more progressive way, then I can understand. But if we go in that direction, we are back to a discussion about making a book for beginners. As it as been suggested before and Daniel did make mention of that, MCTB2 aims at going deeper and in more detail than MCTB1. Sure, the first few chapters on fundamentals like morality might seems out of place beside the more advanced stuff. But even on those matters, advanced practionners can need to be reminded important key points. 

Simon:

Everyone needs a professional editor. Even an editor needs an editor. I've never in my whole career had someone say I made their book worse by substantively editing it: quite the contrary. At any rate, this one is Daniel's book, so he decides how to proceed. It is not for me to say. I offered my nights and weekends for what may turn out to be many months of work for me. I did so as community service and in gratitude to Daniel, because I know with zero doubt in my mind that my contributions will make this book the best that it can be, and I consider this book to be extremely important. Yes, I'm that confident about my abilities and about my view on this issue. But I'm also not going to plead myself blue for the job. I have, as I say, a full-time day job as a book development editor, so I have plenty to do and my feelings won't be hurt if it is decided that my contributions are unwelcome. But, again, that's Daniel's call.
Much more sense than having a pro edit it? I'm not sure why you see this as an either-or proposition. I was assuming that Daniel would want commentary from the full community after it has been cleaned up. Developmental editing is extremely complex. It is not just about correcting ungrammatical usage. I also happen to have read the book many times and am someone who has benefited from it to stream entry. This in no way means I'm the perfect proxy for all readers, but it is a pretty good (free) package deal for Daniel to be getting by way of professional editorial help.

I understand that everyone is excited/impatient to see the new edition, but think of the confusion and time-consumption that would ensue if every section was opened up to 100 different opinions that Daniel (and I) would then need to sift through. Personally, I can't work that way. I have to work with the author one-on-one to do my stuff, really complex time-consuming stuff as it is. I think that the community's commentary will be more helpful after an editorial pass, after I've done the good that I know how to do. I guess that is Daniel's decision, since we've begun some work on the thing, but I don't want to speak for him.

In the thread you are mentioning, I was remembering what was in MCTB1. I haven't even read the MCTB2 version myself. I was just opening a discussion about sections I wanted more clarity on as a reader when I first read MCTB1. About providing the new material on those threads, I don't feel that it is my place to post Daniel's draft sections online. They belong to him, so he will need to be the one to decide how all this is done. If he feels that an open-source free-for-all is currently in the book's best interest, then I'll bow out until such time as he wants my services. But if and when he does want my services, I'll need to have all the other cooks out of the kitchen. Sorry, but otherwise we risk version control issues, as well as just an interminable and ridiculously complex process for me.

Jenny

Simon: 
Hi, Simon. I meant that some parts of MCTB1 are raced through with little actual technique imparted. I also mean that some of the skimpy chapters, such as the ones on the subnanas of the Dark Night, might work better bundled together into a single chapter if they aren't going to be further detailed. It is conventional in book publishing to make the chapters approximately the same length and scope. 

You don't know me from Eve, I realize, but, again, I'll just assert that I've never had any author be anything except ecstatic over my substantive edits. I promise you that I won't set out to ruin or dumb down the book. And I promise not to make Daniel sound like Jack. As if Daniel would let anyone do any of those things!

I don't know what else to say. I could post my resume, acknowledgments, and awards, but that sort of thing is unlikely to inspire the confidence that just seeing the work would.

Jenny

Thanks for doing this.  I think one of the weaknesses of the first book is that it doesn't always feel fully explained.  Of course this topic is difficult to conceptualize when the practice is non-conceptual.  I'm sure when Daniel sees the final product he'll be pleased. If it helps more people understand it then that'll be another reason to have a 2nd edition.

Thanks, Richard. I'm also reading widely on the DhO and talking with others who've read the book (ie, a reading group I was in last year). Since I'm in there editing anyway, I'm also dropping reader questions in. This by no means means I'm the only or best reader to offer a reader response, but it is a start.

For an example of the kinds of queries I'm making: Daniel has a conversational writing style in MCTB, and people like his modern, casual voice. However, one of the drawbacks of being so breezy/chatty is that sometimes the words he selects are vague. For instance, he uses "things" and "this stuff" a lot. So I query him for more precision. It doesn't change his overall voice to select a more specific word so we readers can be sure we know precisely what he's saying at each point. Other times, particularly in the descriptions of the three doors, the pronouns are ambiguous, so I will query him for antecedents so the picture of those doors is clearer.

Jenny

That will help reduce confusion.  Though it will tough to explain toroids and some of the kasina after-effects like logarithmic spirals.

I'm not personnally interested in reading the draft by the way, as I don't have the time nor the skills or the level of realization to seriously contribute to it. I see that you have a reading group, which is good and might serve in providing the valuable input. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for your work. I'm simply coming from a background where many people working on the same piece of work is common.