Analayo: "Meditation Maps, Attainment Claims, and the Adversities of Mindfulness"

Ven. Sujato,

Regarding the alleged falsity of “we are going to make sure that nobody ever believes you again,” do you mean that Ven. Analayo has demonstrated to you its falsity by sending you his email exchanges with Daniel and/or recordings of their two oral exchanges? Or do you just mean that you personally prefer to believe a fellow monk’s version of events rather than Ingram’s?

Cheers,
Snežana

After telling everyone he was going to write a response in Mindfulness (with and reviewed by “esteemed colleagues”) it’s very telling that the most reputable forum he was actually able to get was … an interview on the “Guru Viking” YouTube Channel?! :man_facepalming:

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At first I thought this too, but now reading Daniel Ingram’s forum there are some pretty diehard believers. It sounds like some of them had “dark night of the soul” experiences that Buddhism didn’t directly explain, others felt they couldn’t attain jhanas and wanted an alternative lay practice. Some mention that it’s not their “karma” to practice the EBT way.

I feel personally the importance of Anālayo’s response and upholding the truth. I grew up in the TM community where just about anything goes in the name of Maharishi. People will believe their leaders. Look at what’s happening with the far right in America.

It’s crucial to uphold the original texts, practices, and definitions in the face of so many strong personalities and seekers looking to explain their experiences.

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Seems everyone here is doing nothing but dissing YouTube lately! :laughing: And I suppose “Guru Viking, vol 3, no. 2, pp. 85-94” doesn’t quite cut it in terms of publication credentials. :slight_smile:

Anyway, to be fair, recalling the Bhikkhu Analayo/Thanissaro Bhikkhu debate, I think it was only Analayo that had his articles/reponses actually published in journals. IIRC Thanissaro just put his responses up on a website (his monastery one). Bhikkhuni ordination is also a topical issue and there’s enough of general readership interest there, I guess, to justify articles by a very well established author in a journal (even if crafted around a response in an online debate). Analayo also was on the politically correct side of the debate – a side that I happen to agree with – but I doubt a more conservative Theravadin monk would have gotten an article published in a journal with religious legalistic arguments against female ordination even if he had tried and even it was the most amazingly written paper ever! :slight_smile:

In this case, I’m not sure there is a particularly topical issue involved (the article was more in the nature of focusing on one person than dealing with grand issues). The journal itself would likely be the only reasonable (academic) avenue of reply (otherwise the only route is just putting an article up online). It would seem reasonable to me that someone collaborating with academics who was a subject of a one-person “case study” (a rather negative one too) in a journal should get some kind of right of reply (if even a relatively short letter to reply to major points). From the link above, it seemed that Ingram only “hoped” to get a response published in the journal. There’s a level of realism in that. He then says in the next post that his “initial response” was rejected. Maybe they sent an article-length response and the journal itself had something of a more modest length in mind! :man_shrugging: Sounds like they will try again anyway. Debate by journal is not exactly a lightning fast process either (say what you want about YouTube, but that’s not one of its flaws :laughing: )! IIRC the Analayo/Thanissaro back-and-forth took about 2 or 3 years to play out? I also had to smile a bit though at the comment about the rather restrained nature of the journal medium (again not YouTube :slight_smile: ):

as we intend to publish it in Mindfulness, as that is a radically different audience and cultural context, with a relatively different purpose and set of stylistic expectations. The typical laser-like fire will be significantly rechanneled into trying to win hearts, minds, scientists, and research dollars.

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Call me an interloper on this thread but this part was my favorite:

“hypersexual ways of looking at the world and people are
common in this territory. It is the stage most prone to
creating vipassana romances … heightened libido and
increases in sexual ability may be noticed during this
stage. Affairs with other meditators, teachers, and other
types of people become more likely…strong sensual or
sexual dreams are also common at this stage.”

What?!

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True, and some have been around for many years. But you can’t see a trend with a snapshot. I know a number of people that started out there and eventually rejected it. There are always far more people reading on a site like that than actually post - same I would think for this one.

Maybe it isn’t. Buddha said his teaching was for the few not the many. There is that old saying “You can lead a person to dhamma but you can’t stop them from thinking”.

I agree. I also feel it is necessary to present these teachings as contemporary, living dhamma - not just old texts. Too often, I feel there is a rigidity and fundamentalism in the EBT community with regard to the path. I think it truly comes alive when we have people like Ajahn Chah and others (preferably alive) that can speak about their experience in everyday modern language. It’s allot easier than trying to translate something from a dead language from a long dead culture. This characteristic is partly why people like Daniel are able to get their foot in the door - even how they get confused in the first place.

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For those interested in how discussion between Ingram and Analayo went, I repost from DhO:

EDIT: the forum post from which this link comes:

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Right? It’s so weird until you remember that with people like this, everything is projection all the time. This is not a description, it is a confession.

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In my early teens my faith in Buddha and his teachings (a few things I knew) were fortified by the Kalama Sutta. I feel this is a very powerful doorway in modern times to realize Dhamma without any dogma by honestly looking and observing one’s own experiential journey and transformation of defilements through the five educational trainings of the mind for ‘samadhi’ (my phrasing) and sincerely taking Buddha’s invitation to ‘come and see, investigate’ (Ehipasiko) and ‘be a light unto yourself’ (attodipabhava).

I downloaded and printed Ingram’s free book out of curiosity, but realized soon, it was a mistake to print the whole book! I would be nice to know real living Arahants. I didn’t know Bhikkhu Analaya is one.

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Blockquote
@Nava I didn’t know Bhikkhu Analaya is one.

Maybe I’m mis-reading your quote, but just in case there is any confusion, Ven Bhikkhu Analayo is not an arahant, and he would not claim to be! In fact he would be the first to confirm that he is not.

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@Linda thank you for that correction. I misread or misunderstood someone’s comment somewhere. So I went back to review my book.

For someone at the journey’s end
Freed of sorrow
Liberated in all ways
Released from all bonds
No fever exists.

The mindful apply themselves
They don’t amuse themselves in any abode.
Like swans flying from a lake
They abandon home after home.

Like the path of birds in the sky,
It is hard to trace the path
Of those who do not hoard
Who are judicious with their food,
And whose field
Is the freedom of emptiness and signlessness.
Dhp 90-92, Gil Fronsdal

More here SuttaCentral
:pray:

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This seems to be Daniel Ingram’s best response to the article, a well-done podcast, Daniel gets his best shot to respond to all the critique, being questioned by a nuetral host. I think it is well-worth it to balance out the bias here in SS/EBT and understand the background of Analayo’s writing.

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Since bias implies unfairness and prejudice and prejudice isn’t based on reason, I think it’s safe to say that there is very little bias here.
Bhikkhu Analayo was also a “neutral host” who questioned his claims and had long conversations with Daniel Ingram about them.

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This is a really good point, thank you. Too often people fall into the lazy assumption that having a perspective is the same thing as having a bias. Everyone has a perspective, it is a necessary dimension of knowing anything. We can literally only see from a specific point of view. The more we are aware of our perspective, the better we can become at making allowances for it and seeking out other perspectives.

Reason and evidence always have a role. They cannot always solve problems, but they can serve to narrow and define the issue better.

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Within the first eleven minutes of the interview you do have to realize that does Daniel Ingram not only know nothing of Buddhist meditation, he’s also ignorant of Bernard Faure’s well grounded critiques of early Western assimilation of “Buddhism” through D.T. Suzuki (a rinzai zen monk). To be “surprised” that Bhikkhu Analayo rejects perennialism … wow!

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Without getting into a debate on who is right and who is deluded (not that I think I am qualified to offer an opinion), this whole thing saddens me a bit.

I can now understand how the schisms in Buddhist schools came about. Are we not able to tolerate differences in approach and interpretation?

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Dr. Ingram is no Buddhist.

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Someone shared a link to Daniel Ingram’s MCTB book a few years ago, and I remember browsing through it. Frankly, it came across as a loose collection of incoherent rants, and some weird takes on Buddhist teachings that often sound crazy - check out chapter 68 - “magick” and the brahmaviharas where he talks about the magickal potential of human beings and goes on to even more interesting theories such as (quoting from page 545)

“The brahma viharas are generally in the (somewhat inaccurate) category of private magick, and even if you make them public magick by, say, chanting out the phrases in some hopefully appropriate public context, hardly anyone would object or find anything odd in wishing others well or in the other three practices. Still, the category of private magick is a relative one, as the field of causality is unavoidably interconnected. Actions done in your own mind stream are guaranteed to have implications for the rest of the world.”

What? Yes, this is humour, but some points are still questionable, e.g., how does he guarantee the last statement? Is this just a writer’s creative license or did he really mean that?

There are many other chapters with similar interesting views. Perhaps Dr. Ingram is really a sane and grounded individual, but just from going through his book, I really get really strange vibes… that something’s really off here, and I’d stay very far away from him or his works.

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Seems Daniel Ingram has prestige in post-rationalism/silicon valley circles: Book Review: Mastering The Core Teachings Of The Buddha | Slate Star Codex

Addressing troubling effects of earnest ppl trying, and failing, to be make progress on the path is useful no?

The part of Daniel Ingram’s book regarding the dark night is a dangerous one. It invites people to make themselves believe that they have progressed on the path because of an increase of fear or depression. Delusional people can fall into this trap and be somehow content to be depressed, having the pride that they are on the right track. So they see what the Buddha taught as restlessness & anxiety ( uddhacca-kukkucca) and sloth & torpor (thīna-middha) as skillfull mental qualities.

Yes, the Buddha taught the dark night moment: it’s when your concentration is hindered by restlessness & anxiety (uddhacca-kukkucca) or sloth & torpor (thīna-middha).
This stage lasts as long as you don’t see them as they really are and as long as you don’t abandon them.
In other words, as long as you have Wrong View, Wrong Mindfulness and Wrong Effort, this “dark night moment” lasts.

Should there be any vision, the Buddha teaches us not to cling to it. Should there be any insight, keep going until this insight matures into something concrete, i.e a mind free from the five hindrances, a mind in jhāna.

Here, you arrive Right Concentration. Then, you have a basis to develop further Right View by contemplating the five aggregates, the six-sense bases or the four elements. This won’t turn into a deluded perception or insight because your mind have a good basis in jhāna where the five hindrances are not present.

The above part is what the people in “the dark night stage” should learn.
They should learn also the suttas, i.e the true teachings of the Buddha, and listen to wise and truly attained people like Ajaan Maha Bua, Ajaan Chah or Ajaan Dtun, not to the wrong people.

The good or bad part about Daniel Ingram is that he gives his false Dhamma book freely. It’s good because Dhamma books should be given freely (like those of Ajaan Geoff) and it’s bad because his is not a true Dhamma book.

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