While I think that while Analayo made some good points in his article, I found some of it a bit too much on the personal side overall (and I’m generally a big fan of Analayo’s books and writings). I wasn’t a fan of how he used the direct Ingram quotes (actually had me vaguely wondering about how representative or fair was the overall picture being painted at times), which I felt generally weakened the impact of the article. It might have been stronger if he had stuck more to something along the lines of: here’s what Daniel Ingram teaches, and here are the practical and doctrinal reasons I have issues with and why. I think the reddit post I linked to does some of that quite well (though it doesn’t pull punches when arguing about the actual points of the system).
I read the MCTB book myself several years ago (or got the through most of it anyway). I still have a physical copy of it somewhere in my bookshelves. I felt a strong somewhat refreshing “can do” energy off the thing. I had some reservations about it, though, even at the time (a bit more on that later). On Daniel Ingram himself, he seemed like a no-bullshit up-front kind of guy. As spiritual teachers go (IMO there’s a high percentage of hucksters in the general spirituality field), he seemed honest. I think he makes no money from all of this (IIRC he makes a living as a medical doctor) and, as someone has mentioned, his book is available for free. Those are all good signs.
My impression from lurking on his forum for a bit was his system (big emphasis on fast noting) seemed to be getting impressively replicable results. There was a detailed map and many people there seemed to be indeed getting into the territory laid out in his maps. He was also upfront about dangers of his intensive boot camp-style hardcore practice approach (I suppose people couldn’t complain that they weren’t warned).
My judgment was that he was sincere (still is my opinion). He seemed to have a lot of experience, found his experiences didn’t match up with traditional maps and systems, and so created his own (or extensively adapted what was there), which is fair enough I guess. He seems intelligent and charismatic (though generally there’s always a person like that at the nucleus of any such spiritual group or mini-movement).
I guess my main reservation about the MCTB system at the time was that the whole process of doing this path, or even the end-point, just seemed a bit bleak. It seemed quite feasible that with enough of his type of practice (doing it intensively enough), one would end up where those people in his group seemed to be at; it’s just that I wasn’t so sure that I actually wanted to.
The section A Revised Fourth Path Model comes to mind. At a certain point it sounded like one would hop onto a kind of merry-go-round of constant insight cycles of “powerful A&P Events, challenging Dark Nights, equanimity phases, and what seemed to be brand new, fresh Fruitions …” with, seemingly, no getting off. The experiences sounded like a real roller-coaster from discussions there (and very tough going at times and some people getting into real difficulties) with this cycling even still going on to some degree even at their arahant level. Towards the end of that section, there’s a more uplifting description of the fourth path. Still, the book and forum generally left me thinking: “well, if this is enlightenment, am I really sure I actually want this?”
He often doesn’t hold back in the book. It’s often quite harsh, e.g. the section prior to the above in The Theravada Four Path Model. The harshness doesn’t really bother me. It’s just that a was rather iffy about some of the arguments there at the time (seems a lot weaker now in retrospect). His opinion that completely eliminating the fetters of desire and aversion is unrealistic is a legitimate question/line of argument. Therefore, he doesn’t believe third and fourth in the traditional system is possible.
I suppose my issue with that was less about that contention or whether it’s true or not (I was open to arguments on the issue), it’s just that I found it made the underpinnings for his system more muddled. Generally, I find good spiritual systems set out a coherent and plausible soteriological framework (or at least what it is they are supposed to be doing): lay out what the problem is supposed to be, what the cause of that problem is, and some kind of path/system/recipe to solve this problem, e.g. the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism (other such formulations have been made in other systems). Craving in the Buddhist system is the cause of the problem. I suppose if one can’t really fully remove the cause of the problem, and craving is still the cause, then the resulting system seems more muddled and grey. IIRC morality, samadhi/jhana and insight/wisdom all seemed to function relatively independent in the MCTB system. Sila was not neglected – it was described as the first and last practice. However, each of these practices seemed to rather independently remove certain types of suffering. Full enlightenment seemed to be possible while morality or samadhi/jhana were far more perfect (so there could still be the arising of suffering from both of these). So enlightenment seemed to be associated with the elimination of a rather subtle and refined source of suffering. It’s certainly a more restricted conception, rather lacking in grandeur, though arguably more realistic and certainly probably a lot more attainable.
In some situations, the phase “no pain, no gain” is appropriate. It is usually is for more intensive hardcore approaches. On balance, I wasn’t really overly sold on the approach. The “pain” potential of it seemed a little high. I asked myself if I ended up in a place where I was constantly cycling through “A&P events”, “fruitions”, “dark nights” etc., would I actually be happier? If the “gain” was promising enough, then maybe that would be worth it for a bit. I suppose the nature of the “gain” never became clear enough to me, or what exactly was problem/difficulty/lack that this particular version of enlightenment was supposed to address.
There seems to be some good stuff going on over there. I have a look there every so often. A month or two back I linked here to an interview I came across on the dharmaoverground forum, which I found very moving (a member of theirs, Richard, who recounted his meditation “career” experiences, a lot of it quite classical, to Daniel Ingram, shortly before he passed away). Sounded like he had made substantial progress to me. Very nice interview.
Anyway, people become very understandably very invested in spiritual systems. That’s why discussions like this can often be very charged (maybe that’s why “sex, politics and religions” are supposedly topics to avoid in polite conversation 
). IMO spiritual systems (including varieties of Buddhism too) can sometimes harm as well as help (depending on the circumstances and the person involved), which is why I think robust discussion of the content of such systems can be useful. Not easy to do though given how dear they can be to people’s hearts (it can feel like a person attack, like someone coldly discussing the pros and cons of one’s spouse, and not likely to go down well) so if the discussion veers towards personalities, then at that point, it’s usually probably effectively all over in terms of usefulness!