Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 187: Is Enlightenment Possible for Regular People, Daniel M. Ingram

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

Daniel M. Ingram sparked controversy in the Buddhist world when he declared himself to be an arahat, the term commonly used for a person who has reached the final stage of enlightenment. In this week's episode, Ingram responds to his critics and details what he experienced during the course of this journey. He also talks about his book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, which aims to help people navigate their path to enlightenment, which he insists is an attainable goal for any of us. The Plug Zone Website: http://integrateddaniel.info/ Book: https://www.mctb.org/ Twitter: @danielmingram Additional sites: https://firekasina.org/ https://www.dharmaoverground.org ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I want to start off this potentially controversial episode with a story. About seven or eight years ago, I was in the middle of writing 10% happier and I went on what was then my second silent meditation retreat? I was at the Insight meditation society in central Massachusetts and

Before the retreat officially began they served a lunch and after the lunch you were supposed to go into silence So they weren't allowed to talk after this lunch, but at lunch you could talk and I was sitting next to this young guy, a really smart young guy. I think he just graduated from Yale. He was really intense and serious about meditation. And I think he had just finished him like a month long or a six week long retreat and was rolling straight into this one. And at one point, after we're getting to know each other a little bit, he lowers his voice and says, have you heard of Daniel Ingram?

I said, no, I've never heard of him. Who is he? And he's still speaking kind of with a lowered voice. He said, he's an emergency room doctor from Alabama who claims he's in arhant or arhant. There are two ways to pronounce that word. That word is traditionally used to describe a fully enlightened being And then this kid then goes on to say don't mention him to the teachers. They get really upset So I was immediately intrigued that the here's a apparently a dharma

controversy which seems like it might be a contradiction in terms declaring yourself to be an our hunt or even talking at all about your, what stage of enlightenment you're at is immensely controversial in Buddhist circles. The Buddha, as far as I understand, it's specifically barred all of his monks and nuns from declaring their levels of meditative attainment. Although the Buddha, we should say, talked quite openly about how enlightened he was, but you know, he was the Buddha. Anyway, it's considered to be a verboten for monks and nuns.

And for the rest of us, it's considered to be bad form at the very least. And for teachers, it's considered to be perhaps damaging to your students to say how, you know, what stage you are in the in the path toward enlightenment because it can provoke something that's very common among Western meditators, which is striving and competition. So traditionally in Western meditation circles they try to be pretty careful about how or even whether they talk about the stages of insight or the stages of enlightenment. To be clear for a second here before I get back to Daniel, we're talking about a very specific school of meditation.

There are many schools of meditation and many maps of the stages toward enlightenment, but in the Vipassana or Insight tradition, there are, there, it sounds a little bit like Dungeons and Dragons, but there are four stages towards enlightenment. One is the stream enterer, the second is the once-returner, the non-returner, and then our hunt or our hot, depending on how you want to pronounce the word. So I, of course, you know, view all of this with a certain amount of ironic distance, especially at this time, while I was still writing 10% happier,

I was pretty deeply skeptical that in light it was even possible, but I was really intrigued by the fact that here with this emergency room doctor, clearly a sane, highly functioning individual was walking around talking about how he's in our hunt, and in fact had written a whole book called Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha about how he's in our hunt. In fact, he had written a whole book called Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha about how he was in our hunt and how you could become one too.

So I actually went and read this book after the retreat. It was like the first thing I did after I got out of retreat. And at first I was like, this is a little insane, but based on the cover, it was actually a PDF that you could print out for free. It was a self-published thing. You could order on Amazon if you wanted to pay a little bit of money, but or you could just, he was giving print out for free. It was a self-published thing. You could order on Amazon if you wanted to pay a little bit of money, but he was giving

it away for free on his website. I printed it out on my computer. The cover has this homemade art with some meditating guy with laser beams coming out of his solar plexus. I thought, this is going to be junk, but then I read the book. It's definitely over the top in some ways, at least I read the book. And while it's, it's definitely kind of over the top, in some ways, at least this iteration of it, I say he's, I should say he's gone on to edit it. But this iteration of the book, low these many years was pretty over the top

and provocative. And he was really criticizing Western Dharma teachers for hiding the ball in his view on enlightenment. He feels that this whole omerta that Western meditation teachers have adopted over this sort of code of silence over the stages of enlightenment is disempowering that meditation, that enlightenment is doable for regular people and he did it. And so he goes on to tell you his whole story and how you can do it kind of cookbook style. I still have to read the book thought, is this guy crazy?

I don't know. And then I had a conversation with about him, about him with my friend Dr. Judd Brewer, who was a neuroscientist. At that point, he was at Yale, now he's at Brown. He's done a lot of work looking at what meditation does to the brain. And Judd said the same thing.

Like, at first I thought, I looked at the book. I said, no way this guy's nuts. But then I read the book, this is Judd talking. I read the book and I realized he's really smart, which is what I had realized too, from reading the book. And then Judd took it one step further. Judd actually put Daniels brain in an MRI.

He was doing a study at this point of advanced meditators. And he found that Daniel's brain was really different and interesting and it was clear that he here was somebody who had done an immense amount of meditation. Now you can't he couldn't verify that he was an arhont or whatever, but clearly something's going on with this guy. I, after learning all of that, went out and went out to a conference where I heard he was speaking and I met him and I found him to be immensely likeable and you know he's not you're about to hear him he's not what you would expect an allegedly in light and being with sound like he's valuable he's quite a character

um... he's not afraid of provoking controversy and being critical but I really liked him a lot and to this day consider him to be a friend and I had I ended up writing a whole chapter in 10% happier about the issue of enlightenment that was kind of starring Daniel and ended up cutting it out at the end because I thought no actually this is probably a separate book which I'll write at some future date

but I am very pleased to have Daniel on the show finally. He doesn't do a ton of media. He's a little bit media shy or traditionally has been. So I'm happy that he came on. This is a fascinating discussion. I want to say before I dive in here, we're not doing voicemails this week because there's more than enough

meditative content in this show. But we are looking for new voicemails. So, and I'll remind you again at the end of the show. 646-883-832-646-883 8 3 2 6 6 4 6 8 3 8 3 3 2 6 That's the numbers the number to leave us a voicemail and it's in the show notes as well All right, enough of me talking here we go. Here's Daniel Ingram. Well, it's awesome to see you again. Great seeing you as well I always love seeing you. Yeah Where should we start? Well, let's just start where I always start, which is, how did you get interested in meditation?

So I had a few meditation experiences when I was a kid where I remember when I was about three and a half years old and I know this by the house we were living in at the time where I would just lay down on my parents' down comforter downstairs in their bedroom and just start breathing. And I would breathe more and more slowly and I would get more and more slowly and I would get more and more peaceful

and get these very pleasant feelings and then I would get sort of very economist feelings. I wouldn't have called them that when I was a kid. It's just a really nice thing I used to do. And so that's this little weird thing. And it turns out that's not unusual. Like I'm not saying like, hey, I'm a weird special person.

Actually, if you ask people questions, a reasonable number of people actually had some kind of experience as a kid that then they kind of forgot about or got extinguished by something. I don't know where these things go. And we discovered it later. So that was a first little blip that, again, a little weird, but not that unusual. I have a four-year-old around the house. I have a hard time imagining him doing what you described, but maybe I don't know his interior life as I think, as I do, as well as I think I do. Yeah, so for some reason, my memories go way back.

I can remember all kinds of things when I was a kid. I don't know. You might be surprised. And most, in most of my three and a half year old life, I was very much a three and a half year old kid, except for this one weird little thing. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting

questions. What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of

their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?

Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or Wondering app. Right. There was, I don't think anything else unusual about me. And so then when I was, in about 10 years old, I went to this weird hippie quaker school and actually went second through fourth grade. And we would sit in meditation for 10 minutes every morning. So the Carolina Friends School and North Carolina and Durham. And I found it

really irritating and annoying thing. We were just sitting there for 10 minutes and there was no technique or guidance or anything. It's just a quaker thing. You sit in silence and see what happens. And so that got me at least some basic discipline because we did that every day. So I was doing, you know, you know, however many hours that is, a reasonable number for a kid. And then in fourth grade, I got to take an elective, again it was a weird hippie school, it was kind of strange, called Close Encounters, which was about weird analog synthesizers. This was like 1979, so a synthesizer then had all these knobs and dials, kind of like the new ones do today, it's retro-fat of analog.

But it was just amazing to play on this thing and explain like how the synthesizer worked. And then we did all these guided meditations where like we would do the thing where you like squeeze your toes and then relax them, visualize warm light coming in and squeeze your feet and relax them, you know, and we'd go through a whole body and do that kind of stuff. And that was really neat. I just thought that was so cool. Like this is so much better than most of what I was doing in school, you know,

and so that was a lot of fun. And we were like visualized ourselves getting really big and like bigger and bigger, like as big as the room, as big as the school, as big as the city, as big as the planet, as big as the universe. And then we would get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller down to where we're like an atom. And then we would like visualized crawling around inside your body and seeing what your toes feel like and seeing what your feet feel like and if you see Find anything that seems like it needs to be fixing you can just fix it because you know how to fix the little things And so it's interesting weird visualization acts exercises from some hippie in 1970s late 1970s and

then I've been having flying dreams since I was a kid and I remember my first one when I was five years old in the first time I ever flew. And it was really amazing. Do you have flying dreams, by the way? I used to have flying dreams. Were they really cool? Yes. Yes. You know, right? And I'm sure plenty of listeners do too. And I just thought these were awesome. And I have no idea where I got this idea. I sorry, where I got the idea from to then when I was about 14 or 15 years old, I thought, well, I want more flying dreams.

Maybe I'll just visualize flying between like 50 foot wide billiard balls in space before I go to sleep for a while and maybe I'll have more flying dreams. Well, you just came up with this idea. I have literally, I cannot, there's nothing. Like, I try to remember back like where did this come from. Nobody, I was in suburban North Carolina, this is like 1983 or something. I had no access to meditation, anything except this exercise

I had done like four years before, or five years before, I'm not sure something like that. And so, yeah, so I just decided to do this visualization exercise and I was really frustrated that I couldn't visualize well. I'd kind of never noticed that it was hard to visualize or that I couldn't visualize very well. But if you ever tried to visualize anything and visualize it really well, you'll notice it's really hard, right?

It's really challenging to actually get the images good and stable and clear like this is a serious project. And for some strange reason, my teenage brain really took to this project, and I was determined to somehow figure out how to visualize better. Well, when you do that, you start to learn things about your mind. Like if you want a color to show up, like, let's say I wanted to visualize a yellow billiard ball that I could then visualize myself flying towards, well, you sort of visualize an intent, and then you get to see what color show up or shape show up as a result of that.

And then you notice your reaction to those, and then you get to see what color show up or shape show up as a result of that. And then you notice your reaction to those and then you sort of modify it. And this sort of back and forth iterative process of figuring out how to get the visualization good. And that apparently was enough meditation insight to get me to a stage we would call the arising and passing away. I learned that stage name like 10 years, actually 11 years later or something like that. We just have to hear for a second for anybody who's concerned. I learned that stage name like 10 years, actually 11 years later, or something like that. Would you stop here for a second for anybody's concern?

So when you talk about stage in meditation, we're talking about the stages of insight and described in ancient Buddhist texts of things that happen in the mind of a meditator as sheer he practices. Right, and it turns out these are actually just standard developmental things that you don't have to be a Buddhist to experience the stages of insight.

You just have to somehow pay attention enough to something and notice enough about its impermanence, its changing nature or something about its cause and effect. Or, you know, there's these various things you can gain insight into. And if you pay attention well enough to your immediate sensei experience, some people will just flip into this stage. And when I flipped into it, I had this dream where, um, they were trying to describe before, but we're standing on this road, me and two other people, and we were about three feet high in silver spacesuits, holding reguns.

And everything was washed out and super bright. And this is an incredibly vivid dream. The colors are all just so bright, and the sun is shining down, like blazing sunlight. And we're standing watching this long dusty road. And then all of a sudden, there's this cloud of dust and this horse, this huge black war charger horse with a huge witch riding on it. And she's got the pointy hat.

She looks like your standard Halloween cartoon which or something, And she's got a black dress and a black cape. And she comes riding on this huge, or charger horse towards us. And she takes her wand. And she points it at us. And this brilliant white light blazes out of it. And my contrastness explodes. And at this point, to say I'm asleep is really stretching it. So the dream comes into This is a slow, slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow By the way, the arising and passing away, the specific stage can present a lot of different ways. So this is just one semi-ideasyncratic experience of it. So it's a whole other topic. Not everybody who hits this stage has ray guns. Right. No, some of these things are just geeky teenager like in their brain interpreting it.

But some of the specifics, like sense of energy or presence, or sometimes for a few people explosions of consciousness or meditating and dreams. What does explosion of consciousness mean? Like it literally felt like my entire body and mind had just exploded into sparks. Like that we're just flying all over the room. So there's no you there to experience what that felt like? Well, somewhere, but trying to figure out where that you was would be disorientingly confusing. There was definitely some sense of experience or reference point. At this point. It'd be very hard to figure out Where because it was moving very fast and fragmented at this point at this point in the interview I suspect some people listening or saying what what the hell is this guy talking about?

Yeah, and so it turns out a if you want to read about these things You can read all about the stages of insight because they're well described and a number of texts including my own book Which we can talk about later. Oh, we will. But these things that turns out have been described for at least 2,300 years and probably much longer than that, you can find various maps that talk about these kind of meditative phenomena or attention development phenomena in a whole bunch of places. So I could list a whole bunch of sources or we can put them in the show notes or whatever. But you can read about these things.

And these things are things that happen to some people. And actually a reasonable number of people. So actually like my sister was walking down the streets of New York. And all of a sudden her consciousness exploded. And for some reason she crossed their eyes and then passing away. A lot of my friends. I a lot of meditator people I hang out with, you know, two people I've been married to, have crossed the stage. It's not that unusual, and it's actually the most surprising thing to me is that it's not better known.

And it's really weird that somehow this thing has been missed. And like, if you look at the life of Voltaire, the great philosopher, he describes perfectly in rising and passing away experience, and then all of a sudden he was this great philosopher. There's actually a bunch of examples of that. Humus, another example. Tolstoy has a good description, and they all cross this thing, and once you cross this thing, you're a little different. And so...

What's another way to describe it using different terminology than your consciousness explodes? How could we describe it in a way that would be as simple as possible for people? Yeah, so actually that could actually be an entire podcast. And I can talk a lot about that. It's one of my favorite topics. And the problem is, so a lot of experiences are functionally this stage, but they can look like a whole lot of different things.

So for example, some people have explosions of consciousness. Some people have some sort of a vortex like experience. Basically anybody who's talking about Kundalini energy awakening, that's this stage. Some people just see like a brilliant white light that somehow is kind of blissful for a lot of people. So relatively common things for people to get into, particularly on meditation retreats, but plenty of people in day life have this happen. I know someone who took a, as I've mentioned before, she was an actress and she took a workshop on how to control her breathing such that she could deliver lines to the back of the room at relatively high volume but not run out of air at the same time.

And that's a real skill that people who are on stage need to learn well. And so that was enough like introspective paying attention that for whatever reason the next time she walked on stage and started paying a whole lot of attention to her breath, boom, all of a sudden like her, she was on stage and it felt like her body just flew into fragments all over the room and like and then she we coalesced and obviously the play didn't go so well for that sort of one of those moments. I actually had this happen to me while I was driving down an interstate one time and luckily somehow I didn't manage to wreck. Luckily it didn't last very long.

Okay, so if people are with us at this point, if they have, if they, if they, if they're not like thinking we're, we're engaged in crazy talk up up to this point, the next thing they might be thinking is, okay, I'm meditating now, I don't want this to happen. Well, actually, that's a reasonable and interesting point. So that's another whole thing we can talk about. So, um, this stage also sometimes is not as dramatic. I'm talking about some of the more dramatic things, but like one of mine, it was just like the sense of energy that suddenly got between my eyes and sort of between my ears, and it kind of had this buzzy loudness, and it was like and what did the zip part just kind of zap down the middle of my spine, and that was my

holerizing and passing away. But it was enough to then have the effects that has which are to throw me into the more difficult stages that pretty much always follow it. Now that more difficult stages are not always that difficult sometimes. They're kind of milder sometimes, not even that noticeable, but sometimes kind of challenging. And so we would call those the knowledges of suffering or the duke anyanas, duke meaning suffering and yana's meaning in sight stages or St. John of the cross called Dark Night of the Soul or you know various people. And so the trick with your eyes and passing away is that it can then bring up some psychological stuff and some deeper layers of ourselves that we then have the opportunity to practice with and work on and awaken but can also be kind of thrown

by sometimes. So I was then kind of thrown by these things when you were a teenager. When I was a teenager and the problem is retrospectively about it now into you in bed. Yeah, yeah So yeah, and then I also had my first out-of-body travel experience very shortly thereafter I can't remember was that night or the next night But I wear this float out of my body and floated through the wall to common stage of practice for people to have first out of body Experiences not everybody has them again and some people just experience kind of blissful, tingly energy, like on their skin, and like sort of weird tingles of chills or raptures. Some people experience kind of weird movements,

or spontaneous shaking, or strange sniffing patterns. Some people, I mean, some people experience pleasure that is like incredibly blissful, or even might be described as orgasmic, or, you know, like, wow, a lot of people describe this as their conversion experience. So in Christianity, when someone says they had a conversion experience and I saw the light, yeah, that light you saw, that bright, white light that felt like the love of God or how have you interpreted it, that was your arising and passing away moment.

You see this described in all those religious traditions, you see it being a major turning point in a lot of people's lives. So St. Augustine is a class example like St. Catherine de Ville. You can find if you go back in a lot of, look at a lot of mystics, they had their first experience and that was what we'd call the arising and passing away, call it whatever name you like. It doesn't matter. But and so this is a universal human phenomena that you find actually across religious traditions and even in secular people. So that's really interesting when people who are secular and have no reference points for anything woo-woo or whatever, and all of a

sudden have this experience, it can be kind of disorienting or surprising or confusing. And for some, it's kind of mild. It's just like some buzzy tingling and they didn't need to sleep as much and they had a really cool dream or whatever. And then that unfortunately was enough. And so diagnosing this thing is kind of complicated and actually requires some real expertise of the range of presentation, which actually takes a while to develop. This stage is also a common time for people to get very zealous or to suddenly think they're awakened,

which it's just one stage on the way to what we would call awakening. You can draw your lines where you want. But, or suddenly you really want to tell everybody to practice or be incredibly excited about something or some people can have sort of manic episodes or what look like manic episodes to this where they don't sleep for a few days and they're like think they're king or queen of the universe or whatever. So like that's where it can get into sort of the problematic side not that that can't be a lot of fun but can also be kind of a mess if you're like that's how you suddenly are in your work a day office or whatever. Let me try to put this in really basic terms, which, and this could be inaccurate. So please correct me.

When mental chatter is decreased and through whatever modality we're using meditation, breath work, whatever, when mental chatter comes down, very interesting experiences can arise. For some, yeah. But that's essentially what we're talking about. Yeah down, very interesting experiences can arise. For some, yeah. But that's essentially what we're talking about. Yeah. And these interesting experiences

can take a wide variety of forms. All of them functionally, we will, you know, well, there's the nice ones and the not nice ones, and there are maps for these things. And people have been describing these for, again, thousands of years. And what's interesting is-

Can you say maps already interrupt you again? Yeah, maps of the stages of meditation or ways to categorize these things or predict even what's going to happen next so various in schools religious schools schools of Buddhism schools of Hinduism. I don't know maybe the identity is Eastern Orthodox Islam They have described Yes, shamans. Yes with a little help from plants described. Yes, shamans, yes, with a little help from plants. They have described what happens as you engage in these practices reliably and somewhat predictably over time. Yeah, absolutely.

That's what you mean when you say maps. Yeah, because I find that concept to be incredibly interesting. I that as well. The term enlightenment, which I never really took seriously, frankly, before I got to know you, even though it had been brought up. I mean, I took, I, I, I'd, I'd hear my meditation teachers talking about it and thought it was a ridiculous piece of baloney appended to and otherwise sensible system of mental exercises. And then I started to get to knew you, and we'll talk a little bit about your story and why it matters in this context.

But I always thought enlightenment was really ridiculous, but what one of the things that started to help me change my mind was actually, you know, these, there are maps and from all these cultures completely dislocated by both time and geography. And language and culture. Yes.

We're describing similar things. And there are just, you know, the maps diverge at key points and all this. That's some degree, yeah. But, but, but, you know, that even makes it more interesting. True. So, yeah, I'll stop rapsodizing. No, that's, that's all really important.

Thank you so much. Yeah. So okay, back to you, you're in your bedroom, which is ray guns, et cetera, then you fly, or you have an out of body experience, you got, I'm important to note, you're not saying you actually flew, but you had the sensations of a-

Rising up out of my body, seeing my body there on the bed, floating through the wall, snapping back in all of a sudden. It didn't last just a few seconds. So did you become a teenage meditation teacher? What happened next? No, I had no idea what the hell had happened to me. I had no language for this, no reference points for this.

And then I hit the more challenging stages, which are called dissolution, fear, misery, disgust, desire for deliverance, and a not very well-named one called re-observation, which actually can be very challenging. So these are just in terms of the maps, you're now talking about the terivata Buddhism insight, stages of insight map, and it says there are stages that lead up to the arising and passing away, but after the arising and passing away, which is fireworks, Esk, for some, for some, there are a bunch of other stages that are different actually. Yes.

And then they culminate in not culminating, but they lead to a per the map, equanimity, where you- Eventually for some? Yes. If you're lucky. Yes. And then for some, if you're lucky, there's this very loaded term of Nirvana. Actually, well, that's a complicated word.

I'm going to say, stream entry or first path, and exactly how that relates to Nirvana would be happy to talk about if you want to. So there's two meanings of the word Nirvana, at least, or Nirvana, if you want to be Polly about it. Polly being the ancient language spoken by the Buddha. And Nirvana being Sanskrit, which was came later. So Nirvana is used at least two different ways or Nirvana, and one of them

relates to a momentary disappearing of the Sensei world, and then a reappearing of the Sensei world. Now there are some sort of what I'll call polyheads who will debate exactly the canonical use of this that really don't want to get into that fight, but just acknowledge it exists. that really don't want to get into that fight, but just acknowledge it exists. And so everything disappears. When the mind has perfectly synchronized all of its attention on a moment and seen that moment vanish, basically.

We're seeing that moment collapse and not be self. We're seeing something in the suffering of the way we solidify our grasp onto that moment and then we let go of that. And it rushes away from us and disappears. So the various ways we can enter this thing. And then reality disappears, just like frames have been taken out, and the reality reappears. There's nothing in the gap, because it's not like there are, you know, black frames there

or clear frames there or any frames there, it's just the frames are just gone. So we lose like, you know, a quarter second or a second or something, most of the time it's not very long. And then we're back, you know, a quarter second or a second or something, most of the time it's not very long. And then we're back, and then we're different. And so that would be the first stage of awakening. The word Nirvana or Nibana is also used to describe a much higher stage of awakening than that, which would be called our hot ship in the teravator. You can, you know, various other traditions would have their own words for it. But that is a permanent state where there's no longer the sense that there is a watcher doer, no more controller ever rising again.

And this is just the unfolding moment as it is. Right. So there's no the sense of self is deconstructed. In a very, very specific sense. So the sense of self has to be used very carefully, right? Because as soon as you use a term like that, then people are going to have all these meanings they might attribute to the word self. Self might be the sense of being able to careful oneself,

or self might be the sense of perception, or self, you know, people use these different words different ways, and so you've got to be very careful when you use a word like that because really in this context, it's used in an incredibly specific sense and it's and it's a sense that most people are not used to and not expecting and so it means that

rather than they're being a sense of a controller, now there's just the sense of intentions arising naturally, like the rest of the world unfolding naturally, and then actions arising naturally from those intentions. So there's a sense of naturalness or causality without the sense that there's something separate or independent from that that's controlling. Weirdly enough people like, oh, I don't want to lose control. Actually, no, you never actually had control because the sense of self in this case is an illusion. So this just removing that illusion doesn't change function. In fact, it upgrades function because there's not the confusion about the fact of something that didn't actually exist. So it's actually an upgrade. It's better. And there's also the sense of the watcher. So we generally think we're this sort of special point somewhere between our ears or in our

throat. So there's for some people in their hearts or chest somewhere, it seems to be where we kind of are. The central watcher, no, or do, or when we say subject, that's where we kind of seem to be, the observer. And it turns out those are actually just a bunch more sensations happening on their own. And so you can actually, with enough training and insight, learn to notice that actually all of the sensations you thought were an observer, a controller do, are actually just more sensations, and that sensations are just kind of where they are. They just kind of light up where they are naturally, always have. And so the sense of watcher is also an illusion with the removal of that, actually.

There is this great sort of increased clarity because the brain is not having to pretend to filter everything through the central sort of linear mode of some, you know, Porsche mode that's trying to like, oh, this and this and this and this and really active this and control this and be not aware of this and remember this. Like, that happens. Those are some little sensations that are now just happening in a wider burden. Sort of, you call it a wake base of transience or something. And so these are some of the ways in which it's not self in the way people generally think

of themselves and sort of a psychological sense or normal identity sense. It's a very specialized meaning. So anyway, go on. Yeah, it's not like you don't make densest appointments or you don't feed yourself. Sure. Right. But just to just to you, you said a lot of stuff a couple of minutes ago that I wanted to make sure people aren't

confused about. So, I want to try to explain it, but fact check me as I go here. So, the stages of insight, again, and this is just one of the maps in the Teravata school here, not even all Teravadans embrace this map, but the stages of insight in the old school Buddhism, basically, you go through this process that you described of you do some beginning meditation, and if you're lucky or not, you get this arising and passing away stage, and you go through some difficult stages, then you hit equanimity where you're cool with all that and then maybe Nirvana hits and arises or whatever. Am I close enough?

Yeah, Nirvana, it's kind of one of these loaded words. Like, cessation, some people call it. Yeah, sure, cessation or fruition, which leads to more comfortable calling first path or stream entry. Right, but so it's less, little more technical, little less confusing, but people still don't know

what that word means either. So maybe we talk about that. But I guess what I'm trying to say is you said first path. And so I think it's important to note that there are four tongues. It's envisioned in the maps, as I understand them, that you hit first path and you become what's called a stream enterer. Then you go through this again again or a version of this again And then Nirvana cessation or fruition happens again, and you become a

Once returner these second path the names are It's easy to get stuck on these names because it does sound like something out of Dungeons and Dragons But anyway, one of the reasons I like it. I love Dungeons and Dragons back in the day. I find that zero percent shocking, and I say that with affection, since you are a self-described ultra geek. That's the fact. Then the third path, the third time this hat, you go through the cycle and Nirvana or whatever, you want to call it, arises or doesn't arise or whatever, it's non-returner and then the final time are hot or are hot depending on your pronunciation of choice, which is

fourth path, some people, some people, and this is where things get a little legalistic with you, in particular some people think of that as full enlightenment and in that negative emotions no longer arise, you no longer experience greed or hatred or confusion about the nature of reality. And so this is, I mean, again, I don't wanna have, I've never experienced any of this stuff, but it is intriguing to me because I've experienced maybe like tiny little tastes

of the beginning and I know a lot of people who I take seriously, who have been, who are claimed to be further along in the path, and it's hard for me to dismiss them. And you were a very key in my development on thinking about these things, getting to know you was very important. Well, thank the people who are kind enough to train me for that, because if I see fards, because I stand on the shoulders of many, many giants. So let's just give back to your story, because I think this will help clear things up for people.

After you had these experiences as a teenager, what happened next? If I remember from our many, many years of just conversing, you then let a pretty conventional life. Yeah. Except, I was a weird kid. I was a geeky kid. I was sort of a socially awkward kid. Maybe some people say I still am kind of a social awkward kid sometimes.

It's so lovely. Sure. Thank you. It's kind of you. And so, um, and then this thing happened to me, like six more times, um, in the next 10 years, where I would sort of get to equanimity kind of fall back cross theorizing and passing away again, my consciousness would explode, or some other weird thing happened, like one time I was dancing, and all of a sudden became this like vortex of blissful energy,

like as I was whirling around like a dervish, and then it was kind of all died down. By the way, in Sufi dancing, there's another of these Contemplative Schools, dancing is the way to get into ecstatic states and into awaken. And now I totally understand why I'm like, yeah, go dervishes. Good.

And so that's where you find some of these interesting technologies. This happens when they figured out, wow, if I do this thing, it leads to this thing sometimes and they started teaching other people. And so these are again universal human experiences. When I say conventional life, you might have been a kid, but you like went off to college. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't know what had happened. I had no, this, I mean, all these strange experiences were just filed in a drawer of weird woo-woo, and I was raised kind of scientific materialistic. I was, you know, in school science and math and into physics and

chemistry. Your parents are scientists, if I. Yeah, so,, so yeah, they, my mom that a PhD in biophysics at Yale on scholarships and was the first woman to do so. And my dad's got an MD from Yale, you know, is Yale, you know, Harvard, Yale, Yale, Harvard. And so I was raised by people who were very scientific and sort of scientific materialist until my mom kind of went out there pretty far. That's kind of a whole other story. I'd prefer not to dwell on,

but let's just say all of a sudden, the wild end of the new age, from my point of view as a child, was suddenly now a part of her worldview and her scientist days were over. And I'm just kind of kind of throw that out there, move along. But the point is, it was disorienting as a child,

and I didn't know what to make of that. And it didn't help me integrate any of the experiences that I had had, because she wasn't really talking about that kind of stuff. She was talking about other things. And it made me in some ways even more like, yeah, we will know. But then I eventually ended up running into some meditation people and doing some meditation

and all of a sudden they had maps for these stages. And then I was like, oh my god, this stuff has been well described and they're describing my experience to a T and how did they know? And wait, can I stop you again? Good and it's gracious. It's good. A lot of things happen in the between us. So maybe I'll just take them off.

If memory serves, you went off to college, where again, you and C. Chapel Hill. Okay, and then you were by your own description, if I recall correctly, you did audio for high class bar bands. Yeah, I was a sound man for some dance bands, motone, soul bands, rock bands. And that was my living all through college. I had long hair and a sort of a weird like, somewhere between mullet and flock of seagulls, hair do.

And that's awesome. It was wearing ripped jeans and long black trench coats and playing guitar and bands. And so along the way, I met this guy Kenneth Folk. And this was, but what could be then you went back to med school. So, yeah, there's a whole lot in there, right? Okay. So the med school happens after you discover meditation. Yeah, it happened eight years after college. There was a gap. Okay, so the gap is where the meditations things start to come in.

Yeah. All right. I'm just situating us in time. Carry on. So I met this guy Kenneth Folk and he had also crossed something called the arising and passing away. You've had him on, I say? I have not had him on. Oh, you want to have him on. I've got to have him on. Yes, I know him through you. And so, yeah, he's a pretty well-known meditation teacher. Talks, you guys have a lot of overlap in the Venn diagrams and oral friends. I've known him since I was, you know,

I guess, late freshman or something in college. And we lived together for almost a year in a crazy band house. And we would philosophize. He had also crossed the rising and passing away under different circumstances. And but we neither of us knew what it was. And we were both sort of in this weird sort of half-in, half-out stage, but we didn't even know what that was.

And we were kind of flailing around, and I was looking at T.S. Eliot. He was looking at Ken Wilbur, and he was looking at Tulsa, and I was looking at quantum mechanics, and he was looking at Tolstoy, and I was looking at quantum mechanics and things like the dancing wooly masters and the new physics and how it relates to the mind and all that stuff. Anyway, and so we had all these conversations,

and then finally he goes off to California and ends up being convinced by a guy named Bill Hamilton that he needs to do some retreats, and he does a bunch of retreats, and he comes back, and this is a guy I've lived in a band house with and been on the road with, and I know him, like you know people who you've had those kinds of experiences with and I was like yeah this is better.

So then inspired by them I started doing retreats with Christopher Tipness and Charter Rojelle and Jose Rezig, Norman Feldman and Fred Van Alman and Ivan Weir and Sabani, Barzaga, and people like that. These are all, well, reasonably well-known meditation teachers. We should probably put some information on that. Yeah, and going on retreats with them and then at Bob and a society and then, you know, with Bonte-Gunaretana and some of the monks in his order and starting, you know, got insights and the stuff. That insight. Yeah, I mean, so the interesting thing was every time I would go on retreat, I would cross

the arising and passing away again, some dramatic explosive, weird thing, and then I would hit Dark Night State, doesn't just kind of wreck my life. Oh, that's the other thing I forgot to mention. Whenever I would cross the A&P a few weeks later, I would wreck my life. I would break up with my girlfriend. I would quit a graduate program or another educational thing or I would do something. And yeah, just make a mess of things because I suddenly didn't care about those things. I didn't see them as that interesting or appealing or whatever.

The strong negative emotions that would come up that I had no normalization for, hey, that's what happens after the AMP wasn't happening because I didn't have the maps yet. And that eventually I got the maps when I went on my third retreat at the Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Center and I learned Mahasisato noting, which I found very powerful. Okay, can you just tell us what that is? Yeah, so anyway, you also, when you say got insights, yeah, I'll talk about that. Both of those.

So, on that retreat that I finally really understood, like, what I was doing and what was going on. And so, I learned to note, and noting as a technique used in the Mahasi Saddo tradition, but you also find it in like Shins and Young and Chuladasa. And in the Polly Canon, and such as like one by one, as they occurred, which you can find in the middle length discourses of the Buddha number 111 I think. Anyway, Mahasi Saita is a no longer living Burmese meditation master. Yes, and he was incredibly important at bringing meditation to lay people. And he got this crazy idea to take lay people and put them on these intensive retreat programs and watch the whole bunch of them wake up and get traditional insight

stages and get traditional stages of awakening. Whereas before it was in many ways, the monks were doing that, but lay people not nearly so much. And so this happened in Burma in sort of the middle of the 20th century. And then some people started, Westerners started going over and doing these things and they started waking up and getting insights. And he also came to the Insight Meditation Society in Barry Massachusetts and he taught there three months and like 1980 or 81 or something somewhere around there. And all of a sudden they got a vastly higher proportion of stream hunters than they had ever had.

And they were like, whoa, this is pretty cool. And they've been teaching noting, or some variant of it, for their three month ever since, because they were impressed at its ability to get people in touch with what's going on. It's a very simple technique. You just like note, rising, rising, falling, falling for the breath, or lifting, moving, placing, or whatever for the feet, or wandering for the mind, or seeing, hearing, thinking, you know, and exactly which notes you use, and how you use them, you know, not something to get,

you know, too neurotic about. And you can find instructions in this, in his very simple and wonderful book, Practical Insight Meditation. My favorite Dharma book of all time. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, And this strangely simple technique creates in some people who do it well in high enough dose, some very, very powerful effects that were kind of surprising to me. My body was shaking and sniffing, and I was like sweating and seeing bizarre things and having weird sensations pour through my body.

And then I was like, felt like I was like sinking through the floor into an narcotic strange syrup where everything was going like freeze frame flashing. And I'm like, what the hell? Like this is like what I went through as a kid, but even weirder like a more powerful because I'm now I'm doing it on retreat with this very very powerful technique. And then I've been able to sit for like four hours and now I can barely sit for five minutes without unbelievable retreselessness and irritation and sense of like, just existential whorlblleness like welling up. And I'm like, what the heck? And then the old monk, seeing me have gotten to a stage that was worthy to give a little more

information to, played this old scratchy tape of this old Burmese monk with a very thick accent, describing the stages of insight, except he, and you could tell this tape had been played like a thousand times on this little cassette recorder. And yet he described in order everything I had gone through in sequence with a freakish level of detail and stuff that I thought was just my own weird body doing weird stuff. Like I've never heard of this stuff. And all of a sudden they not only do they know about it, but they can predict it and describe it.

And clearly everybody else seems to go through something like this too or they wouldn't play this tape. And it convinced me that I was in a stage called reobservation, which could be a very challenging stage for some, but that right after it was equanimity. And if I just have faith in the tradition, the technique, and just note, whatever is going on, no matter how bad it is, that I can maybe get through this. And that's what happens. And all of a sudden, from intense restlessness and irritation in my mind feeling like a crazy hive of bees, I buckle down and sort of gather my resources and note through the horrible and all of a sudden everything opens up and I'm this sort of weird flowing space of

equanimity and things are amazing. And then the retreat ends. And then I fall back into the dark night and kind of wreck my life and kind of mess up my relationship with my first wife and I Kind of mess up the service project that I'm working with and both guy India at the time and I Cancel all my medical school interviews because I now don't care anything about going to medical school I'd gotten all these great interviews at some really great schools and I cancel all that and I'd sell nearly everything I own and I just thought I'm gonna go on a you know go all that and I'd sell nearly everything I own and I decided I'm going to go on some long retreat or whatever and then I go on my then.

So I've got the maps from that source and I got the maps from another source from practical insight meditation which has them and then I found them in a book called the Vasuti Maga and later we'd find them in books called the Vamudimaga which are books you can find. Ancient Buddhist. Yeah, these are old Buddhist commentarial texts. And actually the stages of insight come from before that. They're canonical. They come from something called the Abidama, which is one of the three baskets of what's

called the tippy taco or three baskets. Three big books, the code of conduct for monks, the sutras, and the Abidama, which is sort of a section on analysis and summary. And anyway, and so it turns out these insight stages are well described and old and got and anyway. And so it turns out these insights to just a world described in old and got some help. And then on my next retreat, not only did I know what to do, but I knew what was expected. So it didn't throw me this time. I wasn't confused by it and I could just practice.

And by this point, I wanted nothing else in the world than stream entry. I guess. And the first experience of what you don't like to call Nirvana. Sure, you can call it Nirvana. That's fun. Just realize it's a loaded word with a lot of weird baggage on it. A lot of complicated cultural stuff.

You're looking people have made it this far. They're okay with weird. I hope so. Anyway, yeah, that's true. So good point. So, not referring to you, I'm referring to you. Well, I'm kind of weird. That's okay.

I'm a bit of an odd duckling. It's true. That's okay. Right? I'm not claiming to be normal. Not that I would even know what that word meant, but you know what I mean. Somehow. So anyway, so I got on the surcheet and now I know what to do. And I don't want anything else in the world. I have no other concerns. I don't care if I break my brain. I don't care if I go crazy. I don't care about anything else. So I have really no hindrances. All I want to do is note and notice and

pay attention and figure this thing out. And by the way, you're in your 20s here. Yeah. I'm in my 20s. So an intense young man in his 20s on a quest. This is 1996 at the time, monastery and bodhaya sitting with Christopher Tipmuss and his fine crew of other great teachers again. And they were really nice. And what's interesting is Christopher is totally non-mapi because he's coming from this Thai forest. So he was a nice counterbalance to my mapiness. So, okay, I just want to describe some terms there. The Thai forest tradition, also part of Teravada Buddhism, which is the old school of Buddhism. But they are not, they're much more relaxed for the most part, as I understand it, about these maps.

Yeah, they're generally not as mapping, and there's some interesting historical reasons for that. It's not like all everybody in Thailand or Thai forests doesn't like the maps are used, and they know about them, right? These people are particularly the monastics are very good scholars, they're in the commentaries, but they're coming from a tradition that actually has some interesting sort of Vajrayana and Mahayana influences. Those are later schools of Buddhism. Later schools of Buddhism.

And this interesting history of Thailand, how this came down in the late 1800s, there was a Thai king that sort of decided, we're gonna just kind of clean up and homogenize Buddhism and make it all teravada. And we're gonna kind of strip out some more Vajrayana and Mahayana elements from it, but they never really went away. I mean, they just sort of called it something different, but so because they had all three schools

of Buddhism there, what they have is sort of this interesting mixture, which is cool. Like I got a lot out of sitting with Christopher Titmiss as an ex-tie forest monk, and being influenced by other tie-for-as people like the books of Achachancha, for example, who trained a lot of the IMS teachers and people. So anyway, so it was nice to be on this retreat with simultaneously the powerful technology of Mahasi, good maps, teachers who also were able to see things that were not the maps and emphasize those things as sort of a counterbalance. And it just turned, and after my year of volunteer service

in India where I've been working in street clinics in Calcutta and Mother Teresa's home for the Dying at Dostitute and this rural health education, these sort of project in Bodhaya, then like, and India had done whatever India does, which had stripped a tremendous amount away from me and kind of broken me down. That's a whole other story. It's been a year in India. Can do that to you. Amazing country, but wow, some growth happened.

And so that combination just made me, I guess, apparently ripe for really just cutting through delusion, because I didn't care about anything also doing that. I had no other agendas. Nothing else in my mind I wanted, and I just went straight for it. So six days in, all of a sudden, fume, my mind manages to synchronize and disappear and

reappear. I'd gone through the stages of insight again, they were challenging, but I knew how to handle them because I'd been through them a lot of times before in daily life and on retreats. And so now that I have the normalization, the name, somehow that helped me just be with them, because it's like, this is normal, this is normal, I can just practice, I don't have to worry that this is weird or I don't have to be confused by it, I can just practice, and so I just practiced. And the techniques that are reported to produce insight, weirdly enough, produced insight. Okay, insight, I asked you this before, what do you mean by insight?

So insight in the Buddhist technical sense is a very specialized meaning of insight and it means an appreciation of the three characteristics. Now other people could go into what insight means. You could also say, you know, I'll talk about three characteristics. Other people might say, it means insight into dependent origination or insight into suffering. Those are all true. And so I'll talk about those. So the three characteristics, I'm very teravadni or inside into emptiness is how a lot of Mahayana or Vajrayana people or Zen people might put it or inside into Shunyata There's very other words for the same thing. Okay, fun Pick your language whatever language you like. I'm comfortable with all that language as long as people know what they mean But I'm gonna go kind of old school teravada because that's kind of my home turf not that I haven't trained in a bunch of other schools

I have but impermanence so to actually see one sensei reality missus to moment the first of the three arise in vanish. This is the first of the three choose. That's right. So to actually physically perceive sounds to arise in the three year's the three characteristics. Yeah, three characteristics. So to perceive directly for oneself, not as a theoretical concept, but but but but but but. That one's physical sensations vibrate, arise, vanish, pulse, one's mental sensations, thoughts, intentions, memories arise and vanish. One's sounds when here arise and vanish, but at a very fine grain level, we're actually talking multiple times a second. So, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25, which sounds like, oh my god, I can never perceive that, except you can. Even listen

to me speaking at this incredible rate, which I realize I talk fast. And I'm sorry about, by the way, apologize if I talk fast. I kind of do a sort of hypomanic just the way I was born. I work with this best I can. So even to understand me saying that sentence, you have to understand a lot of things very quickly per second. To type a lot of you, I'm sure are pretty good typers. Well, you type many keystrokes per second. And to be able to do that, you have to be able to perceive a lot of things per second. But if you actually notice, well, I can perceive the arising and vanishing of the sensations of each keystroke, the intention to type a key, whatever letter I'm going to hit,

while you're keeping track of what it is, those letters are leading towards a sentence or a meaning or something you're trying to convey while listening to the sound of the clicks and feeling your body and all that. You're experiencing many, many sensations per second and just by noticing that fact clearly, there's a way to gain insight. And so driving, think about just to turn like a car for one second of turning a car, like how many of the things you have to calibrate and the lane around you and the steering wheel and exactly how fast you're turning and what you're turning towards and

what's in front of you might be to the right or left of you, might be about across the street or whatever. There's a tremendous amount of data pouring in. So our minds have this incredible level of resolution that we use all the time to do things like understand my hypomanic presentation. But if we turn that towards actually just noticing the arising and vening-shing of those sensations themselves, then insight can result. And insight can change you. It can up the resolution of your brain.

It can increase the ability to actually just perceive the fact that your thoughts come and go really rapidly. Your physical sensations come and go. This has, can have powerful emotional consequences, just to notice that thoughts are these little fleeting blips of stuff arising, vanishing, that your bodily sensations of fear or sadness are a lot of little sensations. And again, gotta be careful with spiritual bypassing here, that's sort of a whole another topic. But it can give people a sense of clarity.

Spiritual bypassing, just now that you've mentioned it. Sorry. So spiritual bypassing is where you try to use meditation techniques that kind of ignore the content of experience in favor of just noticing like sensations arising and vanishing or just getting into bliss or getting very quiet. So there's this debate about how much one should spend looking at one's emotions, and one's issues, and one's shadow sides, versus just noticing that what I would call the true nature

of just bare-sensate experience. And I think we have to do both, but sometimes it's easier to do one and then do the other. They don't tend to mix well. So when you're doing emotional work, look at emotions as emotions. Don't try to just pick them apart into little meaningless blips of data. And when doing insight practices, pick your emotions apart into little meaningless blips of impermanent data. And so, and learn when to do one or the other. I think we need both of them to grow well as people and be reasonable, saying hopefully well-integrated people. But when practicing, but I would think

of a sort of more pure insight practice, this is kind of a loaded term, but forgive me. You just notice lots of little sensations make up your experience. They come and go and they come and go on their own. So what's interesting is anybody who's ever sat down to meditate, this is the next characteristic, oh, well, it's actually the third one, but no self or not self. Anybody who's ever sat down to meditate for even a few minutes, I'm sure you have noticed that trying to get your mind to do what you want to do at all times is nearly impossible or it seems so. And all these thoughts seem to be arising out of your control.

Actually, yeah, that's insight. That's insight number one. This reality is not in your control. Actually, yeah, that's insight. That's insight number one. This reality is not in your control. That's true. And it appears that you control a little bit of it, but that's actually a loosery. Even that little bit of control you think you have, if you really pay attention clearly enough and get intentions clearly enough as part of your awareness, to notice the rise and manage, you will see them arise causally just like everything else arises cause. And I direct my thoughts? Naturally. So initially we start with the assumption that we kind of can.

Right? So Buddhism has three main trainings. Morality, concentration, or basic meditation skills, and then insight. So Silasamari and Panya, or Sheila, you know, Shammata, Prasna, or however you want to phrase whatever kind of polyurethane or however you want to phrase whatever kind of poly or sand script words you want to use. But what they mean is morality. When training and morality or good behavior, good speech, good action, good livelihood,

we assume that we are in control. We assume we can make choices. We assume that we can determine what's going on. We assume that we can decide to eat that up all or eat that point of ice cream or whatever it is. We can try to navigate in this world and figure out what consequences our actions led to and hopefully gain wisdom from those and use that as a feedback mechanism to inform our decisions.

We assume decision-making capacity and agency. Okay, and even when training and concentration practice, which is kind of a loaded term, and is really a sophisticated new-errone concept, but we assume that we can try to quiet our minds, that we can try to stay still, that we can try to pay attention, that we can try to notice what's going on, that we can try to follow a technique, if we wish, or that we can try to just be open to whatever experience arises, that we can note, that we can follow our breath, that we can notice a positive mind state when it arises and try to embrace it and cultivate more of it. We can notice a not very nice or seemingly unskillful or unpleasant

mind state when it arises and try to figure out how to have less of those if that's what we're trying to do. And so again, this training assumes choice and it assumes agency and it's a relatively good assumption. And that's how most of us live most of our lives. And that's great. However, we then in-site practice do this weird thing where we walk up to this edge and we walk up to this edge with the sense of agency with the sense of control with the sense of this but then we say with a sense of agency and control or a illusion of control really I'm going to try to see that the sense of control is an illusion and I'm gonna tune Intentionally with a sense of illusion of agency tune my attention to this fact that that is an illusion and that intentions arise on their own

tune my attention to this fact that that is an illusion and that intentions arise on their own, causally, naturally, like all other natural lawful things unfolding in this world. And so we take the intention and direct it to seeing intentions arise on their own. And so that's what we call insight. And so that's the sort of weird paradox of Buddhism we walk, but we start with a sense of agency, and that's what we have to work with, and that's what we use to actually deconstruct that fundamental illusion. You talked about the emotional benefits of the insight into impermanence. In other words, it can be emotionally liberating to know that sadness may arise, but it will also pass.

Sure. What are the emotional benefits of seeing that the self, as we conventionally understand it, is an illusion? Yeah, so many. Okay, so there's this sense that most people have that they're this poor, linear thing that's trying to control things, to do things, to be things, to know things, to make decisions, to navigate in this world. And that is an inherently painful illusion, because the only thing that we have an experience to base a self out of is all this changing stuff. And it turns out that the

process of trying to create a stable sense of self out of an intrinsically incredibly unstable experience, right? Our moment to moment, there's like, okay, that my left shoulder is kind of the same sensations as it was before, but it really isn't exactly in those sensations. Actually, you're kind of different. My head's kind of the same, so there's some sense it was before, but actually there do new fresh sensations that are changing all the time. Those thoughts are kind of like maybe some thoughts that I had before, but they're actually different thoughts. Those feelings that are kind of like feelings I've had before are actually totally new fresh different feelings. And so it turns out that the mental process of having to constantly figure out which of

these things is the new us arising and vanishing moment to moment is kind of like a virus on your computer. It just takes up all this processing time and it turns out it didn't need to do it anyway and actually just makes the whole thing not as clear because it's constantly trying to make permanence things that are not permanent, which is an arduous task and one doomed to failure, but the system gets pretty good at it. And so that's painful. And it turns out that there's this other weird thing that

then happens with pleasure and pain. So the weird thing is pleasure arises somewhere, let's say. But there's this split-off sense of self, we believe we're somewhere in our head. And let's say the pleasure is in our hand. Let's say I put like on a new, really soft glove or something. It just felt nice on my hand. Well, the weird thing is, you now have the central observer that thinks its sensations here are the pleasure, or the knowledge of the pleasure, or the owner of the pleasure. Well, that's not true. The sensations of pleasure might be in your hand at the nice soft glove, or the fuzzy mitten, or the whatever picks a nice thing that is sort of distant from your head that feels nice, you use your imaginations. And so thanks. And there's a problem now because this thing that's

in the middle of our heads that thinks it's really the observer, controller, nor doer, now is distant from the things that are pleasant. And so it actually literally strains, literally like, it tries to bend itself and figure out a way to get itself to be closer to that thing. And that bending forward is actually craving. It also gets very confused when the mental sensations going on around your head, most of which are not pleasant, are not pleasant,

but that's most of the sensations you're paying attention to. Because there is this confusion where you think these sensations in the middle of your head are actually observing. No, they aren't. And so most of what you experience is not the pleasant sensation. It's all this other sort of sensations around your head somewhere wherever you think the observer is that are nothing like the pleasant sensation, that are now trying to get towards the pleasant sensation, that are trying to figure out how experientially to get the pleasant sensation to last,

they're afraid the pleasant sensation is going to leave. But they're barely actually most of attention is not on the pleasant sensations themselves. People eat a tasty meal, and they might notice the first bite or two are tasty. Then after that, they're thinking about the meal or distracted. They're not actually enjoying the nice meal you just spent all this money on, particularly for New York, or food prices to kind of high, but you have some great restaurants. And so, but like most of your money is wasted because your attention was not there, because it's going through this weird sort of, it's propping up, you know, this weird sense of

a loose or a thing. A similar thing happens with pain, right? So you might have some painful sensations. Like, let's say I stub my toe toe the actual sensations of stubbing my toe are very Limit in space. They might be very strong. Okay fine. I don't like stubbing my toe. It hurts But then there's this whole funny thing of like the internal mind like tries to shut off the sensations of the toe because it Imagine it's the experience right up here It tries to ignore it's trying to like shut down it's trying trying to get away from it, it's trying to literally get the head away from, get the sense of observer away from when these are just more sensations up here. And those are just sensations in your toe.

And even long after the sensations of the toe have kind of disappeared, there may be this, oh my god, I stubbed my toe. And all this reactive stuff that's going on from this something up in the head that is still responding to its own memory of the stubbing the toe, its own images of stubbing the toe, none of which are the stubbed toe. And so I could construct all kinds of other examples, but in these same kinds of ways, we have this bizarre reactive thing that we then set up, which is illusory and didn't need to happen.

The sensations of the toe could just be the sensations of the toe known by themselves where they were, no bigger or smaller or more intense without all of the complicated elaboration. Same thing with the pleasant sensations on the hand, if you put on the nice mitten or whatever. It just feels nice where it is. It was what it was. It was felt directly and experienced clearly, and then it disappeared. But the whole thing was, oh my god, I've got to close to it. I've got to make it last. And most of the time, I'm not even paying attention to it anyway. So I'm kind of missing it. But like, that whole thing, it turns out it doesn't need to happen.

And it's just like a virus in the system or whatever, that you can insight practices are designed to actually be, you know, some antivirus program that actually clears it out and resets the system. And now the system can just experience things where they are, naturally, clearly happening. And you don't have to get this sense that you're processing everything through this limited central system thing. Well said, let me just reset for the conversation. So you've got my long rant, by the way. No, I, I, podcasts are about long rant. So, okay. Thank you. You're in a safe place for that We were talking about your experiences on this retreat where you experienced stream entry and

I interrupted that by asking you about the insights and you started talking about the three characteristics you have now covered And the three characteristics are the three characteristics of reality. characteristics of reality that make up every moment of our lives. The first was impermanence, the third was no self or not self or selflessness, and the second, take it away. So that, actually, I was just talking about the second one, but I forgot to mention that I was talking about the second one. That's suffering. So the suffering characteristic is curious, because from an insight point of view, it's actually specifically applied to the mind that is laboring under the false illusion that there is this no-er-dure-water controller that's somewhere in the center of things. That's then relating to these things in this way that causes additional suffering.

So it's this weird tension in the illusion of the observer that's trying to figure out its relationship to things or even what it is And it turns out those processes are painful and transically painful. It's like sort of a vagnazio or like a headache You didn't even know you had until suddenly it went away It's like some irritating background noise that you would kind of forgotten was ever there until all of a sudden it stops And you're like, oh my god. Thank god that noise. I didn't really know to pay attention to anywhere. It was not happening anymore. And so it's very freeing. And this happens at levels. So in the TerraVauta maps, sort of by levels, there can be sort of jumps and variants. I don't want to go into the complexities of the map. That could

be an hour long conversation. But let's just go with sort of standard simplified theory. In there, these levels where you sort of take a layer of mind, and initially for stream entry, it's kind of a superficial layer of mind, but it's an important one. And you kind of remove that sense of illusion and confusion from it. And so you kind of remove in some way

that initially is not that obvious for a lot of people, kind of that layer of suffering, but there are deeper layers of identification and that sort of creating a self-observer agent watcher controller process. There are deeper levels of that, deeper layers of mind, then with further cycles through the stages of insight at higher levels, you can get those layers to and do the same thing. And eventually, you run out of layers. Now, how many layers there might be, or how many cycles you might go through, that's

a whole complicated topic. And it's not very rarely for. It's usually, anyway, some other, you know, various numbers, the numbers aren't important. But the fact that eventually you can run out of layers, and suddenly you really have actually hardwired the brain such that now it automatically perceives things the way they actually are. And so this is what the Tibetans would cause, you know, so like sort of things auto liberating or that wisdom and emptiness arise together or there are all these different words for the teravodins would call it our hot ship. Or one of my favorite suto's called

the the hea of the bark cloths, suta, they say in the seeing is just the scene, in the hearing is just the heard, in the thinking is just the scene. And the hearing is just the heard. And the thinking is just the thought. And the physical sensations are just the physical sensations. Meaning no longer is in these things the sense of a separate watcher, do or know or controller. They're just arising naturally on their own. And this is literally a doable thing. And this is what insight practice is lead to. And the great thing that the Buddha says, he discovered, people would probably done it

before that too, but whatever. Anyway, but he said, I, you know, show the way to Nibbana to this insight. And so this is actually a doable thing. And it's not weird that it's doable. Like, if you, like, it's just a trainable skill from my point of view. And people don't like that. Oh, it's this deep spiritual journey. Oh, it's more than that.

Yeah, okay, it is. But it's also a trainable, learnable skill, just like learning to play the piano or learning to do whatever or all kinds of skills we learn all the time. If you spend enough time paying attention to the fact that things are impermanent, eventually you automatically notice things are impermanent. So it's kind of like reading, like when you we first start to learn to read, you know, A, B, C, D, we have to think about what the letters are and then we start putting them together into words and that takes all this thought and it's complicated. But now, if you, when you learn to read, you see a word in it, auto translates to meaning.

I don't have to look at the ABC News thing, you know, we're 10% happier with Dan Harris thinking on your wall. He's looking at the side on the wall here in the studio. I don't need to think about what the one is or the zero or the percented auto translates to meaning directly. And the same way is learning to read or learning to type, where a good type isn't thinking about each keystroke

they're making. They just kind of know what they want to say and their fingers make them say it. And that same sort of automatic way, this can be hardwired. And if you practice insight, practice well enough and long enough, this is a learnable thing. And things just auto translate to empty.

Auto translate to impermanent. Auto translate to not self. Auto translate to causal. Auto translate to clear. And so it's just another thing like that. Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Okay, so I want to just see if I can recap a little bit of your personal chronology to get to something important to discuss.

And you stop me if you want. But if memory serves, again, because I've known you for a couple years now, we've talked about your life and my life a bunch in our conversations over the years. Memory serves. You had this retreat where you experienced stream entry, went off and did many other retreats and in the ensuing years you also went and got your medical degree.

And then at some point, you actually hit second path, third path, and you believe fourth path. I do and Now this it then you did something extremely controversial, which is you went out and said I I hit fourth path. I am an r-hunt which or our hot whatever you want to pronounce it There's arguments about that too one of the things I love about Enlightenment which is supposed to be this wonderful soft, is that as soon as you start talking about enlightenment, you're in an argument because everybody disagrees about even how to pronounce the various words. But anyway, you went out and talked about the fact that you would hit fourth path

or arhant ship and wrote a book by Daniel Ingram, the Arhant, or Arhant, and people went bonkers in the Buddhist world. So tell me about where to start. Tell me about the... Well, let's start with, tell me about the moment that you believe you hit that fourth path, and then we'll go from there. Okay, so at this point, this is April, retreat 21 days, Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Center. I think of myself as late Anagami at this point. Anagami is...

On his third path, third path. And the non-returner, also known as non-returner. Yeah, and the reason I think that is because I've gone through a number of cycles of insight where I went through rising and passing ways to dark nights, to equanimity, to things disappeared and reappeared. And then my brain was really different and operated really differently. And I went through a number of cycles of that. And at this point, reality is so much different from when I started at baseline that it feels like it's like 95 to 98% there.

The vast, so that's what reality is. So what I mean is everything just seems luminously clear where it is almost. In your daily life or under. Walking around all the time. These are baseline shifts. It felt like switches had flipped in my brain. And now I'm walking around a very, very different experience of reality than I had before. And the vast majority of it,

rather than seeming like it's being known, done, or controlled by some little central watcher, seems aware where it is. Like, I'm picking up my hat. And the hat, the sensation is like picking up. It seemed to be knowing themselves where the hat is. And the sensations of my hand holding the hat, or the sensations are just there knowing themselves very in this very direct, clear way. And almost everything seems to just be happening on its own naturally, the sense that there really is, an agent, a free will, is almost entirely gone.

But then like there's- And yet you're functional in the world. Yeah, very functional. I was way more functional. I think it would have been a mess in medical school before I'd not done this, but I managed to graduate from medical school semester early, kind of an unusual accomplishment. I would say that's pretty highly functional. I'm thinking the only person who's ever done that at UNC medical school as far as I know,

they were all shocked when I managed to do it. And then I took the time off to travel around the world and part of traveling around the world. I wanted to go on retreat. And so I went on retreat because I hadn't had much retreat time in medical school at all. And so I go on retreat and I think of myself as very functional at this point, obviously I'm able to get an MD. And I go on the spreadsheet and I've also got access to all the

sonic stuff, so I can do all these unusual and genres are like these deep concentration states where you might get very blissful or rapturous or tranquil or quantumous or spacious or formless or go into these unusual experiences. And I've learned how to do all those things because I've read some good books and studied with some good people and got some good training and seemed to have some sort of talent for these things. And it turns out, StreamEntry makes us a lot easier for a lot of people to get into these deeper states, which

is one of the cool benefits of it, for some, not everybody. And so, and I did a lot of daily practice But I've got all these skills and they're not it. They're almost it right They're they're very satisfying. They're very impressive to me. I'm you know, I have a pride thing It's true. I have a little bit of an arrogance thing. It's true. I admit that and I'm pretty impressed with my skills and talents and My early 30s and I feel like I've done all these things, but yet there's this sense that it is not the last It is not the thing you want all these things are cool

But it's not the thing I want there's something wrong at the center of it. There is a problem There's still like this annoying not like unbelievably hard to track sense of subtle something that still wants to own this Do this be this control this like unbelievably hard to track, a sense of subtle something that still wants to own this, do this, be this, control this, something, and it's maddening. And it gets more and more maddening as I get more and more disenchanted with all of my skills, abilities, and whatever else I have attained. So finally, I go on this retreat with this incredibly good meditation teacher, a guy named Sido Upantita Jr. to distinguish him from the Sido Upantita senior who is one of Mahasi's Sido's chief disciples and lineage transmitter guys who's written some good books that you should look up. Anyway, the point is that but he's sort of a younger Mahasi Sido abbot of a monastery, but also very, very impressive.

And he's the first meditation teacher I've spoken with who, when I presented all of my skills and abilities and my assessment of things, was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine. And by the way, this. And he would sit there and I would describe all my wild experiences. And I was getting at least formal realms and doing even more exotic things like obtaining the state called Naroda Samapati, which is the cessation of perception, feeling where you kind of put yourself into a coma. It's a very unusual thing to be able to. I'm kind of simplifying, but anyway, he would listen to all this wild stuff and he would

just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, but just this. So nice. Anytime. And he would just hold his hands out wide and hold this space. And it was just like, I know he gets it. And I know I don't. And that is like the most unbelievably maddening, but inspiring thing all at the same time. And then after a week of me like floundering around doing all this impressive stuff, he finally says, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at some point, you're going to get your concentration strong. And I'm like, and I'm simultaneously like really like a kind of offended because I'm like, I think I have pretty strong concentration, but I'm like, but clearly it's not strong enough to understand what he's talking about

because I can see, I can feel viscerally, he knows something I don't, and he's got something to teach me, and I say, okay, I'm gonna listen. So I go back to really TeraVon basics, three characteristics, six sense doors, impermanence, suffering in no self, and six sense doors to the ordinary,

seeing, hearing, feeling, et cetera. But I decided to do it with like, I was like, okay, what could be stronger concentration than this? I say, 100% capture. I'm going to go for 100% capture. I'm not going to let a single sensation of any size, including the sensations of space, consciousness, memory, mental impressions, intentions, sights, sounds, physical sensations, not a single one, arise and vanish without me perceiving it to arise and vanish on its own, and see the suffering in it. This is an incredibly crazy thing to sort of attempt from a certain point of view, but I don't care at this point, I'm sick to death of whatever I have, I'm willing to tear

it all to shreds, and I'm willing to go back to basics, and I take my relatively hypomanic, sort of type A, achieve a mind, and turn it to this task. And I start shredding my reality. And I start trying to literally see the beginning and end of every single sensation, which ends up being like, you know, it's like, mind has to become this crazy, like, machine gun, like, thing that dances into the wide void, but it's a three-dimensional spacious machine gun. I don't even know how to explain that. And at some point, you start feeling like, okay, yeah, but it's not fast enough.

It's not clear enough. It's not complete enough. It's not wide enough. It's not powerful enough. It's not concentrated enough. And then, what else do I got? What else? How can I do this? So I'm like, and I'm ramping up on the power in this gonzo crazy sort of way, and things are getting really wild. So at this point, like my reality is like dissolving into fortices with every step I take in walking meditation. It's like, anyway, I won't bother to describe it all. The point is, stuff's getting weird.

And eventually, after a week of this, and like pushing it with every single thing I have, I'm totally exhausted. At this point, insight cycles have been whipping through like sometimes every few minutes, sometimes every 10 seconds. It's getting crazy. Reality has been strobing and disappearing and re-appearing and vanishing and reconfiguring and flushing and flashing. To the point that literally I'm walking around the room, seeing the room as if it's like

a strobe light vortex and sane insane mailstrom, like psychedelic crazy. Okay, so I've done something pretty unusual to my brain at this point. And finally, I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I'm sick, I'm out, I'm exhausted. That's all I have. That's every single thing I've got. If it takes more than that, I don't have it.

And I cut the power. It's like early afternoon towards the end of the second week of the retreat. And I start walking across the meditation hall. And if you ever go to Malaysian Buddhist meditation, the second floor, there's this station there, I don't know if it's still there, where they had the Asian version of tang and some sort of hot chocolatey drinks

that you could drink if you want to. I'm just going to replenish my sugar stores and take a pause. And then I noticed that my mind went through what I'd call suffering door fruition, which is where reality gets torn away from you. And the suffering door fruition is kind of weird because this is the one where, like, when they're talking about, like, you finally realize the hot coal you're grasping and then you let it go, this is what that metaphor is talking about. So, like, it feels like reality is torn away from you.

It feels kind of like you die almost. Like, you're not supposed to use words, soul and Buddhism, but it literally feels like your soul is ripped out of your chest or something. Anyway, forgive me, traditional Buddhists for using that word. So, but that's kind of what the feeling is like. And then everything disappears and reappears. Except I went through a suffering door of fruition and there was no suffering in it. It just felt clean.

Clear, there was no sense of violation of a center point, there was no sense of anything that anything was ripped away from. There was no sense of that kind of creepy, violating feeling that happens when that happens. I was like, wait, because I've been through thousands of these things by this point. I know them well, and I'm kind of an obsessive

micro-phenomenologist. So like micro-phenomenologist meaning, I pay attention to all little blips and flutters and changes and shifts and really see if I can see exactly what's going on in kind of an obsessive way. And this was totally different. I was like, whoa, suffering, door for-wishing with them. And then my mind flips over and everything's just as it is.

Everything, that annoying sense of do-or-watcher controller up sover and everything's just as it is. Everything. That annoying sense of do-or-watcher control or no-or-beer that had somehow been in the background that I couldn't find despite years of trying was gone and everything was just clear and everything was just happening on its own and the cycles of insight could happen perfectly naturally. They did not matter. This was not about them. And there was just this amazing straightforward clarity

to everything. And so I went and reported this to Sado, Uppon, Dita, Jr. and he's like, his eyes are lighting up and you can see, like, he's usually really still, right? And he's like, and finally, he, there's only three people in the room. There's like me and this 10 preset sort of equivalent,

not quite none, but she's sort of semi-monastic and white. And him, and he points at her and he's wearing white. She's wearing white, yeah. So, and says, oh my god, did you, oh, he didn't say, oh my god, he said, did you hear what he said? Did you hear what he said? And his eyes are like lighting up like, because I'm like talking about what had just happened.

And it's like, yeah, everything just comes and goes and that's fine. And this is just fine. And it doesn't like everything is it equally. Every single thing has always been it. And he's like, yeah, he can tell he's like really like, yay. Even though he's trying to be still because really funny. So, um, so that was the thing. And then there's, it's really funny. So that was the thing. And then there's more out past that I could go into,

but the literal point is through very straightforward techniques and simple assumptions, three characteristics, six end stores, done well. You literally can hardwire these understandings into your brain. And that's the important message for anybody listening. Not that some guy on a podcast is like, you know, blowing his horn or whatever. The most important thing for you is, if for some strange reason, you feel inspired to

go through all the weirdness that can sometimes occur and dedicate that level of resource to it, which who knows how much that might be. I know some people who did it in way less time than me, way more easily. So it doesn't need to be this big project in the same way it was for me. For some it is, for some it takes longer, For some it's much harder. I don't know. I'm somewhere in the middle, I think, actually, as this goes. But it's doable. And you can do this if you decide, or you know, something in the middle stages of insight or paths or whatever. These are doable things. And I have plenty of friends

who have various paths and path attainments. And if you hold out a shingle that says, hey, I have path attainments before you know it. There are all these other people who come out of theingle that says, hey, I have pathetamins before you know it. There are all these other people who come out of the wood working like, yeah, I can't talk about this thing. But can I talk about it with you? And we can be friends. And suddenly, you're in this cool network of people who are, you know, interested in these kinds of mental

transformations or whatever you want to call them. Well, so that's what you decided to do to put out a shingle to write this book. Yeah. Give it away. Sure. You can buy it. But you also gaveingle to write this book. Yeah. Give it away. Sure. You can buy it, but you also gave it away at your website as a PDF.

That's how I did it. I downloaded it and read it. And like 10 years ago or something like that. Yeah, don't do this for the money. And yet you don't do this for the money. You were a practicing physician at the time. Don't even take donations, don't you? Yes, so you were giving away this book

and you would talk to, in you sat a community on the internet and people will come talk to you. And so that's how I heard of you. I was on a retreat. I was on a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society. I was sitting next to some kid who just graduated from Yale. And he was really into meditation. And it was the part where you could talk right before we go into silence. And he was like, whispering, have you heard of Daniel Engerman?

I said said no. He's like, guys, this doctor who says he's enlightened and all the teachers hate him because you're not supposed to say that you're enlightened, which we should talk about while you're not supposed to say it, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, God. So I was like, wow, a Dharma controversy. And you even know there was such a thing. And so after the retreat, I printed out the book and read it.

And then we, I made it my business to become friends with you Etc. So you hung out a shingle and you wrote this book called the The mastering the court teachings of the Buddha mastering the court teachings of the Buddha and an usually hard-cored Dharma book Yes, and you wrote by Daniel and by Dr. Daniel and R. By the R-Hot. Daniel M.ingroom. So I actually weirdly enough, don't mix my doctor life and my meditation life a lot, though I'm about to do a little bit more of that because I'm gonna do some research stuff

so that the MD and the MSPH, Master of Science and Public Health, that was actually in a PhD program in epidemiology at one point. I just, I took all the coursework instead of doing that. I walked across the street and went to the medical school and didn't do my dissertation. Anyway, but I rarely mix those worlds. And so I don't usually mix the doctor thing.

And like so the doctor just not appear on the book. What does appear is by the R-Haw, Daniel Angrum or the, something, then the interdependent university or something like that. Yeah, that's it, yes. And there, and one of the versions, yeah. Okay, that was the old version. Anyway, you call yourself an R-Hot,

and which is traditionally used to describe somebody who is fully enlightened, like gone are all negative emotions, uprooted is greed, hatred, and confusion. Actually, I would, that could be a very long conversation of why I think that is not as accurately a traditional interpretation as you might think, but go on. And also the Buddha clearly said he was more enlightened than the rest of his Arhats. That's also canonical. So it's full enlightenment, in this case, technically as Buddhahood, not our hadship. The Buddha was an Arhat, but also claimed to be so much more.

I will leave verification or refutation of those claims to somebody else. But the point is, this is actually the word full enlightenment is a loaded term. And so I explicitly have never said that I'm fully enlightened. Nor do I believe that I am a full Buddha. In fact, I'm 100% convinced I am not. And so just to help, yes, I'm claiming something very impressive, but no, I'm not quite claiming that thing you say I'm claiming. Okay, people freaked out about this. Why do people freak out about this?

Yeah, it's a zillion reasons. So, where to start? And it depends on how cynical you want me to be and how undenorous you want me to be. Okay, let's just start with the fact that traditionally it is true that discussing attainments has been relatively taboo in a lot of cultures and a lot of times in a lot of places and that's certainly relatively true in Asian countries except they have this bizarre code. So when Mahasi Sayadao signs his book, ahaha, sorry, aga maha pandita. So if you pick up practical insight meditation, it has signed a ha maha pandita maha sisidau. That title means our hot in addition to a

whole bunch of good scholarship, right? So that's what that word means. And if you were in a traditional Asian country, would you know he's saying his name our hot? Same with the book the vermuti Maga, which is one of my favorite of the commentaries. This is sort of a book that summarized a lot of Buddhist meditation techniques from somewhere around the first century common era, C-A-D, whatever you want to say.

And so it's also signed to the Arhat Upatisa. The Buddha himself was very into saying he was an Arhat and also elaborating in detail all the other things he could do, all the powers and all the additional insights and all the things he had. He also was constantly calling out other people around him as Arhats and people would say they had attained to Arhat ship back in the traditional Buddhist song of the Pallikan as full of these stories. And then somewhere along the way that got lost or mistranslated or like you could never

say it or what if you go to Asian countries there's all this code so they just don't say it directly often but they'll say it. And the Tibetan tradition like they're not letting you wear a certain fancy hats or have certain fancy titles unless you're seriously awakened right or somehow have convinced someone you're seriously awakened even if you aren't. Right, so there's this whole system of disclosure, of openness about these things. They're practical, just like, you know,

when I walk into the room, you know, and the, you know, when I was practicing emergency medicine, I'd walk in and I'd say, I'm Dr. Daniel Ingram, because that's important for them to know that, right? I'm your doctor today, I'm not a tech, I'm not a nurse, nothing they are very important they really are, but today my function role is as your doctor and that's my training and you need to know that, right? I'm your doctor today. I'm not a tech. I'm not a nurse. Not that they are very important. They really are. But today, my function role is as your doctor, and that's my training, and you need to know that. So we have the interaction, you know. And in the same way, back in the day, and in modern times, you see this all the time in Asian countries,

and even some degree in the West now, where people will mention their claims and their attainments and what they can do. So you have the sense, oh, yeah, this is a doctor, or, you is a doctor or a surgeon, they can take out my appendix. This is an R-A-HOD, it's reasonable, discusses and lighten with them, and that's how I view it. Now, that can also cause problems, right? So people claiming things that they don't have, people arguing over what the criteria are, exactly how they relate to all the emotional range stuff and how these relate to dark emotions or troubling emotions or negative emotions, which we've touched on a bunch and I'm happy to go there. And so people argue about these words and these things.

But so yeah, there was a thing as Buddhism came to the West where where Zen came first, and Zen doesn't in a lot of ways. It's not there weren't elements in the TeraVada or whatever, but, you know, some, particularly in America, Zen was a stronger president before the TeraVada and Insight stuff was, and they really don't talk about stages of statesmen. They're really not Mappy people. Okay, cool. Their reason is not to be Mappy, and it can be helpful sometimes not to be Mappy. Get that.

And then when some of the early insight practitioners, particularly inspired by Aachanchah, who was Thai Forest, and really did not like talking about the stages of insight, though everybody if you would ask anybody at the monastery is Aachanchah and Arhat, they would have said, yes, which is sort of, you know, this bizarre game and dance that everybody plays. And so same thing with Mahasi Sada, I was claiming being our hot and plenty of other people claim to be our hots in Burma and Thailand and other places, Sri Lanka, et cetera. Not as much in Sri Lanka.

And so then when it came to the West, though, a lot of people just said, this is gonna cause too much competition, which it does cause a lot of competition sometimes. This is gonna cause too much comparison, which it does sometimes, true. This is gonna cause too much competition, which it does cause a lot of competition sometimes. This has got to cause too much comparison, which it does sometimes. True. This is going to cause too much judgment, and we're too hard on ourselves, and we're too neurotic, and we can't even handle that there might be hierarchy, right, or maps or levels

of attainment, and it will cause neurosis, which is true. Those things all occur. They were right. The people who said we shouldn't talk about the maps or the levels of the states, the problems that they identified, every single one of them, they correctly identified as a problem. And they're right. I give them their arguments. They're due. Okay, sure. I've seen all of those things within my own community and my own life, my own mind, and my friends. These are all real problems. And yet,

they're also benefits to being able to talk about the maps. And I've seen lots of people that is, you know, particularly when they had like the Dark Knight stages, and they had no idea what the hell was going on, and you're like, yeah, that's normal after the A&P, and suddenly they're like, oh, that's normal, I'm not like broken, I'm not weird, I'm not this freak, I'm not something horribly wrong with me, it's an expected thing. And then that normalization helps people, and they can do something, and they can engage, and they can figure out, they can apply all these standard technologies that have been developed to help people in those stages because now they have a diagnosis and they can apply appropriate treatment.

That's really helpful for a lot of people, not everybody. Not everybody likes the maps, not everybody thrives with the maps, but some people really do. And so to have the option for people who like to be mapping and are willing to deal with the downsides, which there are some, This is a country where, in theory, the open flow of information, the lack of censorship and free speech are things we highly prize. And if there are some people that I think

if there had been the library of Buddhism would have banned all the books that talked about the stages of insight, even the canonical ones, meaning, we're least cynical, but that's often not how we try to do things here, and what we sort of semi-think of as the free world. And so I kind of rebelled against that sort of book, Benny, shouldn't talk about it, shouldn't tell anyone, should keep this a secret thing,

and put the stuff out there. And you know, that's caused good and bad effects, not all good, but some people really ever appreciated it, and that is a thing that seems to work for them. And I think they should have that valid option. So that's my argument for why these things are a good idea, but also to give acknowledgement to the fact that the people who argue against disclosing these things are making reasonable points. It can cause a lot of future mind, where people are not engaged with that moment that would produce insights, but instead chasing a concept of the future in their minds, that is not this moment, and it can take

people away from the very experience that will wake them up. Those are real downsides of the maps, and if you're going to go into a map, you tradition. You have to learn to work with those. In fact, the problem is you can't adhere the maps. So if you've listened to this podcast, you're kind of toast. Sorry about that. So that's, I mean, should we give informed consent about these things? Should you have at the beginning of this, by the way, this is going to talk about the maps and the downsides of the maps as you

can't unhear them. And now you might have judgment or comparison or reactivity against people who might have other levels of insight and attainment, right? And so maybe we totally validly should have put informed consent at the beginning of the podcast. But you know, you and I have talked about this before, the deep end of the pool and the shallow end of the pool. Yeah. Right. So you're really, you're trafficking in the deep end of the pool.

And I, as the Mr. 10% happier and trying to help people get interested in doing a minute to five minutes to 10 minutes a day, about the shallow end of the pool. And in our previous discussions, I don't know if you still hold this view, you've said, look, okay, that's totally fine. If the people who just wanna do a little bit to improve their focus and lower their emotional reactivity, great. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's in some ways a different endeavor.

Yeah, it's kind of like things you can do with water that are fun or good. Some people wanna sit in their hot tub for 10 minutes a day, right? That's great. I love hot tubs. That's all they want to do with their water. Some people want to do an hour of water aerobics a day. That's totally cool thing to do with water too. Some people want to go white water rafting, a whole lot more charred, maybe a whole lot more fun, maybe a whole lot more risk. And some few crazy people like me want to go surf, you know, 50 to 100 foot waves off the

coast of Portugal in a metaphysical sense. I'm not actually a surfer, but you know what I mean? Like, those are all totally valid cool things to do with water. They get to some exercise that might be exciting, interesting, whatever. I'm not saying this is all about excitement. It's about more than that wisdom and deep personal transformation, but in the same kind of way, like, it would be bizarre if you couldn't tell anybody that like, you know, whitewater rafting existed. Or if the people who did what, whitewater rafting got all down on people who sat in their hot tubs for 10 minutes just relaxing and chilling out after a stressful day, that would also be equally weird.

But the meditation world is often like that. And so I would really like it not to be like that and to realize there is a range, there's room in this ecosystem for all of us, those who like the strange deep end. But actually, these days, I'm actually kind of focusing on the middle sum in some ways. Those people who have gotten into some insight territory through meditation or through a yoga class or through a breath workshop

or through an theogenic experience, which a lot of my friends cross theorizing and passing away the first time. Psychedelics. Yeah, psychedelics or whatever. Or just all kinds of situations. Some even as young kids for no obvious reason. I guess there's some carmet causality to it,

but I don't know what it is. And then they're in it. And then they're in this thing, and the switch has been thrown, and you kind of can't go back. So helping people normalize these things and helping them learn to go forward and deal with what might be going on,

and the cycling that can occur and sorting it out from bipolar disorder and all of these things and helping provide emotional support. And all of that is important. And so I think the languaging, the terms, the maps, the conceptual frameworks, if held with an appropriate looseness and maturity can be very beneficial, but learning, there is a learning curve there. And so that learning curve and how to deal with the maps and do it be very beneficial, but learning, there is a learning curve there. So that learning curve and how to deal with the maps and do it in a mature, reasonable,

sane, healthy way is one of the things that I think should be more broadly taught and more broadly encouraged. I want to say something in your defense, which may be awkward for you to say, so I'm going to say it and then I'm going to ask you a bunch of hard questions. Okay. In your defense, for you to say so I'm going to say it and then I'm going to ask you a bunch of hard questions. Okay. You were defense. It's not like you are going out there and saying, hey I'm this enlightened guy, come give me all your money and follow me blindly, I'm walking around in robes, whatever. You are until recently we're practicing physician who wrote a book with the goal as I understood it and continue to understand it of helping other people get learned about the as we said before deep end of the pool of and you were able you were willing to say some things that would be controversial and you're also made yourself accessible

to people a questions to you and you never charged. You fact you gave away the book you can buy a hard copy of the book on Amazon but you can also get it for free and so you had your own sources of income, you were not looking for accolades or people to give you a ton of money. So I want to say all of that and move on to something unless you want to add to it. I do actually want to add to that. So it's more than that. So not only am I not getting money for this, the small amount of money I make from the book, which people are like, oh my god, these make all this money. No, it's generally less than like $2,000

a year and sometimes it's a little as a thousand than after my tax bracket as a doctor. That like take half of that, not quite. And then I would use that to actually fund the server time for the Dharma Overground, which is a community that I founded with Vince Horn. It's online. You can find it, DharmaOverground.org, which is a free community that I pay for. I pay for his development. Vince has been on his podcast, I should say. Yeah, super nice guy.

Good guy. And he helped me start that because he had some technical skills I didn't and Dharma Interest and thought it would be good. And so that's a free online community that I actually use a little bit of money I make on the book. It goes to support that. And so even that, I don't keep for myself. And then all the emails that I actually use a little bit of money I make on the book, it goes to support that. And so even that, I don't keep for myself. And then all the emails that I get, I answer them for free.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get to them, right? So it might be weeks, sometimes occasionally months. Every request for Skype calls, I generally take those. But I refer almost everybody out to somebody else. So I'm usually like, yeah, in your local community, there's actually this good teacher, or, hey, there's this other center you should sit at. Or there's this's this other you know these people who are teaching Dharma and want students and so I'm not actually even wanting students I don't have anybody. I think of as my formal students. I'm not running retreats that are open to the public. I

You know sometimes go on little retreats with a few friends who want to practice together so I'm and I actually you know, so I'm not looking for students, I'm not looking for money, I'm not looking for power. I don't, the only organization I run is this online forum that I almost never have to do anything authoritarian about except ban the occasional person that's causing a bunch of trouble. And so yeah, I'm doing it because people were kind enough to teach me freely. And they taught, even more than important,

that they taught me honestly. So Bill Hamilton would honestly talk about the stages of insight. Mahasi Saddo honestly talked about the stages of insight. Kenneth Folk, who very early on had some taught me some things, would talk about the stages of insight, et cetera. And so in this way, I'm passing on what people were kind enough to do for me because it changed my life. It opened horizons that didn't know where possible. It allowed me to attain things. I had no idea existed. And I'm incredibly grateful

for that. And they taught me for free. Christopher Titmist didn't charge me Bill Hamilton, charge me none of them. Sharda, you know, Norman, you know, Christina Feldman even, they weren't charging me money. And so there was no financial relationship, nor were they looking for me to be their student. I wasn't, Christopher wouldn't say, oh come be my student, he wasn't ever saying anything like that. And so in that same kind of way, I'm passing on that same spirit, this is nothing weird about me, this is just like that's the tradition I was brought up in. That's the model I was exposed to.

I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was really in keeping with the traditional teachings of the Buddha. And so I'm following this model. And there's nothing particularly weird about that causality. Okay, so let me get to the hard questions. How do you know you're not deluding yourself about your levels of attainment?

Yeah, so that's a great question. So the very interesting thing is my immediate experience is so radically different from how it was that's incredibly compelling. It's certainly possible I'm delusional. Although the other people I've talked to who have managed to reproduce the experiment were all clearly victims of the same delusioned. You know, Sido Upandita Jr. is if I'm deluded, then he's deluded because he thought I had attained to this thing, right? If I'm deluded, then Bill Hamilton was deluded, then Mahasi Sido, perhaps, was deluded, perhaps

were all crazy, except I wouldn't trade this for anything, except maybe world peace, and then I would do it reluctantly. This is so much better of an upgrade. The level of sense-8 clarity I have is off the charts. The sense of naturalness, the entire thing unfolding, the sense of a doer is totally gone and has not arisen again at all under any circumstances since that retreat in April of 2003. The sense of light or awareness that's in everything, the sense of the sort of linear thing that's processing, everything is utterly gone and nothing seems to change that. I've had the flu, I've had serious pain, I've broken bones, I like, nothing changes that basic

thing that the mind is now clear, it seems to have flipped over to some different way of perceiving reality that's bomb proof. I mean, maybe I could stroke out some part of my brain. It would ensure it. I don't know, but barring that, it seems to like, it seems to handle everything. And so, with the sense of a watcher, a subject, a doer, a knower, a stable entity, all being totally eradicated. You can call that whatever you like. Pick your favorite term for it if you don't like the word arhotter, you don't like the word pathter, you don't like the word whatever.

You don't have to call it anything nor do you even have to believe it. But would I recommend doing the experiment for people who want to see for themselves? It's easy to criticize, right? It's easy to say, oh, you're just not. Okay, fine, maybe I am. But the first principles of it that perhaps you could pay attention to these straightforward aspects of reality, clearly, and then learn to perceive them automatically, just like you learn to read automatically, is not a weird set of assumptions. And so way more important than some do babbling in a hypomanic voice on a podcast is that if you're interested in this stuff, you go do the experiment. So the

Buddha and me and everybody else says, go see for yourself. Go check it out if this calls to you. And if it doesn't, and you're not willing to do the experiment, then be a little hesitant with some of your criticisms. Not that skepticism isn't warranted, it totally is. I was all kinds of skeptical about all this stuff until it started happening to me. I was like, really? You know, again, I was very, very scientific, materialistically rigid for, you know, the first half of my life.

And then all of a sudden, I was like, okay, no, this stuff is happening. I can't, that paradigm doesn't work for me anymore. You described sort of the beauty of the state in which you claim to live right now, but I wonder you are, I mean, I'll say I consider you a friend, I think you're awesome, but you retain some human foibles like you talk about being hypomanic, you talk a little bit about being arrogant, how can those things be true if you're as enlightened as you say? So, it's, there are a bunch of different analogies that I use.

So for example, the Buddha, the Buddha was always talking about how awakened he was. His very name means I am awakened, the name he chose for himself. And like, the first person he talked to that wasn't a God or a giant snake was this wandering ascetic who who said, wow, you're glowing dude. What's up? And he's like, I am awakened. I am the knower of worlds, you know, tamer of gods and humans, you know, you know, unsurpassed in my ex, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like the first person he ever met, he friggin unloaded this unbelievable list of incredible stuff he was, right? And I'm not doubting that. Maybe he was all those things. Cool, like somehow his teachings are still incredibly profoundly, personally transforming, 25-hundred years later. That's some, that says something. You know, he was clearly impressive, right? And he was not afraid of saying it at all, right? And so the Buddha himself, unless you're willing to, oh, he was, it was arrogant, but it was empty. Okay, yeah, but that arrogance part, that confidence part, that telling it like he thinks it is part, read the Buddha's text with that filter and start

looking for that. And you're like, oh, yeah, actually. And so the history of the life of the Buddha, there was constant conflict and struggle. He had back pain. He had bad headaches that were like debilitating. He had bad back pain that was debilitating. He had to rest a bunch. He had all kinds of conflicts with people. He argued with people. He used really harsh language with people sometimes. People like, oh no, it's just the Buddha. You can figure, no, but like, if that was, like, pay attention. Pay attention to the stories actually story is actually tell you read it and with that filter and go okay Wait a second and then look at modern times Right, so like plenty of people go to Asia and they're like yeah, there's this our hot monk throwing a rock at a dog

Like what's up with that? So just because as Chino said is this is a chan guy or is then you know Korean chan And um, he said just because the sun is shining brightly, doesn't mean all the snow melts at once. And the notion that the simple fact of perceiving that things are, you know, tentically luminous, ephemeral, empty, you know, whatever you want, you know, picked your favorite words for this kind of experience,

that doesn't mean it suddenly writes all biological or cultural or, you know, childhood conditioning. It just doesn't true. It would be sort of like imagining that everybody who is a great piano player, of course, would be a great writer, right? They have incredible skill at hitting keys all day long. They make beautiful music. And yet, is every great piano player who can hit keys really well all day long. They make beautiful music. And yet, is every great piano player who can hit keys really well all day long and play beautiful music a great writer? I'm not sure that's true. And I'm not sure why you would think that. Or all great writers, great piano players. Everybody who can type really well and write really well, they all great piano

players know. It seems so closely related. You think of course, but okay, no, wait, no. And in the same kind of way, modern reality testing. So I've had plenty of teachers you've heard of, come up and say, hey, yeah, that thing you claim to have done, I've done that too. And then we'll talk about it, right? That's one of the really sort of, I'm honored to have had some of those conversations.

That's really grateful that people get to have those. And you talk about it and yeah it doesn't perform like they, you know, they can still, you know, make love with their partners. They can still be irritable when they get hungry. Like, there's still some physiology. Like, all of the traditional presentation, the text just does not hold up to modern reality testing and yet the fact of insight and in the seeing, just the scene, in the hearing, just the heard, totally does, is totally doable today. And so, yeah, so you have to, with modern reality testing and empirical methods, right? Can you reproduce the experiment?

And then when lots of people reproduce the experiment, what do they find? You can find that some of it holds up really well and some of the traditional myths and dogmas just don't actually. And so that's, I'm also a scientist, right? So I have MSPH and epidemiology and an MD and I've published papers and journals and stuff. So I appreciate that empiricism. Empiricism in both sense of the words that we're doing the experiment and we're using our own experience as the basis of reality.

So that's my answer. You talk about the durability of this, but how doable is it really? I mean, is somebody in my position with a kid and a bunch of cats and two jobs, can I really achieve stream entry, not to mention our huntship? I know people who get stream entry actually without even practicing. So occasionally it even happens, but actually I know people who get street, got street entry actually without even practicing.

So occasionally it even happens, actually I know people have gotten even higher past than that without doing anything you would call meditative. OK. There's a reason that happened for me. The problem is rather than thinking, yes, no black, white dimension, sorry,

categorically about this, we need to think dimensionally. There is clearly a bell curve to this stuff. And there are dose dependent sort of probability shifts. So it is true that people who practice more go on more retreats, you know, have better concentration or whatever, sit with better teachers.

It's true, all of those things are gonna increase the probability that these things are likely to happen. But I know people who did this stuff in daily life worth complicated lives who just either were just a few natural talents. I know a few people who were just frigging naturals. Okay, so we'll ignore the supernatural talents who just they've just got it. Like Mozart was writing symphonies at age four. There are a few of those people. I know there was meditators. I'm jealous. I was not one, right? But okay, they exist. They're not many.

And then you have people who, like me, with a whole bunch of work and a bunch of retreats and a bunch of practice can do this stuff. And then you have people who, I know a few people who have gotten pads in daily life. Literally people who have gone on no retreats and they just did some practice and they were meticulous about the daily mindfulness.

Every single activity you do accepts some certain types of inner processing cognitive work and certain sort of conversational things sometimes are really pretty amenable to just noticing their true nature, noticing their arising and passing away all the little blips and flickers that make up that experience, noting them, paying really careful meticulous attention to their vividness, their vibrancy, all the little, all little moment to moment, and so it is possible with diligent practice and dedication to lead a hectic life and do this, is it easy? No. Can it be done? Yes, and I know people who have done it. One of the, you talked about this before in your defense,

but one of the criticism of you is that people like me sort of type A ambitious people hear you talk and get very inspired and then get very, our practices get infused with a real striving that can be a hindrance. True. As I mentioned earlier, and totally absolutely true, a great point.

And so what do we do about that? Yeah. So one has to be very, very careful. I have a chapter in my book, my book again, which you can get for free at mctb.org. So there's a chapter called a clear goal. And in the chapter called a clear goal, I talk a lot about working with that future problem, that striving problem. So you have people who say,

I'm gonna get enlightened. Okay? And then you have people say, I'm gonna practice really well and get enlightened. And then you have people who say, I'm gonna practice right here noticing these sensations in my body mind, so that I get enlightened.

And then you have people who are just like, yeah, I'm gonna notice these sensations right here in my body mind, so that I get enlightened. And then you have people who are just like, yeah, I'm going to notice these sensations right here in my body mind, right here, right now this sensation, this breath, this sight, this sound, this moment, these fingers, these feet walking to the parking lot, going in the elevator, walking down the hallway, going to the bathroom, brushing their teeth, eating a meal, you know, waiting for the subway, whatever they're doing, you know, going to bed, walking, you know, waiting for the subway, whatever they're doing, you know, going to bed, walking, you know, putting on their slippers, they're going to pay attention to that. Those are the people you're going to bet on winning, right?

If you were a betting person, which, you know, you're sort of asking the question, what increases your probability is kind of a betting game. If you had to bet, you're going to bet on that one, because that's a person who know has a very, very mature, um, skillful relationship to the problems with the maps, with striving and with the goals. Someone who has finally recognized, know, this here in this phantom long body, in this moment is where I find it or I don't. There is no future moment that is it. It is this moment or it isn't and you just go, okay, right here again, again, again.

And what's really interesting is like when you teach people on retreat or you go on retreats with people and you all practice together, you can feel people who have finally dropped into that groove. And it feels really good to be around them. There's something just so nice about that. They're like, now that it's like, because they're claiming their power, right? They're really claiming their power and directing it well, and they're claiming their birthright in this moment to be clear about it and to be wise about it and to understand it as it

arises. And they've got that fundamental concept down, and it's just delightful to be around in that same way, people who are really striving and really competitive and really, it just makes them eard to agitated and being around this. Like, you know, and you can tell it's causing them more suffering and that's true. And this is a danger. Again, the people who criticize the map-based traditions

are even making these things publicly disclosed. They're right. And that happens. But there is a way to grow up with that, just like in sports, right? So when we're little kids, we might get really angry when we're playing a sport. Like the other team, you know, one, and we lost, and they're crying,

and they're angry, and they're screaming, and they're just like, so upset, and their parents might be the same way, right? So, you know, the mad soccer mom, or soccer dad, or whatever, you know, or basketball mom, basketball dad, or, you know, or basketball mom, that basketball dad or, you know, whatever they're all ah in the same kind of way. But there are people who can grow up and like, you know, they play a great game of sports and I think one team won one team lost, but they all like had a great they had a great time playing the game and they all shake each other's hand at the end.

Yes, see you next game. Okay. See you next game. You know, it's got a whole different feel to it. And that's like mature sportsmanship. In the same way with the Dharma, mature competition or mature comparison, it can have a really fun, jovial, playful, inspiring feel to it. Like, yeah, oh man, that was an awesome pass to you through, but next time I'm gonna throw an even better one.

And that kind of like collegial fun attitude is an attitude we adopt for all kinds of other things, right? You know, and that's what we hope to see in champions, right? So the champions we like in the Olympics are the ones that were like, you know, really nice people and really congratulative of the other team or the people that didn't get the gold when they did, right? But the people are like, yes, I got the gold.

You're like, oh, yeah, okay, not so good, right? And so in that same kind of way, we learned this for all kinds of other skills and areas of life, you know, academic degrees. And you know, what car are you driving? Whatever. You know, but we, the mature people, we can, there are some people who learn to be mature in the face of competition in comparison.

This is something we've done for so many other things. Why can't we do it for this? Of course we can. In closing, let's do what I call the plug zone. Can you just, I know you gave us the website for the book, but can you just describe this new edition of the book where we can get it, where we can find the Dharma over ground, where we can find you, et cetera, et cetera.

Give us the whole thing. Okay, so there's mastering the core teachings of the Buddha, which you can, sorry, you can read for free. And soon enough, we'll be able to download a PDF of for free at www.mctb.org. You sound like a radio announcer. Thanks. And then I actually have another site with us some friends of mine called www.firecacena.org F-I-R-E-K-A-S-I-N-A.org. And that's actually about using Candle Flame as a meditation object. It's also free.

There's a free book you can download there, or you can print one out on Lulu. We don't get any money from that. We just have them charged. The printing costs were not making a red cent off of that book. And you can hear all kinds of interesting reports of what happens when people do Candle Flame and go deep in that practice. And then the Dharma Overground, which is a community of practitioners who like talking openly about these things.

It's an online forum with all the glories and problems of an online forum, you know, so just, you know, but it's www.dharma.org or m-a-overground. O-v-e-r-g-r-o-u-n-d.org. And so these are some places you can find some of my stuff. Or my own website is integrated Daniel.info. Spelt just like you'd figure. And social media. So I'm on Twitter at Daniel and Ingraham. I think it's the major one where you'll find me in sort of social media. And the book, just so people is, is your, well, I read the first edition,

but it's basically your story and practical tips. So I took the first edition of the book, which had almost no autobiographical details, and I made it twice as long. It was like 160,000 words or whatever. Now it's like 320,000. So yeah, it's a gigantic hog of a book. I'm working on a summary. Sorry for how long it is. But it added all kinds of additional details about concentration practices, a whole lot of additional details and practice tips that come out of me telling my own stories. If you want to hear the story, you can read all about it in the book. And I just went into a whole lot of other topics that I hadn't gotten into in the same kind of way, like dependent origination and actually talking about these things skillfully

of way, like dependent origination and actually talking about these things skillfully and powers and, you know, a whole bunch of other stuff. Powers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's a discussion for a different podcast, but whether one can achieve powers is, like, super normal powers is, is, yeah. Interesting discussion.

Read Real Magic by Dean Radem, RADIN. Yes, he just, Daniel, by the way, just recommended that to me over lunch, which preceded the taping of this podcast. Yeah, Daniel, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast, and I appreciate you being a friend. You've been a huge influence on my thinking about these issues, so it's been long overdue to have you on the show. It's delightful enjoying your friendship as well, sir. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been fun, and I hope that you're able to get something useful practical

for yourself as a practitioner, and don't get too caught up in the details or story of just one dude, because that's not as helpful as you learning these things for yourself. Good place to close. Thanks, buddy. Okay, big thanks to Daniel Ingram there. As a reminder, we're not doing voicemails this week. That was a lengthy episode. A lot of pretty quite meaty.

But we are looking for new voicemails. As I said, 646-883-836-646-883-836. I imagine this episode in particular is provoking a lot of questions, so feel free to call us with your questions. You can also, if you're an app subscriber and you have burning questions or frustrations or whatever or new goals based on what you just heard, you can ask your coach on the app. Go to the coach, find the coaching feature, and our coaches are standing by and very happy

and eager to answer any and all of your questions. Big thanks to all the people who put together the show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, among others. Big thank you as well to our little feedback group that gives us feedback on every episode. That's immensely valuable. Really appreciate that. And thank you to you for listening. As always, we love it when you rate us, review us, talk about us on social media that boosts our ratings and helps more people find us.

I will see you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com-survey. at Wondery.com-survey.