Red flag alert! In all Buddhist traditions anyone who claims to be enlightened immediately invalidates that assertion. Humility and an utter lack of ego reification or self-identification with enlightenment is the very definition of an awakened heart-mind. Therefore, a realized individual would have no need or even a subtle impulse to utter such characterizations or claims about themselves and their level of realization. Oh how Western Buddhists, blinded by self-regard, get the essence of the Buddhist teachings so wrong... the ego will take everything as its own; including enlightenment.
I don't think that's actually universally true. Although there are plenty of people claiming enlightenment who didn't actually get there, some people recount awakenings and mystical experiences WITH humility and a lack of ego. It either happened or it didn't. Acknowledging it isn't by itself invalidating if it did actually happen.
Honest question, coming from someone almost completely unfamiliar with Buddhism: if the above is correct, how can any concept of enlightenment be taught or even usefully developed? If the people who have achieved it (i.e., the people who would know what they’re talking about) by definition couldn’t admit it?
it's not for exactly this reason. Even if you have zero ego, you may claim to be enlightened so that you can teach other people. And this motivation makes sense even if you are, in fact, englithened.
As far as I am concerned I found his book quite interesting as I believe I have experienced what he calls the ‘arising and passing’ event three times, followed by the kind of depression, fear and disgust he describes. Not in a formal meditation setting but following the instructions of the now defunct truthstrike community. Nothing further than that, but still quite impressive. I have no idea whether what he talks about in other places of the book is real because I had no direct experience of it.
Well, maybe Buddhist traditions have had it wrong all this time. We've made so much progress in just about everything else over the past fifteen centuries, it's weird to assume we can't be any better at Buddhism than Buddha was.
We understand calculus now a lot better than Newton or Leibniz did. We understand evolution better than Freud, economics better than Smith, even utilitarianism better than Bentham. I would like to propose that if an idea has been around for centuries and we don't understand it better than the guy who invented it then either it's simple enough not to require any elaboration, or it's an intellectual dead end.
As a further corollary, ideas named after a person are probably bad. If we haven't, over the centuries, managed to separate the idea from the inventor somewhat then there probably hasn't been much progress in it.
Ohm’s law is an effective description of the underlying statistical mechanics, though I do not know whether that counts as having superseded or expanded it
You have it backwards. We accept current microscopic theories of electricity only because they are consistent with Ohm's Law. In general, "laws" are mathematical summations of empirical observation, and they never change. They are the bedrock of empirical science. "Theories" are what we construct to explain laws, and we keep them only as long as they're consistent with the laws.
One could argue that to an extent laws are just simple theories -though that might be a purely semantics debate. The way you conceptualize “laws” makes them sound like “facts”: more general than experience, yet more stable than models/theories. I am not sure I buy that. On a somewhat unrelated note, I remember glancing at the original notes by ohm, which obviously look nothing like what is taught to students today. But whether the only difference is notation I can’t tell with just a cursory look.
A theory has a "why" behind it. It says why current should be proportional to voltage. A law is just a statement (usually also in mathematical form) that it always is.
A law is not just data, because the data don't have the trends stamped on their foreheads, have noise, et cetera. Tycho collected data, and from this Kepler formulated laws, and then along came Newton and constructed a theory of gravitation to explain why Kepler's laws are true.
It's not just a semantics issue, the distinction has profound philosophical consequences. Laws are things that cannot change and are always true, because they are rooted in direct observation (excepting the trivial cases of bad data or mistaken math). They can certainly become supplemented or limited, e.g. we recognize that Kepler's Laws are not followed always and everywhere, because of relativity, because planets are not infinitely smaller than the space between them, et cetera, so we take note that the laws only hold within certain defined limits, and outside of that something else does.
Theories, on the other hand, can and do change, and have a much more tentative epistemic nature, because they involve inference of things and mechanisms we cannot directly observe, e.g. Newton infers the existence of a gravitational force between Mars and Sun, which he cannot directly measure. Classical electrodynamics (e.g. Maxwell's Equations) posit the existence of an electric and magnetic field, which we cannot directly measure, and relationships between them that we cannot directly test. We measure our confidence in the theory -- including its axioms and unmeasureable components -- by how well it reproduces law.
On the object level, this is blatantly wrong as regards Ohm's Law.
Our current microscopic theories of electromagnetism do not predict Ohm's Law holding in all circumstances. This is an empirical success of those theories, because Ohm's Law is not true in all circumstances. In fact, it is fairly easy to find non-ohmic materials whose passage of current does not depend linearly on applied voltage.
Ohm's Law is a rule of thumb, and this is often the case for "Laws" in physics -- there's really two kinds of laws, one of which is a postulate that encodes part of a theory and another of which is an empirical regularity that is usually not universal or exact. The empirically-based laws are less reliable and more likely to be superseded than the more abstract postulates.
Yes, I already included the fact that we discover limitations on empirical laws. That doesn't change their accuracy or reliability or truth value, it just says they are more limited than we at first thought.
And your conclusion is nonsense. Abstract postulates are changed regularly and drastically -- just ask Einstein about quantum mechanics, Dirac about Consevation of Mass, Dayton Miller about relativity, or Newton about Ptolemaic epicycles. Theory is routinely superseded. Can you name *any* empirically-derived law that was shown to be wrong in its initial area of application? I can't.
Right, they'd all fall into the "simple enough not to require any elaboration" category I mentioned in my second para, but admittedly I forgot to specifically exclude stuff like that in my third.
Simple ideas named after a person can be good, complicated ones probably aren't.
I don't think they always fall into that category. Ohm's concept of electrical resistance was usefully expanded later into the concept of of a frequency-dependent reactance for use in AC circuits. Galileo's concept of linear inertia was extended to moment of inertia for rotational motion, and then gained much more subtlety when relativity came along.
I think I understand where you're driving, but I think your initial model isn't a good one universally and suggest a different approach in some cases: it feels like you're saying we start with an abstract vague idea, and then as time goes on we refined it, finish it off, like starting with the rough frame of a house and adding plumbing, electricity, drywall, so that it becomes much more functional. Should we continue to name the finished house or factory after the guy who originally just marked out the property and threw a tarp over some sticks? Maybe not!
And it feels like t his might be good metaphor for fields that are of human construction, like math, music, or the law. We invent a vague concept like "justice" and then our ideas of what that practically means get refined over time, and with experience. Should we credit much or most of our understanding of the principle of free speech to Madison because he wrote the First Amendment? Probably not.
But I don't think it's a good model of how fields rooted in experiment evolve. Usually in these fields we begin with collections of measured fact. Someone notices some low-level trends that connect them, and then someone else constructs are more elaborate framework that explains all the low level trends. It's more of a bottom-up evolution, which begins with the most concrete possible data and adds layers of sophistication and abstraction. Instead of starting with the most abstract and general concepts, we end up there, after a long time. For that matter, we can more readily change the top-level largest and most abstract concepts and ideas than we can change the lowest-level facts and observational trends -- because the former are our mental invention, while the latter are uttered by Nature and have nothing to do with our imagination (although they do depend on our discernment).
There's no good reason to forget about or minimize the contributions of the person who first noted the low-level trends, because that noticing is exceedingly valuable, it's the foundation for all that comes after, and it never gets superseded or altered beyond recognition. So we continue to honor James Joule with his name on the unit of energy because he proved that heat was a mechanical process, and not a material substance, and that's a permanent step forward in our understanding of the real world. It has never been superseded, and never lost its importance, the way a Roman legal precedent of AD 180 might have.
The original collectors of the Pali canon would be amazed and perplexed by this (Lisa's) comment. If Ingram has roared his lion's roar in the assembly and said "Birth has been destroyed, the holy life has been lived, that has been done that needed to be done, there is no more to this stage of being!", then I for one am glad for him.
What a kafkatrap! By this logic, the person least likely to be enlightened would be the Buddha himself.
> a realized individual would have no need or even a subtle impulse to utter such characterizations or claims about themselves and their level of realization.
Why a person with zero ego might say they are enlightened: (1) because someone asked, (2) because they want to help others achieve enlightenment.
I've thought about this, a bit. Currently my thought process is something like this: "humility is a virtue" is not merely a moral value, it also offers instrumental value. While boasting of your achievements offers an immediate appreciation/status boost, in the longrun, being humble is likely to offer more appreciation, as long as you can ensure that people indirectly get to know of your achievements. So something like the following:
1. Without ego
1.1. "Something cool happened, let me tell all my friends about it!"
2. With ego
2.1. "Something cool happened, but people will think badly of me if I boast about it, and I don't want people to think badly of me."
2.2. Or "something cool happened, but I'll strategically be coy about it (while, at the same time, pretend-reluctantly telling some people who I know will spread it around), so I have the pretense of humility while people get to know about the cool thing at the same time, offering me both appreciation for having done the cool thing and further appreciation for seemingly staying quiet about it."
This. Humility means not exaggerating things about yourself, and not mentioning the things when they are irrelevant to the debate. It does not mean actively denying true things, or refusing to mention them when they are of benefit to others. (In the context of internet debate, where people discuss to satisfy their curiosity, mentioning true relevant facts may be a benefit for the curious ones. "Oh, you guys are interested in X? I happen to be X, AMA!") Humility means not manipulating your status upwards. It does not mean actively manipulating your status downwards. It mean telling the truth regardless of your status.
The rule "don't speak of X" is just an approximation of humility; a simple way to stop people who can't stop talking about how X they are. And like any rule, it can be cleverly circumvented -- the standard solution for high-status people is to have *other* people tell everyone how cool they are ("Here comes John Doe, the Master of X! Everyone please show him how much we appreciate him being here with us today!!!", followed by a round of applause), while the high-status person performs a "humble" denial on the stage ("oh, I am just a random guy", followed by the moderator saying "Oh look how *humble* the Master of X is! This is a sign of true mastery!!!", followed by another round of applause).
So the rule of "humble people do not talk about themselves" in practice translates to "only high-status people are allowed to say that they are X".
EDIT:
Oh, another use of "don't speak of X" is not to comment on things that can be directly observed. Like, if you have a beautiful hat on your head, do not say "I have a beautiful hat on my head", because everyone can see it; if it is indeed beautiful, they know, and if it is not, they know too.
The online equivalent would be not to say "I am smart" or "I am polite", because if that is true, it can be seen from the comments you write. However, it is not obvious what an enlightened person looks like... first, because it is not a part of the Western culture, so who knows, maybe my preconceptions are completely wrong, and second, because I do not have an opportunity to observe Ingram in his real life, so even if he 100% behaved like an archetypal enlightened person, I would not have a chance to know that.
> 1.1. "Something cool happened, let me tell all my friends about it!"
If that's the process, it's the definition of ego at work, given the true meaning of "cool". (People may not be conscious of this meaning.)
This also fits my observation of such conversations.
I'm not saying that this is an especially bad thing. And of course there can be a different reason for sharing the cool thing, such as sharing excitement. (If however you can't find one, then ego/impressing people is a good candidate because it's so common. There has to be some reason after all.)
Plenty of Eastern teachers will admit to being 'enlightened' if you know that you're looking for. For example, they may admit to having access to the formless Jhanas, which are normally only accessible by Second Pathers. Or, like the current Dalai Lama did, they may say humbly that they have managed to attain a measure of equanimity, which is essentially a joke and admission of attainment. Furthermore, the are many texts where the authors are clear about their attainments. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Guo Gu, Padmasambhava, Dagpo Tashi Namgyal, Ajahn Tate and of course the historical Buddha but I have no doubt a quick search could unearth many more.
Monastic practitioners in most traditions are not meant to talk about attainment to their contemporaries, only their teachers and the first wave of Western Buddhist teachers have also been rather reserved about the whole thing. I think people like Joseph Golstein et al maintained a level of secrecy around attainment, frankly because they wanted to be taken seriously, rather than being seen like New Agers or spaced out Swamis. However, things went too far to the extent that people in the West started to understand attainment as something dry and theoretical, rather than the radical series of cognitive shifts that it actually is. Daniel has probably done more to change that view and bring Buddhist attainment into the light than anybody else in recent years. I don't agree with everything he talks about, I believe he has a rather narrow view of 'enlightenment' and I'm not sure he really understands what attainment is constituted by in the Mahayana but I certainly respect and honour his view and assert that implying he is egotistical or lacks humility is a completely mistaken view.
Ha, did you have chats about My Little Pony with both of us? I'm the "Magic the Gathering is Turing Complete" Alex. I congratulated you on your Starlight Glimmer mask. :)
How is it that this particular Daniel Ingram doesn't have his own Wikipedia entry? I'm kind of shocked. He's a big deal in certain circles, especially on Dharma Overground.
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence.)"
My understanding is that they are substantially more effective on the transmitting end than the receiving end, but of course it’s a lot easier to choose to wear a mask yourself than to get everyone around you to wear one.
I don't think it matters either way. From the recent Cochrane review:
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence.)"
I'm not worried about community outcome as much as I'm worried about passing diseases to my husband in the first place (at the very local level, this Cochrane review is useless). To avoid passing anything, I need not to catch anything. COVID and influenza can be airborne. Ergo, I have to do what I can while having a life. At least according to the UCSF lung transplant team. Definitely try to take this up with them if you believe it's silly to wear masks around lung transplant patients for some reason!
If you have to block everything then masks are helpful in that they reduce spread of bacterial diseases like pneumonia. But I believe there's a substantial body of research showing that surgical masks have zero effectiveness against viruses, which makes sense when you think of the basic physics of it: using a mask to block a virus is like using a screen door to block a dust storm. If your husband is that vulnerable then you should probably both wear respirators or something.
And I hope you realize that community outcomes are just aggregates of individual outcomes, so yes that Cochrane review should be of interest to you. By all means go ahead and err on the side of caution with low-cost precautions like masks, but don't be deluded into a false sense of security. They do (within error bars of) zero to protect you from covid/influenza. Being vaccinated and socially distanced/outdoors are your only effective safeguards.
Respectfully, I don't need your permission to do what I know I have to do according to my husband's doctors. Also, I hope you realize that this is a sensitive topic for those of us who have to live with immunosuppressed/-compromised people and we have been having these conversations with others who feel that masks are useless for years while the docs continue to tell us we need to mask, so there's a bit of an edge to my response. Finally, in the future, I suspect you'd like to know (I hope you would) that your comment sounds pretty pedantic -- which is also contributing to the edge in my response. I hope to meet you at this event so I can explain further.
Parenthetically, I have to say that basic physics would like a word with you about that absurd analogy which has unfortunately spread far and wide. A mask is in no way comparable to a screen door -- unless you are wearing a single 0.005mm thick layer of material. A mask is comparable to several hundred screen doors piled in random orientations on top of each other. Masks block particles not because of the hole size in any single layer, but because the stacking of many layers makes any pathway through very twisty, and the chances of an airborne particle negotiating all the twists and turns without hitting a wall and sticking to it are low.
I think Daniel believes that the path to enlightenment is attainable and he has broken down the steps to get there in his writings. It's not a guarantee, but it is a prescription. Assuming enlightenment is not some mystical crapshoot or granting-of-the-gods, it may be less magical and more methodology that the Buddha figured out and Ingram has quantified.
He did mention in the book that the final phase shift where you become enlightened is up to chance, or grace. You can work to get to that point, but the final step is not up to you.
I have this hypothesis that taking antipsychotics would make enlightenment go away. No one thinks enlightenment would survive a lobotomy, and antipsychotics are not that, but they are no joke either.
Has Ingram tried that? He is interested in the science of enlightenment. Can someone float the idea to him?
Basically, I read this book (https://www.amazon.com/Psychosis-Psychiatry-Psychospiritual-Considerations-Understanding/dp/1801520151) which posits that what psychiatry normally calls psychosis can in fact also be a spiritual state. In it, there was the interesting observation that the founders of religions have all exhibited psychotic symptoms. Buddha in particular claimed to have had contact with Brahma and Mara, and to have had visions about how the world is (he said it was flat and that at the center was Mount Meru). If a person reports things like these to a psychiatrist, a diagnosis of psychosis could (not necessarily) be made, as these things would be judged to be either delusions or hallucinations.
Now, I don't believe the founders of religions were literally psychotic, but there was definitely something about madness in them. Rene Guenon says that the truths of religions are suprarational insights, they come from beyond reason. And well, once you are positing something above and beyond reason, that thing is still outside of reason, and is therefore a sort of madness. Definitely a very rarely encountered madness, and an odd madness that can trump reason, but still madness.
Hence why maybe an antipsychotic could knock someone out of a non-ordinary mode of cognition like nirvana.
Basically, the author believes in actual magic and psychic powers. "Give zero credence to anything coming from someone who believes in magic or psychic powers" is an extremely deep-seated heuristic of mine. I have had this same disappointing experience - someone sounds like they might know what they're talking about, and then the word "magick" shows up - a couple of times now while exploring meditation literature. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being too harsh, but on the other hand I really really really don't want to end up in a cult, and absolute contempt at the first sign of wee-woo feels entirely necessary to that.
My read of the book isn't a 'belief in' magic, but an acknowledgement that magic is a standard part of the story because some weird mental states sure feel like magic, so we may as well use that language to describe them; but any Buddhist should also tell you that things you feel aren't exactly 'real'
Yeah, he starts by saying it's not that simple - and then goes on to recommend Castaneda, Wicca, Thelema, Golden Dawn, Crowley, plus describes a step by step procedure to cast spells, stressing the importance of thinking through the possible consequences of what you're asking for. Yyyyyyyeah.
Here's how I arrived at believing he believes in magic. I found the MCTB site, which links to another book he wrote (https://firekasina.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/the-fire-kasina.pdf). The blurb on the back of the book states that it "presents a practical technique for the development of supernormal powers". Then I opened to a random page, and found him describing a retreat where he claims to have caused with his mind a glowing orange pentagram to materialize in midair, with someone else also seeing it.
Thank you for organizing this event. I am delighted that this event will be outdoors, COVID-conscious, and inclusive. I will be happy to remain masked during the event to respect the health and comfort of all who participate.
Will there be a talk/interview or just an opportunity to mingle with David? Sorry for the silly question, never attended an ACX meetup, so want to understand the format.
I found Dr. Ingram very disappointing. He paid a staggering amount of homage to such pseudosciences as astrology and Norse mythology. He also described himself as a "practitioner of chaos magic." I was thoroughly shocked and disappointed that someone with such certitude about this kind of hocus-pocus would be invited to a "rationalist" event.
It would be a peculiar meet up if you weren’t attending !
It would? There are tons of ACX meetups, inclusive specifically announced here that Scott doesn't attend.
Is registration required, or can one just show up?
Just show up!
Red flag alert! In all Buddhist traditions anyone who claims to be enlightened immediately invalidates that assertion. Humility and an utter lack of ego reification or self-identification with enlightenment is the very definition of an awakened heart-mind. Therefore, a realized individual would have no need or even a subtle impulse to utter such characterizations or claims about themselves and their level of realization. Oh how Western Buddhists, blinded by self-regard, get the essence of the Buddhist teachings so wrong... the ego will take everything as its own; including enlightenment.
I don't think that's actually universally true. Although there are plenty of people claiming enlightenment who didn't actually get there, some people recount awakenings and mystical experiences WITH humility and a lack of ego. It either happened or it didn't. Acknowledging it isn't by itself invalidating if it did actually happen.
Honest question, coming from someone almost completely unfamiliar with Buddhism: if the above is correct, how can any concept of enlightenment be taught or even usefully developed? If the people who have achieved it (i.e., the people who would know what they’re talking about) by definition couldn’t admit it?
it's not for exactly this reason. Even if you have zero ego, you may claim to be enlightened so that you can teach other people. And this motivation makes sense even if you are, in fact, englithened.
As far as I am concerned I found his book quite interesting as I believe I have experienced what he calls the ‘arising and passing’ event three times, followed by the kind of depression, fear and disgust he describes. Not in a formal meditation setting but following the instructions of the now defunct truthstrike community. Nothing further than that, but still quite impressive. I have no idea whether what he talks about in other places of the book is real because I had no direct experience of it.
Well, maybe Buddhist traditions have had it wrong all this time. We've made so much progress in just about everything else over the past fifteen centuries, it's weird to assume we can't be any better at Buddhism than Buddha was.
We understand calculus now a lot better than Newton or Leibniz did. We understand evolution better than Freud, economics better than Smith, even utilitarianism better than Bentham. I would like to propose that if an idea has been around for centuries and we don't understand it better than the guy who invented it then either it's simple enough not to require any elaboration, or it's an intellectual dead end.
As a further corollary, ideas named after a person are probably bad. If we haven't, over the centuries, managed to separate the idea from the inventor somewhat then there probably hasn't been much progress in it.
Interested in any counterexamples.
Ohm's Law. Galilean relativity. The Lorentz transformation. The Pythagorean theorem.
Ohm’s law is an effective description of the underlying statistical mechanics, though I do not know whether that counts as having superseded or expanded it
You have it backwards. We accept current microscopic theories of electricity only because they are consistent with Ohm's Law. In general, "laws" are mathematical summations of empirical observation, and they never change. They are the bedrock of empirical science. "Theories" are what we construct to explain laws, and we keep them only as long as they're consistent with the laws.
One could argue that to an extent laws are just simple theories -though that might be a purely semantics debate. The way you conceptualize “laws” makes them sound like “facts”: more general than experience, yet more stable than models/theories. I am not sure I buy that. On a somewhat unrelated note, I remember glancing at the original notes by ohm, which obviously look nothing like what is taught to students today. But whether the only difference is notation I can’t tell with just a cursory look.
A theory has a "why" behind it. It says why current should be proportional to voltage. A law is just a statement (usually also in mathematical form) that it always is.
A law is not just data, because the data don't have the trends stamped on their foreheads, have noise, et cetera. Tycho collected data, and from this Kepler formulated laws, and then along came Newton and constructed a theory of gravitation to explain why Kepler's laws are true.
It's not just a semantics issue, the distinction has profound philosophical consequences. Laws are things that cannot change and are always true, because they are rooted in direct observation (excepting the trivial cases of bad data or mistaken math). They can certainly become supplemented or limited, e.g. we recognize that Kepler's Laws are not followed always and everywhere, because of relativity, because planets are not infinitely smaller than the space between them, et cetera, so we take note that the laws only hold within certain defined limits, and outside of that something else does.
Theories, on the other hand, can and do change, and have a much more tentative epistemic nature, because they involve inference of things and mechanisms we cannot directly observe, e.g. Newton infers the existence of a gravitational force between Mars and Sun, which he cannot directly measure. Classical electrodynamics (e.g. Maxwell's Equations) posit the existence of an electric and magnetic field, which we cannot directly measure, and relationships between them that we cannot directly test. We measure our confidence in the theory -- including its axioms and unmeasureable components -- by how well it reproduces law.
On the object level, this is blatantly wrong as regards Ohm's Law.
Our current microscopic theories of electromagnetism do not predict Ohm's Law holding in all circumstances. This is an empirical success of those theories, because Ohm's Law is not true in all circumstances. In fact, it is fairly easy to find non-ohmic materials whose passage of current does not depend linearly on applied voltage.
Ohm's Law is a rule of thumb, and this is often the case for "Laws" in physics -- there's really two kinds of laws, one of which is a postulate that encodes part of a theory and another of which is an empirical regularity that is usually not universal or exact. The empirically-based laws are less reliable and more likely to be superseded than the more abstract postulates.
Yes, I already included the fact that we discover limitations on empirical laws. That doesn't change their accuracy or reliability or truth value, it just says they are more limited than we at first thought.
And your conclusion is nonsense. Abstract postulates are changed regularly and drastically -- just ask Einstein about quantum mechanics, Dirac about Consevation of Mass, Dayton Miller about relativity, or Newton about Ptolemaic epicycles. Theory is routinely superseded. Can you name *any* empirically-derived law that was shown to be wrong in its initial area of application? I can't.
Right, they'd all fall into the "simple enough not to require any elaboration" category I mentioned in my second para, but admittedly I forgot to specifically exclude stuff like that in my third.
Simple ideas named after a person can be good, complicated ones probably aren't.
I don't think they always fall into that category. Ohm's concept of electrical resistance was usefully expanded later into the concept of of a frequency-dependent reactance for use in AC circuits. Galileo's concept of linear inertia was extended to moment of inertia for rotational motion, and then gained much more subtlety when relativity came along.
I think I understand where you're driving, but I think your initial model isn't a good one universally and suggest a different approach in some cases: it feels like you're saying we start with an abstract vague idea, and then as time goes on we refined it, finish it off, like starting with the rough frame of a house and adding plumbing, electricity, drywall, so that it becomes much more functional. Should we continue to name the finished house or factory after the guy who originally just marked out the property and threw a tarp over some sticks? Maybe not!
And it feels like t his might be good metaphor for fields that are of human construction, like math, music, or the law. We invent a vague concept like "justice" and then our ideas of what that practically means get refined over time, and with experience. Should we credit much or most of our understanding of the principle of free speech to Madison because he wrote the First Amendment? Probably not.
But I don't think it's a good model of how fields rooted in experiment evolve. Usually in these fields we begin with collections of measured fact. Someone notices some low-level trends that connect them, and then someone else constructs are more elaborate framework that explains all the low level trends. It's more of a bottom-up evolution, which begins with the most concrete possible data and adds layers of sophistication and abstraction. Instead of starting with the most abstract and general concepts, we end up there, after a long time. For that matter, we can more readily change the top-level largest and most abstract concepts and ideas than we can change the lowest-level facts and observational trends -- because the former are our mental invention, while the latter are uttered by Nature and have nothing to do with our imagination (although they do depend on our discernment).
There's no good reason to forget about or minimize the contributions of the person who first noted the low-level trends, because that noticing is exceedingly valuable, it's the foundation for all that comes after, and it never gets superseded or altered beyond recognition. So we continue to honor James Joule with his name on the unit of energy because he proved that heat was a mechanical process, and not a material substance, and that's a permanent step forward in our understanding of the real world. It has never been superseded, and never lost its importance, the way a Roman legal precedent of AD 180 might have.
The original collectors of the Pali canon would be amazed and perplexed by this (Lisa's) comment. If Ingram has roared his lion's roar in the assembly and said "Birth has been destroyed, the holy life has been lived, that has been done that needed to be done, there is no more to this stage of being!", then I for one am glad for him.
May all beings be free.
What a kafkatrap! By this logic, the person least likely to be enlightened would be the Buddha himself.
> a realized individual would have no need or even a subtle impulse to utter such characterizations or claims about themselves and their level of realization.
Why a person with zero ego might say they are enlightened: (1) because someone asked, (2) because they want to help others achieve enlightenment.
My sense is that, to someone that achieved something cool, acting humble requires more ego than telling other people about it.
Can you elaborate on this? Why would acting humble require more ego?
I've thought about this, a bit. Currently my thought process is something like this: "humility is a virtue" is not merely a moral value, it also offers instrumental value. While boasting of your achievements offers an immediate appreciation/status boost, in the longrun, being humble is likely to offer more appreciation, as long as you can ensure that people indirectly get to know of your achievements. So something like the following:
1. Without ego
1.1. "Something cool happened, let me tell all my friends about it!"
2. With ego
2.1. "Something cool happened, but people will think badly of me if I boast about it, and I don't want people to think badly of me."
2.2. Or "something cool happened, but I'll strategically be coy about it (while, at the same time, pretend-reluctantly telling some people who I know will spread it around), so I have the pretense of humility while people get to know about the cool thing at the same time, offering me both appreciation for having done the cool thing and further appreciation for seemingly staying quiet about it."
This. Humility means not exaggerating things about yourself, and not mentioning the things when they are irrelevant to the debate. It does not mean actively denying true things, or refusing to mention them when they are of benefit to others. (In the context of internet debate, where people discuss to satisfy their curiosity, mentioning true relevant facts may be a benefit for the curious ones. "Oh, you guys are interested in X? I happen to be X, AMA!") Humility means not manipulating your status upwards. It does not mean actively manipulating your status downwards. It mean telling the truth regardless of your status.
The rule "don't speak of X" is just an approximation of humility; a simple way to stop people who can't stop talking about how X they are. And like any rule, it can be cleverly circumvented -- the standard solution for high-status people is to have *other* people tell everyone how cool they are ("Here comes John Doe, the Master of X! Everyone please show him how much we appreciate him being here with us today!!!", followed by a round of applause), while the high-status person performs a "humble" denial on the stage ("oh, I am just a random guy", followed by the moderator saying "Oh look how *humble* the Master of X is! This is a sign of true mastery!!!", followed by another round of applause).
So the rule of "humble people do not talk about themselves" in practice translates to "only high-status people are allowed to say that they are X".
EDIT:
Oh, another use of "don't speak of X" is not to comment on things that can be directly observed. Like, if you have a beautiful hat on your head, do not say "I have a beautiful hat on my head", because everyone can see it; if it is indeed beautiful, they know, and if it is not, they know too.
The online equivalent would be not to say "I am smart" or "I am polite", because if that is true, it can be seen from the comments you write. However, it is not obvious what an enlightened person looks like... first, because it is not a part of the Western culture, so who knows, maybe my preconceptions are completely wrong, and second, because I do not have an opportunity to observe Ingram in his real life, so even if he 100% behaved like an archetypal enlightened person, I would not have a chance to know that.
> 1.1. "Something cool happened, let me tell all my friends about it!"
If that's the process, it's the definition of ego at work, given the true meaning of "cool". (People may not be conscious of this meaning.)
This also fits my observation of such conversations.
I'm not saying that this is an especially bad thing. And of course there can be a different reason for sharing the cool thing, such as sharing excitement. (If however you can't find one, then ego/impressing people is a good candidate because it's so common. There has to be some reason after all.)
Related: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-prophet-and-caesars-wife
specifically part II
Plenty of Eastern teachers will admit to being 'enlightened' if you know that you're looking for. For example, they may admit to having access to the formless Jhanas, which are normally only accessible by Second Pathers. Or, like the current Dalai Lama did, they may say humbly that they have managed to attain a measure of equanimity, which is essentially a joke and admission of attainment. Furthermore, the are many texts where the authors are clear about their attainments. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Guo Gu, Padmasambhava, Dagpo Tashi Namgyal, Ajahn Tate and of course the historical Buddha but I have no doubt a quick search could unearth many more.
Monastic practitioners in most traditions are not meant to talk about attainment to their contemporaries, only their teachers and the first wave of Western Buddhist teachers have also been rather reserved about the whole thing. I think people like Joseph Golstein et al maintained a level of secrecy around attainment, frankly because they wanted to be taken seriously, rather than being seen like New Agers or spaced out Swamis. However, things went too far to the extent that people in the West started to understand attainment as something dry and theoretical, rather than the radical series of cognitive shifts that it actually is. Daniel has probably done more to change that view and bring Buddhist attainment into the light than anybody else in recent years. I don't agree with everything he talks about, I believe he has a rather narrow view of 'enlightenment' and I'm not sure he really understands what attainment is constituted by in the Mahayana but I certainly respect and honour his view and assert that implying he is egotistical or lacks humility is a completely mistaken view.
Ingram has retracted his claim to enlightenment.
Really? Where?
I don't know, I read this somewhere on the internet.
Oh, I missed that.
It took a certain amount of Googling to confirm whether this Daniel Ingram who's into music and philosophy and has music on SoundCloud is the same as the Daniel Ingram who composed 80 songs for My Little Pony and has music on SoundCloud. They're not: one is https://twitter.com/danielmingram and https://soundcloud.com/daneilmingram, the other is https://twitter.com/dannyimusic and https://soundcloud.com/dannyimusic. :)
Thanks. I came here to ask this.
...Hey, Yev, good to see you again! Last time was in Sicily :D
:o
Are you the Alex who did Magic the Gathering, or the Alex who did cryptography with playing cards?
Ha, did you have chats about My Little Pony with both of us? I'm the "Magic the Gathering is Turing Complete" Alex. I congratulated you on your Starlight Glimmer mask. :)
How is it that this particular Daniel Ingram doesn't have his own Wikipedia entry? I'm kind of shocked. He's a big deal in certain circles, especially on Dharma Overground.
"Mastering the Core Teachings of My Little Pony"
(Actually, someone should write that book, it would probably be popular.)
I hope to come -- will it be awkward if I wear a mask the whole time? My husband is immunosuppressed so I have to be super careful.
IIRC Daniel is very COVID cautious and plans to stay outside the whole time, so I think you will fit in fine. It might be crowded though.
Outside? Wonderful!
Don't masks mainly work the other way? If you're trying to avoid getting sick then everyone else would have to wear one.
Do they work either way? My understanding of the studies is that they don't.
There has been a recent Cochrane review
Indeed:
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence.)"
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
My understanding is that they are substantially more effective on the transmitting end than the receiving end, but of course it’s a lot easier to choose to wear a mask yourself than to get everyone around you to wear one.
Yes.
I don't think it matters either way. From the recent Cochrane review:
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence.)"
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
I'm not worried about community outcome as much as I'm worried about passing diseases to my husband in the first place (at the very local level, this Cochrane review is useless). To avoid passing anything, I need not to catch anything. COVID and influenza can be airborne. Ergo, I have to do what I can while having a life. At least according to the UCSF lung transplant team. Definitely try to take this up with them if you believe it's silly to wear masks around lung transplant patients for some reason!
If you have to block everything then masks are helpful in that they reduce spread of bacterial diseases like pneumonia. But I believe there's a substantial body of research showing that surgical masks have zero effectiveness against viruses, which makes sense when you think of the basic physics of it: using a mask to block a virus is like using a screen door to block a dust storm. If your husband is that vulnerable then you should probably both wear respirators or something.
And I hope you realize that community outcomes are just aggregates of individual outcomes, so yes that Cochrane review should be of interest to you. By all means go ahead and err on the side of caution with low-cost precautions like masks, but don't be deluded into a false sense of security. They do (within error bars of) zero to protect you from covid/influenza. Being vaccinated and socially distanced/outdoors are your only effective safeguards.
Respectfully, I don't need your permission to do what I know I have to do according to my husband's doctors. Also, I hope you realize that this is a sensitive topic for those of us who have to live with immunosuppressed/-compromised people and we have been having these conversations with others who feel that masks are useless for years while the docs continue to tell us we need to mask, so there's a bit of an edge to my response. Finally, in the future, I suspect you'd like to know (I hope you would) that your comment sounds pretty pedantic -- which is also contributing to the edge in my response. I hope to meet you at this event so I can explain further.
Parenthetically, I have to say that basic physics would like a word with you about that absurd analogy which has unfortunately spread far and wide. A mask is in no way comparable to a screen door -- unless you are wearing a single 0.005mm thick layer of material. A mask is comparable to several hundred screen doors piled in random orientations on top of each other. Masks block particles not because of the hole size in any single layer, but because the stacking of many layers makes any pathway through very twisty, and the chances of an airborne particle negotiating all the twists and turns without hitting a wall and sticking to it are low.
I think Daniel believes that the path to enlightenment is attainable and he has broken down the steps to get there in his writings. It's not a guarantee, but it is a prescription. Assuming enlightenment is not some mystical crapshoot or granting-of-the-gods, it may be less magical and more methodology that the Buddha figured out and Ingram has quantified.
He did mention in the book that the final phase shift where you become enlightened is up to chance, or grace. You can work to get to that point, but the final step is not up to you.
For anyone seeking an easy way to add this event to your own Google Calendar, feel free to use this link:
https://www.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&text=Berkeley+ACX+Meetup%3A+Daniel+Ingram&details=Why%3A+Daniel+Ingram%2C+author+of+Mastering+the+Core+Teachings+of+the+Buddha%2C+is+in+town+and+has+kindly+agreed+to+come+to+an+ACX+meetup.%0A%0AWhere%3A+Rose+Garden+Inn%2C+2740+Telegraph+Ave%2C+Berkeley.%0A%0AWhen%3A+Tuesday%2C+February+7%2C+6%3A30+PM.+Sorry+for+the+short+notice%2C+I+messed+up+confirming+the+date+with+the+Inn%2C+then+had+to+scramble+to+do+so+at+the+last+moment.%0A%0AWho%3A+Anyone+who+wants.+Please+feel+free+to+come+even+if+you+feel+awkward+about+it%2C+even+if+you%E2%80%99re+not+%E2%80%9Cthe+typical+ACX+reader%E2%80%9D%2C+even+if+you%E2%80%99re+worried+people+won%E2%80%99t+like+you%2C+etc.+I+will+also+be+attending.&location=Rose+Garden+Inn%2C+2740+Telegraph+Ave%2C+Berkeley&dates=20230208T023000Z%2F20230208T043000Z
Hey just a reminder that David Friedman is hosting a meetup tommorow in san jose (If you can come to berkeley maybe you can meet some of us in San Jose beforehand) http://www.daviddfriedman.com/SSC%20Meetups%20announcement.html
Wait, I thought there was no alpha left in bringing Buddhism to California?
Scott is secretly short-selling the meetup.
I have this hypothesis that taking antipsychotics would make enlightenment go away. No one thinks enlightenment would survive a lobotomy, and antipsychotics are not that, but they are no joke either.
Has Ingram tried that? He is interested in the science of enlightenment. Can someone float the idea to him?
I'm very interested in why you think this. I'd appreciate any comment or links which point in the direction (ever if incompletely).
(I have speculated myself that antipsychotics work in the opposite direction to meditation.)
Basically, I read this book (https://www.amazon.com/Psychosis-Psychiatry-Psychospiritual-Considerations-Understanding/dp/1801520151) which posits that what psychiatry normally calls psychosis can in fact also be a spiritual state. In it, there was the interesting observation that the founders of religions have all exhibited psychotic symptoms. Buddha in particular claimed to have had contact with Brahma and Mara, and to have had visions about how the world is (he said it was flat and that at the center was Mount Meru). If a person reports things like these to a psychiatrist, a diagnosis of psychosis could (not necessarily) be made, as these things would be judged to be either delusions or hallucinations.
Now, I don't believe the founders of religions were literally psychotic, but there was definitely something about madness in them. Rene Guenon says that the truths of religions are suprarational insights, they come from beyond reason. And well, once you are positing something above and beyond reason, that thing is still outside of reason, and is therefore a sort of madness. Definitely a very rarely encountered madness, and an odd madness that can trump reason, but still madness.
Hence why maybe an antipsychotic could knock someone out of a non-ordinary mode of cognition like nirvana.
Will this talk be recorded and uploaded somewhere?
I was surprised and confused that you knew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ingram_(composer) but then I read the post and was disappointed.
MCTB initially sounded really promising; I liked the sound of Scott's description of being an "antidote to the vague hippie-ism you get from a lot of spirituality". Then I started having the same concerns as this commenter from Scott's linked review: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/#comment-548033
Basically, the author believes in actual magic and psychic powers. "Give zero credence to anything coming from someone who believes in magic or psychic powers" is an extremely deep-seated heuristic of mine. I have had this same disappointing experience - someone sounds like they might know what they're talking about, and then the word "magick" shows up - a couple of times now while exploring meditation literature. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being too harsh, but on the other hand I really really really don't want to end up in a cult, and absolute contempt at the first sign of wee-woo feels entirely necessary to that.
Welp, if people are gonna meet him, maybe they can ask him for a demonstration.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Btg_iaoIQAEvluq.png:large
But listening to someone who believes in magic won't end up with you in a cult, your best defense there is you refusing to submit to anyone.
For what it's worth, Ingram says he looks for fellow adventurers on the spiritual path, not followers, so maybe the risk of a cult is low with him.
My read of the book isn't a 'belief in' magic, but an acknowledgement that magic is a standard part of the story because some weird mental states sure feel like magic, so we may as well use that language to describe them; but any Buddhist should also tell you that things you feel aren't exactly 'real'
Yeah, he starts by saying it's not that simple - and then goes on to recommend Castaneda, Wicca, Thelema, Golden Dawn, Crowley, plus describes a step by step procedure to cast spells, stressing the importance of thinking through the possible consequences of what you're asking for. Yyyyyyyeah.
Here's how I arrived at believing he believes in magic. I found the MCTB site, which links to another book he wrote (https://firekasina.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/the-fire-kasina.pdf). The blurb on the back of the book states that it "presents a practical technique for the development of supernormal powers". Then I opened to a random page, and found him describing a retreat where he claims to have caused with his mind a glowing orange pentagram to materialize in midair, with someone else also seeing it.
I wish I could attend! Will any portion of the event be recorded?
Thank you for organizing this event. I am delighted that this event will be outdoors, COVID-conscious, and inclusive. I will be happy to remain masked during the event to respect the health and comfort of all who participate.
Will there be food?
Probably.
Will there be a talk/interview or just an opportunity to mingle with David? Sorry for the silly question, never attended an ACX meetup, so want to understand the format.
I haven't asked Daniel what he's up for. Usually I have a time when people can ask me questions, I'll see if he wants the same.
In the interest of fairness, will Mara have a representative also?
I found Dr. Ingram very disappointing. He paid a staggering amount of homage to such pseudosciences as astrology and Norse mythology. He also described himself as a "practitioner of chaos magic." I was thoroughly shocked and disappointed that someone with such certitude about this kind of hocus-pocus would be invited to a "rationalist" event.