Mythbusting The Dharma

I had a conversation with Kenneth earlier today where we spoke about why this place is doing so amazingly well. People are getting it left and right. Every week we have somebody new talking about stream entry or getting a new path. This is unprecedented. Almost. I'd like to take a few minutes and explore a bit why, IMHO, this is working so swimmingly.

1. We don't care about dogma. This is about what works. The source material, the sutras and commentary, are not allowed to be taken as sacred. They are guidebooks with a ton of junk in them, but also buried in there are super groovy nuggets of truth that when practiced, lead to actual results. It feels like we are on a mission to sift through all the old stuff and see what holds up and see what is crap. We then share our findings. The western model of skepticism and demand for evidence is meeting eastern mysticism and produce a streamlined, effective approach.

2. Self selection. We are a group of people from all over the world who have been in many cases, chronic dark night yogis. Given that we see people getting results, we are strongly motivated to follow and master the practices that are shown to work. Suffering is powerful, especially when it has been going on for a long, long time. It is our fuel for liberation.

3. The culture of the site. We care about each other - there is a bond that extended time in the dark night imparts to us. It makes us compassionate to each other. And we care about pointing people to examine what's going to produce liberation and what's a dead end. It's a bit like coming across somebody who's car is broken down on the side of the road, and they are trying to fix a flat by attempting to lift the back end of the car with one hand and screw on the lug nuts with the other. We drive by and think, "Oh, crap. I better stop. Don't the know they have a jack in the trunk?"

I love this place.
-o

4. having really simple instructions from kenneth. actually having instructions about how to be enlightened with no bs
5. people being encouraged to actully FOLLOW the instructions and then actually following the instructions

6. Application of adult learning methodologies, including active participation, intensive interaction, individualized incremental learning, modeling, etc.
7. Innovative use of technology, not only the use of this forum but also Skype for teaching sessions and recording and sharing of these sessions for review as needed.