"Students of Daniel Ingram" perceived as having "dangerous" practice

Kenneth encouraged me to post this here, so despite some reticence on my part (and a dread of navigating the 2,000 character/post limit!) I'm sharing it.

***

I recently came off a retreat at IMS during which I got second path. On my second day of review, I decided to consult with one of the teachers about the experience. I was well-aware in doing this that my suspicion of attainment would be treated with skepticism (at least), but I thought it might prove a learning experience. All the teachers on the retreat were trained in the Burmese tradition, and I thought it might be interesting to witness first-hand how the culture at IMS deals with this issue.

So I go into the one-on-one interview with the teacher, and I describe in detail (without using any path/nana terminology) how I escaped dark night, entered low equanimity, climbed up into high equanimity, experienced repeated discontinuities in experience over a 6 hour period, had a super-charged practice over the next 2 days that always began in A&P, suddenly found I had the ability to enter samatha jhana (which I had never practiced before), and was still experiencing discontinuities in experience.

Again, I did not explain it in the words I'm using now. I used phenomenological language. 'I started to become mindful of the aversion to my aversion about these negative thoughts '¦ space didn't seem to predominate anymore, and it really seemed just like one sensation after another '¦ experience no longer seemed related to/filtered through a central hub '¦ as I relaxed, there would occasionally be a 'blip', like a missing frame in the movie but only for a ¼ second, right after which the visual field seemed distorted and would 'pop' back into focus,' etc. And once I had explained all this, I asked, 'Do you think these might be fruitions?'

After a slight pause in which he looks off, the teacher says, 'No, probably not.'

Okay. I'll admit to feeling a bit deflated at that moment, but this response was not unexpected. At least now I might learn something about this particular teacher's perspective on fruitions and paths and perhaps even come away with something to improve my practice.

Unfortunately this was very wishful thinking.

It's difficult for me to reproduce exactly what his response was, because it seemed vague to me even at the time, but I'll try my best.

After saying, 'no,' he did not explain to me why he thought it was not a fruition, and he did not explain to me what was missing from the experience which would make it a fruition. The first thing he says to me is, 'Hmmm '¦ I'm not even sure there's anything I would tell you change about your practice...'

This fits with what this teacher and other teachers on the retreat told me previously that week. 'Your practice sounds great!' 'You're a natural at this!' 'This is great work - keep it up!' Etc.

Then he goes on to say, 'You know, this kind of experience you've had is really terrific, because experiences like his can really build up our faith in the practice, right? Like, this doesn't seem intellectual for you, and I'm not discounting your experience at all, man. This sounds like it was a real powerful experience for you, and that's cool.'

I'm still waiting for this to get somewhere, but between the long pauses and the frequent uses of the words 'man' and 'great', I'm starting to have my doubts.

He meandered a bit, paused, and then said something about jhanas that I don't remember and then said, 'And yeah '¦ you know '¦ there are also the vipassana jhanas as well '¦ so '¦'

Did he think I meant vipassana jhana when I said I thought I entered a jhana? I specifically said 'fixed concentration jhana' and 'I held attention exclusively on the body and nothing else.

So I interrupted and said, 'I'm familiar with vipassana jhanas. They're related to the stages in Mahasi's Progress of Insight, right?'

He says, 'Yeah... right '¦' Then he kind of pauses again (there were a lot of pauses), looks off for a moment, and then looks directly at me.

'Are you familiar with Daniel Ingram?' he asks.

I feel like a bit of a dope for admitting this, but I got excited when he mentioned Daniel's name. I didn't necessarily think he'd be on board with hardcore dharma, but perhaps he had read MCTB, and we could at least share some terminology. I was desperate at this moment for the nebulosity of this conversation to contract into something, even disagreement.

'Yeah!' I say.

'Man...' he says, 'you have to be really, really careful with that stuff. That stuff can be dangerous. All the students of Daniel Ingram I see come through here have a really unhealthy relationship with their practice.'

At this point I had to interrupt. 'I'm not a student of Daniel Ingram's.' (Does Daniel Ingram even HAVE students?)

'No no! I'm not saying you are! That's not what I meant!' he replies. (Then why bring it up?)

I tell him who my actual teacher is (someone who's been going to IMS for a long time). 'She uses the progress of insight maps. Though the operative word is '˜uses'. They're heuristic.'

Again he jumps in, 'Oh no, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the maps! The maps are great!' Some more rambling, this time about the maps, during which he tries to convince me there's no difference between what he's saying and what I'm saying, and yet, somehow, I'm still, on some level, wrong '¦ about '¦ something?

Interview ends with him smiling broadly at me, telling me to keep up the great practice. I thank him, smiling broadly, too!

Perhaps you're wondering why I didn't challenge him or why I didn't at least ask him why he didn't think the experience was a fruition or what he thinks a fruition is - or for that matter why I'm posting this on an internet forum rather than directly to the teacher or to IMS. I asked myself the same question many times after the fact. As far as I'm concerned, and as far as my teacher is concerned, my experiences match the descriptions of the nanas given by Mahasi, from Mind and Body all the way up to Fruition and Review. This teacher was trained in the Mahasi tradition and has trained in Burma. How could the understandings of these stages be so different?

Looking back on it, there are two reasons I wasn't more direct in my opposition. The first reason is that this was my first time at IMS, I was in a closed-door, one-on-one interview with a teacher I don't know at all, and I'm just not sure yet to what degree it is acceptable to challenge a teacher in general or to what degree this teacher in particular can take on board a pointed question or a challenge. Even if my technique is very good, I'm still a relatively new meditator. I don't have allies at IMS, because I don't know anyone there. My teacher is well-known at IMS and has gone there a long time, so I don't want to do anything that might hurt her reputation. In general I'm feeling a bit like an outsider, unsure of myself, unsure to what extent I want to be a part of this community, and not wanting to burn any bridges before they're built. So I was a lot more reticent than I would normally be.

The second reason is that his response to me was so confusing and mealy-mouthed that I didn't feel like I could find a foothold from which to assert myself.

'Your practice is great' but possibly 'dangerous'?

What I'm doing 'doesn't sound intellectual at all', not at all! Or does it, because otherwise why bring it up?

Obviously something I said in the interview called to mind for him this whole group of people he's decided have an 'unhealthy' relationship to practice, and yet he can't find anything wrong with my practice.

That being said, attainments are also a large, central part of the practice. The Buddha talks openly about stages and the more technical, progress-oriented dimensions of practice. The founding text of Theravada Buddhism, the Visuddhimagga, discusses these aspects in detail. When Mahasi Sayadaw opens this practice to lay practitioners, he does not exclude discussions about attainments. He does not say, as some of the teachers at this retreat said, 'Just be kinder' or 'Check in every 5 years and see how much progress you've made' or 'Maybe in 30 years you'll suddenly get enlightened while turning off the lamp.' He gives a detailed, precise account of exactly how one goes about doing it and what they should expect to let them know they've done it right.

Again, maybe you're just not down with progress-oriented practice. Maybe you're just into being kinder and waiting 30 years and seeing what happens. You have every right. (Not sure how much help you'll be able to offer a student who hits dark night or even equanimity to bring some resolution to the experience, but whatever.) But leaving out this important dimension of the practice and replacing it with a mystification of enlightenment - 'Be kinder, but there's also this other thing out there called '˜full enlightenment' which we're not going to speak out' - leaves an enormous lacunae.

Perhaps there are fair criticisms of Daniel Ingram's approach - or at least the approach of people who have been inspired by him - but it DOES fill that gap. If the teachers at IMS were talking about this dimension of practice openly, honestly, and in a down-to-earth way, or if they were at least able to admit ignorance on certain issues rather than faking it or dismissing the person asking the question, there wouldn't be felt such a strong need for hardcore/pragmatic dharma.

When done correctly, vipassana makes one deeply vulnerable. You're allowing your psychological defenses to take place, but you're essentially asking them not to have teeth for the duration. You're encouraging your mind-heart to open to its fullest extent possible. You're asking for a higher degree of honesty about and friendliness toward your own experience - whatever it is - than you will probably at any other time in your life. This process has to take place in a safe environment. The teachers have to offer not only technical advice; they have to safeguard the yogi's trust in themselves, in the teachers, in the process, and in the environment.

Double-binding a student accomplishes the opposite of that. Whether it's done intentionally or not, it's the opposite of the stated mission of the retreat managers. In my opinion it's a lot more 'dangerous' than a goal-oriented practice.

I don't know whether 'students of Daniel Ingram' [sic] are showing up at IMS and other retreat centers with horrendous, dangerous practice. But if they are, who's fault is that? The peace, compassion, and friendliness paradigm of Buddhism is hegemonic. I'm actually in some ways a really big fan of that way of approaching the practice. Has anyone ever managed to get out of a really bad dark night without cultivating a wide-open, wholehearted acceptance of their experience?

But I don't understand how someone from this tradition can be so unprepared to field a question in an interview about attainment. I didn't expect him to agree that I got an attainment (though that would have been nice). But I also didn't expect how disempowering the encounter would be.

Again, yeah, being told 'no, I don't think your experience was a path moment, sorry,' stings one's pride a bit (especially when you're a relatively inexperienced yogi who still relies to some degree on the approval of people he admires). But it's not like I walked in the room, sat down, and said, 'Sakadagami, motherf#$%er! What do you think of THAT?' I was really down-to-earth about it, took the time to describe the experience in detail, and then ASKED the teacher what he thought.

Maybe is that the problem right there? A person who is mature, has good practice but who is also interested in attainment = division by zero? Does not compute?

Whether this teacher is interested in attainments or not, and whether or not he thinks my experience corresponds with what's in the book, in my opinion, it's unhelpful and probably in many cases harmful to put a yogi in double-binds the way he did to me. It's profoundly disempowering to a yogi - any yogi - when your compliments sound condescending and when you make criticisms without standing behind them and offering them constructively.

It's like every compliment was slightly backhanded, perhaps condescending, and every criticism was pulled back as soon as I even gestured in a questioning way toward it. Overall, his response left me feeling disempowered, without a real opportunity to respond or even learn anything.

To be clear, I don't think this teacher meant any harm in what he was saying. I think he was mostly trying to help but didn't know how. It seemed to me at several points on the retreat, watching his interactions with others, that he sometimes doesn't know what to say directly in response to someone, so he rambles. I don't want to be excessively hard on this individual, because there's no way to learn without making mistakes, and lord knows, I make plenty of them.

That being said -- wow! All the teachers running this retreat - including the one in question - mentioned several times during this retreat that they had studied in Burma. Names of various Sayadaws were tossed around at different times. The technique taught at the retreat - noting the breath - was (if memory serves) invented or at least popularized by Mahasi Sayadaw.

I understand that the emphasis of IMS is much more focused on cultivating the paramis in people than in moving people through concrete stages of awakening. They want to help people be kinder to themselves and others and to lessen their degree of dissatisfaction with life. I think that's a wonderful mission. And I want to be clear that I learned a lot - a LOT - from the teachers on this retreat, including the teacher in question. (His dharma talks are funny and memorable.)

But the situation is otherwise - which is why I think that even if teachers do have problems with the attainment-oriented, MCTB approach, they should at least cultivate the same sort of curiosity and spirit of investigation toward it they ask their students to cultivate toward everything else that arises in their experience.

As for why I have chosen to post this to the internet rather than write directly to the teachers or to IMS, there are several reasons.

First, I don't feel as though I'm really a part of the IMS community, and I'm honestly unsure to what extent I have a right to directly question the way they do things. Second, I'm addressing this to the pragmatic dharma community first, because I think you ought to know what at least one of the teachers at IMS thinks about your practice. I have no interest in fostering divisions, but I feel more loyal to this particular (sub-)community than to IMS, since my practice hasn't been informed anywhere near as much by the latter. Finally, though my tone may make me sound very confident in my position, I am still forming my opinion on this matter, and it is important to me to receive constructive feedback on what I'm saying before I take what would in my opinion be a bold move and bring this to the attention of IMS or any of the teachers there.

Quite possibly the teacher has not had any similar experiences, and thus has no idea what you are talking about? In my experience and that of people I know well, teachers in various traditions who've had parallel experiences (even if they use very different terminology) will recognize that experience in others. I've had some very sharp and accurate teaching advice from a very traditional Buddhist teacher who avoids open talk about awakening. But when I ask him about stuff I'm struggling with he invariably has the perfect Zen whack answer that exactly pushes me in the right direction. By that I know that he has at least some level of personal experience with awakening (though I don't know that he is fully awake), and can therefore link the teaching methodology he is familiar with to the experiential things a student is fumbling to describe.

I think it's rather disappointing to have teachers with no personal experience of awakening teaching advanced/retreat courses. Some people are good at teaching meditation technique and have a lot of theoretical knowledge, which can be helpful for beginners, but it is really helpful to have feedback from people who know more than technique when things start developing more deeply. Thus the blessing of these forums and our colleagues, who are here to support each other.

When I'm in over my head on something I react like that dude. Unsure, insecure, unwilling to criticize too much but needing to criticize because I think maybe my superiors might want me to. It's classic!

BTW - I think you reacted to the situation just fine. What would be gained by anyone by getting antagonistic or assertively questioning someone like that? It would be threatening and very counter productive. You are, after all, in his house at that point.

Thanks for posting that.

"Thus the blessing of these forums and our colleagues, who are here to support each other. "

Amen to this last sentence.

You might be right about your assessment of the teacher's experience with regard to attainments. It would explain the confusing character of his response.

I guess the problem that I have with it is that it got into this territory where it sounded like he wanted to criticize my practice, but he couldn't. So there was this constant hit-and-run quality to the conversation, where a criticism or warning or whatever would be raised, but as soon I moved toward it, he was already backing away from it. It's like I wasn't being given an opportunity to respond to anything he was saying, because every time I tried, he claimed he wasn't saying it, even though he was. All this was happening in the context of a power dynamic between student and teacher, and in my state of heightened vipassana sensitivity, it had the effect of driving me bats#$t insane for a little while afterward.

(edited to dampen my characteristically vulgar style of speech)

"You are, after all, in his house at that point.
"

That's totally it. And I still feel that way, which is why I'm being Ranty McRanterson on the internet rather than firing off a letter to the retreat center.

Between your response and giragirasol's, I think I'm beginning to understand better what happened. I can have more compassion for the teacher's position now, because I know how easily insecurity can lead us to do ridiculous things.

The problem is that it's one thing to be a little douchey when you don't have a caretaker responsibility toward people in a heightened, extremely sensitive state, but quite another when you do. I'm not sure if this teacher realizes how unskillfully he behaved and how potentially damaging that kind of interaction can be when someone is so vulnerable.

"But when I ask him about stuff I'm struggling with he invariably has the perfect Zen whack answer that exactly pushes me in the right direction."

By the way, I think that's great (not ideal, but pretty good), and I did manage to get some feedback like that on the retreat from teachers who weren't talking path lingo but who understood the experiences and could offer guidance in the right direction.

"'Sakadagami, motherf#$%er! What do you think of THAT?'"

I'm sorry that the overall experience was so disheartening, but I am almost falling out of my chair laughing at this one:

"When done correctly, vipassana makes one deeply vulnerable. "

Wow, ouch. How true...

"I'm sorry that the overall experience was so disheartening, but I am almost falling out of my chair laughing at this one:"

It's okay. It's meant to be humorous. The experience was really frustrating, but I'm sure there will be more like them, and I'd like to learn to hold them more lightly.

I amused myself many times while there thinking about things I could do to shock the teachers/staff or get thrown out. That's probably the most tame one.

apperception, is it possible to contact this teacher and start a dialogue with him? It would seem that there are some questions you could ask that are not antaganistic but would pin down exactly what he meant.

Can we generalize IMS teachings or are they particular to that teacher? I would think that from their writings that Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield would have responded very differently.

On another note, I have a friend that has gone to quite a few IMS retreats. He says that all the teachers there think noting is only for beginners. You agree?

jack

Jack, as I mentioned in the OPs, yes, I am considering contacting the teacher/organization, and no, I would not apply all the criticisms in this post to all the teachers. Where I meant to criticize the particular teacher, I said "this teacher", and where I didn't, I referred to the teachers generally. I'm sure the post is made confusing by my unwillingness to name anyone, but I don't feel comfortable doing that right now.

As for your question about noting, I don't know. The teachers on this particular retreat taught a technique of anchoring with the breath and then noting when the mind wanders to something else. I tried this technique out for a couple of days, found I didn't like it, and eventually went back to choiceless noting. When I mentioned this in interviews, no one criticized it or said anything negative about it. On the contrary, as I said in the OP, all the teachers liked my practice.

However, one person I went with, who has been meditating probably as long as some of the teachers at IMS, was told by one teacher in an interview that noting can be ... I think the word was "dangerous". LOL! I forget exactly why. I think because it supposedly buries or represses emotions or something? So bizarre.

So no, I haven't gotten that impression, but I've only done one retreat at IMS and so don't have any opinion.

"...I'm still, on some level, wrong '¦ about '¦ something?"

That sums up my relationship with a previous teacher!

"'Sakadagami, motherf#$%er! What do you think of THAT?'

LOL! Oh gosh, that's too much! This is brilliant, thanks for sharing this story. And congratulations on attaining second path!

Awakening itself is rather dangerous, isn't it? You see through all the dogma and ********, truth shines free, and you realize how much time everyone is spending in manipulative games, self-induced suffering and delusional crap. It's ******* revolutionary!!

That said, the vulnerability you mention is exquisite. Moreso the deeper you go. And yet it also becomes less fraught. That is, at first vulnerability and that exquisite sensitivity are still fragile and there's still that feeling that you can be hurt in that open state. But in time you realize that vulnerability is invulnerable. That openness cannot be destroyed or damaged or hurt by anything, let alone someone else's unskillfulness. Put less poetically, awakening cannot be undone by someone disagreeing with your experience and perception. It's not about "you" in a very literal way. Though in the context you describe, I understand it was disorienting and frustrating. I think you handled it well enough, and I'm not sure it's productive at all to pursue it with the teacher or IMS, personally. To what end?

I could see a couple of reasons to approach the teacher or IMS:

(1) I can't be the only one who's ever going to have this reaction to this teacher. While the culture at IMS may be different from the pragmatic dharma culture, I don't think too many of the teachers there would be thrilled to know about the interaction I had with this particular teacher. It's their express goal to create a safe environment for this deep process. Lots and lots of people go to this retreat center. It might benefit other yogis if I said something.

(2) This is the more controversial idea, and I'd like to get others' opinions on it. But shouldn't there be some kind of dialog attempted with the teachers at IMS about all the confusion and ambiguity about enlightenment? I find it difficult to believe that every teacher at IMS holds the same exact opinion on this subject. Maybe there's a lot that could be learned on both sides. As I stated in my OPs, I'm sympathetic to a lot of what the teachers at this retreat were sharing. I come from the pragmatic dharma background. I don't think the two things are always or even normally contradictory.

But again, I'm still a relative outsider to both communities, so I'm not sure to what extent dialog is possible. I'm also not the greatest of bridge-builders, tend to see the differences between people rather than the similarities, and tend toward insecurity and arrogance. So I'm really the last person to take point on such a project.

But I'm just kind of shocked at how much of what the teachers shared at this retreat jibed with my own "hardcore" practice - and then how bizarre it was when they self-consciously talked about what the practice was about and what its terminus was.

What do you think?

At least you are self-aware of your own weaknesses! It certainly doesn't help any dialog to bring that sort of thing in. It probably makes sense for that sort of dialog to be between teachers from PragDh and coordinators/organizers at IMS, I'd suspect, if it were to be productive. I'm having some trouble imagining (say) Kenneth or Dan ringing up IMS and saying "you guys need to get on the enlightenment boat, here, because otherwise you are letting down your advanced students and perpetuating mushroom culture."

I also think sometimes we want something from someone that they simply don't or can't or won't provide. In which case we are throwing a bucket down a dry well, endlessly hoping water might come up next time. There's always this evangelical impulse when we discover something that really works for us, but from the perspective of people who don't much care it just sounds like annoying preaching. The Jehovah's Witnesses have your best interests at heart when they knock on your door. They must be fairly baffled when people don't seem interested.

There's some good stuff related to this in the discussion about bridge building towards the end of the Devotion & Awakening thread, too.