Traditional

I watched part of Is There Magic In The Dharma? - Daniel Ingram and Dhammarato - Podcast of Guru Viking

What is the value of magic in the Dharma? They think it's obvious that there is magic, the question is what is the approach to magic? Ingram feels it's harmful when teachers deny magic for magical experience.

I believe in human experience. I knew a woman who thought an angel lifted her up when she fell, and carried her across the road. I believe that is her experience, without committing to something I don't know about. I'm not saying angels don't exist, because that's her experience. I've never experienced angels, but I don't want to limit myself to what I've experienced, because I haven't been to space, but I think it exists. 

What Ingram is good at is allowing in all kinds of experience people would say can't exist. I don't think I want to be a person that says, "no your experience is wrong." 

It's quite possible that you had a special mental state that is well known that would lead you to think you were abducted by aliens, but nobody saw that abduction, not even your husband in the bed next to you. There is a mental state where the mind gets paralyzed. This is an explanation for the experience that someone was abducted by aliens. Maybe. 

I'm an inclusive explanationist, I want to hear it all. That one explanation fits best doesn't mean I don't want to hear what other people think. Stated without the double negative, I'm interested in people's experience.

I'm kind of scared of Ingram, to be honest. While Daniel is a lineaged teacher in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, I'm not sure if breaking with the tradition is the right move, regarding saying one is enlightened. One thing for sure is that he's met a lot of people and explored the world in many interesting ways. Supposedly he's back of from the "I'm enlightened position" a little.

He likes the "and" instead of the "or". He's a great communicator and knows the counter arguments but listens to them anyway.

My thought is that the common setup of the typewriter is Qwerty. It is designed to actually slow you down, so the older typewriters don't jam up. Dvorak is designed to be the fastest. Is the mind like that? Can you develop too fast? Sangharakshita has talked about spiritual indigestion, too many rich teachings.

I also don't feel like he's embedded in a tradition, maybe because he's creating one, but while he's empowered to teach by Sayadaw, I'm not sure if he's in contact with anyone in that tradition, since he died in 1982. I just don't know.

What his not being traditional allows him to have conversations in an open source kind of way. I think there is a role for that kind of being in the Buddhist universe.

I like people that jam me up and make me confused. “Here is something I can study all my life, and never understand,” says one of the characters in Molloy by Beckett.

I would also add that the culture of not expressing intense experiences led me to not talk about or honor a deep experience I once had, and that was harmful to me in the sense that I didn't seek out the support I could have used to process and integrate it.

Links

Reddit: What do you think of Daniel Ingram?