The DharmaOverground forum is in it's second incarnation now and no longer at the wetpaint site.
If you would like to take anything related to meditation or attainments up with Dr. Ingram directly you can do so at his forum here:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
At one point there was a long dispute between the Mahasi types vs. the Non-dual types and most of the non-dual people split off to this forum here:
http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In the earlier version of the DhO I spent some time discussing a variety of things with the members but over the last year, in it's new format I haven't been involved with the forum except for one occasion where I was specifically asked to comment.
I find most of the criticisms on the more general buddhist forums, criticisms of Daniel's book and his claims to be largely what one would expect from Theravada buddhists and I'm not surprised at any of it. Personally, I don't care if people call themselves arahants or not and I don't care if people want to criticize those claims or not. Daniel has stated that he is making the claims he makes as an attempt to encourage other people to practice diligently and that may have been beneficial for some people. Obviously, for more conservative people, who probably predominate amongst serious students of Theravada, some of what he has to say about liberalizing the idea of what arahats are like is going to be considered unacceptable.
I have questioned Daniel and others about this liberalizing thinking about arahats and I haven't really received much in the way of a satisfactory answer. I have tried to make the point that if you are not prepared to accept the traditional sutta based interpretation of what an arahat is in it's entirety then you are devaluing the term and it becomes largely meaningless. The general drift of what people who focus predominantly on meditation practice have to say is that in practical terms the way that things change internally are not quite the same as how things are more superficially presented in the more traditional terms.
My thinking about all of this controversy is that while meditation is central to the path it is not the whole of what constitutes mature wisdom. In my thinking discipline applies to both virtue and meditation and that together these lead to dispassion. One does not become less passionate about sex, for example, by continuing to have sex, one becomes dispassionate about sex by no longer having sex, thinking about sex and even by becoming revolted by the thought of engaging in sex. So, imho, wisdom is more than disciplined meditation, wisdom applies to the whole of life, both internally and externally. As I see it, that is the real shortcoming of the suggestion that various degrees of meditative experience alone is the measure of one's liberation from ignorance and freedom from being and becoming.
I'm supportive of the main intention in what Daniel and others are doing, which is to encourage very open discussions about meditation practice and meditation experience. I would also like to see more open discussion of that and I agree that the whole subject could use a lot of demystification and clarification. I also agree with more conservative thinkers that it is beneficial to find qualified teachers of meditation. For some people teachers within the traditional settings can be found to be not very helpful when it comes to discussing the ongoing difficulties people can encounter in their meditation practice and many more people do not have access to any good teachers on a regular basis. In that context meditation practice forums like Daniel's have proven to be very helpful to some of the people who have participated.
What is often encountered in more mainstream forums like Dhamma Wheel ( which I find to be among the best at present and this is not intended in any way as a criticism of this forum or any of it's participants ) is that in the course of discussions of subjects like the phenomena related to the stages of insight, jhana, cessation and the like it is often difficult to separate a discussion of the subject of meditation from a discussion of the status of those who are willing to address the subject from an experiential pov. It happens with enough frequency that it becomes effectively impossible to discuss meditation and the objectives of meditation in anything but the most vague and general terms. Attempts to bring more clarity to the subjects can easily deteriorate into arguments about the status of those participating in the discussion.
I don't have any problem with having very conservative Theravada views about the four types of noble persons, I also have very conservative Theravada views on this. At the same time I do not think it benefits anyone to shift discussions of meditation practice and experience into arguments about either overt or implicit claims about attainments. I think it would benefit everyone a great deal if the two subjects could be kept apart.
I think, with the benefit of a few years hindsight, Daniels attempt to put all the arguments about arahatship aside by simply claiming to be an arahat has been, in the context of the Theravada community as a whole, a failed experiment. In the context of the small sub-set of people who are much more focused on meditation in practice, it has been much more of a success. Probably, everyone has gotten what they want out of this at this point. Those who are more interested in condemning people for making this or that claim of attainment of one kind or another have been able to continue to do so in general Theravada forums like this one and those who are more interested in open discussions about meditation practice and experience are much more able to do so in forums like Daniels and others of that sort.
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
