Who should BE CAREFUL about intensive meditation program?

[@em-dy3hn]

Sadly, so many people are traumatized. This number keeps growing. May we all help each other to come out of suffering.

[@Mahasattva27]

Excellent insights. As my teacher once put it, 'you need a healthy sense of self to realize no self'. I've seen numerous examples of the situation he's describing here.

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

Thanks for your observations. Mr Wallace is really brilliant. We have a number of other videos with him providing amazingly insightful analysis

[@Mahasattva27]

@@DharmaTime-is-now I'll be checking them out. 👍 Thanks.

[@squamish4244]

"You have to be somebody before you can be nobody." Jack Kornfield elaborated not to take this as a linear process. You can become somebody in one area, then let go of the conditioning in that area, become somebody in another area, let go of that etc. It's not "I must be somebody completely and fully before I can be nobody." A more specific way of putting it is, "You have to be aware of an issue before you can dissolve it."

[@nasrinaktershapla3044]

B. Alan Wallace helped me see things in a new way with this teaching.

[@loveyourself_first]

Wow, that was really good. I hope to be able to attend a program with Alan Wallace someday.

[@mariabrandl854]

Absolutely true. Yes such people when get teaching positions cause a lot of personal disaster and suffering. 😢

[@spinalcrackerbox]

Excellent and to the point insight. Interesting also, how some people here in the comments reacted with resistance.

[@wisewordings]

Adulation/clawing thing sounds like what psychologists call borderline personality disorder. DBT, the treatment, involves mindfulness I believe.

[@mdrabiulislam9669]

Beautiful talking 🥰❤️

[@bartbengal]

I'd like to see a conversation between Wallace and Jordan Peterson

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

Me too! Both have encyclopedic minds and amazing abilities to teach.

[@redserpent]

What about when the Teacher, Guru, Roshi is the one with the daddy issues or/and deep antagonism against God and other religion?

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

That's a very legitimate concern to have. We have a playlist called Relating to Teachers where some of the commentary is about evaluating teachers. The other ones with Alan Wallace and also Ken McLeod are good places to start. kzbin.info/aero/PL5DTNCfu0wHM7gaOQ5FBPUYgo_Vq702An

[@nazmulhassan770]

Wow, that was really good

[@priyajain6137]

Inspiring video. very good!

[@Jedward108]

I really like your content. But it seems the audio is a little attenuated on several of your postings.

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

Thanks for your interest in these videos. Have you tried another browser? When I interviewed Alan Wallace, I had a wired lav on him and the sound quality was actually pretty good on different computers. Also, sometimes it’s helpful to bump up the volume on the KZbin window as well as on the computer itself.

[@yoya4766]

Troublesome fake guru's is a bigger concern. For they hold the power in an unequal relationship. This video looks old and Buddhism being eastern and therefore mysterious and exotic, escapes mainstream scrutiny. But beware predators lurk in its midst.

[@nishansitoula4922]

that is what happened to me

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

Thanks for sharing your experience. It might help somebody else.

[@yaseminplaceboful]

Hello from a Dane living in Norway: Hmm interesting! Im nothing more than a therapeut having worked with traumatized people for many yrs. This man Alan Wallace, simply doesn't seem convincing to me for several reasons. He just doesn't convey his approach in any convincing way. It is rare that I see that. But to me he's one such example.

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

Thanks for sharing your observations

[@yoya4766]

He is putting labels on people and setting up potential pupils. The Dharma is for EVERYONE who wants to drink its nectar. It existed before psychiatry before such labels were INVENTED. He's a self proclaimed ''guru'', but more like a hippie whose parents indulged him, so he travelled, dabbled and settled upon a nice career in fancy dress, so he could do the international lecture circuit. He obviously can't teach certain types of people. So how can he be a genuine guru? If you are vaguely awakened you could teach anyone and speak in the common tongue. Which means anyone can understand, including animals. This man is manipulative and no one in their right mind would want him as their guru.

[@MultiChewbaka]

So Dharma is only for "normal" people without any scars from life? :) This is just wrong...forget about this dude :)

[@DharmaTime-is-now]

I don't think he's saying that. More along the lines of being conscious of the issues we might be bringing into our dharma lives and trying to solve them there when they may benefit more from direct therapy in conjunction from continuing to practice. Alan is one of the most decent -- and experienced -- meditation teachers around.

[@squamish4244]

@Belinda Breen I very much share your curiosity about this subject. Over the past 50 years in the West, the Dharma has largely failed at acknowledging these struggles. Partly because it was not really into social justice in the East either, and party because the overwhelming majority of Dharma practitioners in the West have always been upper-middle-class white people. (Including Alan Wallace.) They are the ones who were academically exposed to these teachings early on, and they can afford to attend weeks-long retreats etc. So the the Dharma never had to face social problems, by and large. And you're completely right about people looking for psychological healing and not finding it. Others need therapy and use meditation to avoid it. When Alan says the Dharma is for "what you are born with", it doesn't really make sense because therapy is good for what you are born with too, and meditation is good for specific trauma episodes. It all meshes together. I think 2020 was a turning point in the history of the Dharma in the West. It showed that social justice and environmental issues (as coronavirus was triggered by the latter) can't be divorced from the Dharma. Alan Wallace may tone down his vendetta against physical science after this because he will have been reminded that physical science, in the form of the vaccines, is what will enable the Dharma to be taught again in person. Dharma groups will meet much more often online as so much of the whole world has gone online, with virtual reality and augmented reality as tools. We also live in a time when many technologies of the brain are advancing rapidly, and will change everything about how the Dharma is practiced. For myself, I came to the Dharma suffering terribly from existential issues, OCD, panic disorder, addiction, kundalini syndrome and chronic pain. I was very frustrated by how I seemed to be making almost no progress in meditation, and how difficult it was. I bought a brainwave entrainment device this summer and it allowed me to meditate through issues I could never have done before. Then I started getting neurofeedback six weeks ago, and have since made more progress in 30 hours against my issues than in thousands of hours of meditation. At the rate neurofeedback and other technologies are progressing, I don't know if I'll ever plateau. (One can speculate on Neuralink and other brain-computer interfaces, but that lies some ways in the future yet.) Psychedelic research is also resuming after a 50-year hiatus. I bring up technology and neuroscience because I believe it will make the Dharma much more accessible to everyone, in combination with the online world. Huge barriers of cost still exist, of course, but at least there is a clear path forward here. Technology is massively scalable, the traditional means of teaching and practicing the Dharma are not. I will be somewhat surprised and very disappointed if I do not see Dharma teachers directly confronting issues of systemic oppression, the cross-section of therapy and Dharma, new forms of communication and the potential of neurotechnologies more in the future. If the Dharma doesn't stay relevant it will not survive.

[@buddhistphilosopher800]

Run Walther, YES, Certainly. The Dharma is not designed to deal with mental disorders or social dysfunction - that's the psicoterapy work - it is for moderately stable persons psychologically, socially, and financially. The Dharma is High and started at a very High point - It started in Sarnath with the first 5 Disciples of the Buddha who were extreme meditators and ascetics, not with young people with personality disorders. And I can talk from my own life suffering experience.

[@zachariahz]

No he's saying the Guru is not, and cannot be your your therapist, it's not the Guru's function. He explains exactly what he means in the video. Anyone who has spent even a few years around Dharma knows exactly what he is talking about, because lots of wounded people come to Dharma hoping to be healed, they can be, but for lots there is a bunch of work to do first, which therapy is usually more equipped for. Thankfully, there is enough of a meeting today between Buddhism and Psychotherapy that if someone really wishes it, Buddhist therapists can be found.

[@MultiChewbaka]

@@buddhistphilosopher800 the dharma is basically about removing sufflering so we can experience nature of mind. How? By seeing things as the are - meaning being able to distinguish an absolute reality from a relative reality. Some mental disorders comes from how we view or interpret our lifes, correct? We get depression, stress, anxiety i.e from wrong (dualistic) perceptions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, behaviours and so. Buddism can help you with correcting your perceptions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, behaviour etc. and thereby be the solution (or prevention) to some mental disorders.