Now, I’ve really came across an extensive blog by an American white supremacist, anti-woke, Buddhist ex-monk who has spent many years meditating alone in caves in Myanmar from 1990 to 2020 (approx.).

He is describing his efforts in various meditation techniques (lots of comparisons…) and his observations, changing motivations. Dropping monkhood at some point and returning to “the West” with all the implications.

https://politicallyincorrectdharma.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer:
I do not support his racist slurs and anti-woke and imo derisory attitudes.

One of my observations: sannyasins can be grateful to their Master for helping and teaching them about the pitfalls of ‘asceticism’.

What an ordeal! Up-to-date read, imo, as it contains blogs commenting on the current times and developments.

‘Sayadaw U Pandita – Day-52 Making the Life Profitable 2014-15 Retreat’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90JmwIzIRmw

The talk outlines the different stages one may pass through in Vipassana meditation.
So, one can check for oneself where one is at at this current moment.

I would rephrase this topic into a question:
“What can a Sannyasin learn in order to become a Buddha?”

https://suttafriends.org/

It has a section for easily reading one or two sutras a day, which means you do not get overwhelmed by the whole large pali canon in one go.

So far, so good.

I’d been severely depressed for 4 and a half years, having had psychiatric support for most of that time, though without any real change, before somehow coming across the ‘human potential’ movement (then in its infancy in London), done this and that, eg bioenergetics, groups, again without significant progress, before Veeresh’s former wife, who later became the renowned sannyas therapist Ma Yoga Sudha, suggested that dynamic would “get you through your blocks” – which, giving it my all, it did, far more effectively than anything else I’d tried.

What a joy it was to release tons of repressions and suppressions, going into areas I’d never had a clue about – and getting ‘high’ as a result, that wonderful pure, post-cathartic ‘high’, that often lent itself so readily to bouts of unrestrained laughter. For a while, about 15 months, I felt as if I was experiencing a ‘miracle’, finally I was alive, life was opening up, or so it seemed at the time.

But of course, it wasn’t the ‘final solution’ (to coin a phrase), much to my eventual, thoroughly naive dismay, although I’m sure I’d have had a far better time in Pune One if we’d been allowed to do it aloud, the ashram’s neighbours’ complaints at the noise levels preventing that happening, putting paid to my dreams of ‘going totally mad’ and ‘getting high’ in ‘Bhagwan’s presence, which had been one of my main motivations in going there.

Post-9-plus months (and hepatitis) in Pune, the dynamic never again had the same transformative power for me, and – fasten your seat-belts, please, this might well come as a shock – after 2 years of a low energy, depressive condition, I eventually resorted to (oh, no, the humiliation of it all!) taking up TM again (having had to stop it during the pre-dynamic years as it simply didn’t work at all) which, to my huge relief, proved to be just what was needed to restore my health and well-being, making life worth living again. So, I’ll never denigrate that method, I owe it much, at a time when the usual sannyas-type techniques weren’t of much help at all.

I`m not knocking people`s experiences of pulling back from the brink of loss of mind or body.
But if I had a dollar for every time I`ve heard someone say, or read (often in publicity material) that such and such a therapy saved their life, I would have accumulated a life-changing wad of cash!

I guess the word “saved” accesses Xian notions of salvation, too.

What were you doing that was life-threatening when you started to do dynamic, if it`s not too personal a question?

I’d also use these phrases without reservation to refer to several key instances in my life, eg finding humanistic psychology (‘changed’) and dynamic meditation (‘saved’).

It`s as if the spiritual path would be strewn with corpses, like a WW3 battlefield had it not been for the mushrooming of dubious modalities like Mongolian Plunging, Forest Bathing, DNA re-alignment, Vortex healing, Shameless Shamanism and a recent one that I came to know about, my personal favourite: ‘Brainspotting’.

Brainspotting is surely hitting the heights of unparodyableness and beyond satire quality of new age mumbo jumbo. And considering the mental state of the average newager, I guess extremely difficult to do!