This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended
Here's where I think we differ: a lot of people in secular western culture are intensely put off by all the religious stuff that comes with Buddhism. The metaphysics and reincarnation stuff is, in my view, a reflection of the culture that Siddhartha Gautama grew up in and taught in, rather than a necessary part of eliminating suffering. I think that retelling these lessons in a way that's accessible to modern audiences is important. Some people simply will not accept something taught in the form of ancient mysticism. Should those people be denied insight just because they didn't grow up in India during the Iron Age?
I get that Ingram is polarizing. I'll add a link to Mahasi Sayadaw as well, but I just don't think he explains things in a way that's as clear to someone with my cultural background.
Of course the teachings must be made to appeal to westerners. This does not mean totally gutting them
People who won’t accept anything spiritual or religious don’t need this practise. In Buddhism we don’t try to convert, for some people it is simply not their time
The illusion of self can be observed directly. Perhaps it's even an inevitable conclusion of sufficiently intense introspection. I'd consider observing this to be a spiritual practice.
The metaphysics of realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts, etc. is religious thought (and it was the dominant worldview when Siddhartha was born). These are not ideas that I can discover independently through introspection; if I believe them it's because someone told me to.
We might be talking past each other, though: if you're saying that the benefits of meditation are inherently inextricable from a Vedic worldview, I don't agree. But if you are just saying we haven't yet figured out which parts of the religion are actually necessary, then I agree. I personally learned meditation in a fairly Buddhist context, and naturally there are parts that resonate with me and parts that don't.
Actually, he mostly invented them, they aren’t present in Vedic texts afaik. Also, he did perceive it independently: his insight became so great that he could see his past lives, and he taught that we can too if we follow the 8fp
Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightened (one of which suddenly “rated my capacity for awakening” as zero, and when I said I didn’t care flew into a rage)
It’s exactly what you expect to happen when you take Buddhism, try and condense it down into a path for having the strongest and most intense experience, and market it to terminally online young adult men
Ingram was also heavily involved in this “fire kasina” stuff where you just stare at a flame for days until you start seeing things and go kind of crazy, which is a controversial practise in Buddhism
Finally he’s just not a qualified Buddhist teacher
For what it's worth, Ingram himself recommends Kornfield's "A Path with Heart" as one of his favorite books, which is largely about how the goal is to be a better person and that's not the same thing as developing incredible concentration abilities and having intense experiences.
I don’t really think it matters what Ingrams favourite books are if his methodology has been so destructive