Viscid, I know you mean well, and this is not just for you. It's for most people who I have been exchanging posts with.Viscid wrote:It's not really that off-topic. Ingram's status as an arahant is in question. Are the suttas the final authority in determining an individual's level of attainment? If yes, then Daniel Ingram is not an arahant, as his behaviour contradicts some requirements as stated in the suttas. If no, then we have to make that determination using, in part, our own intuition. If we're going to either support or refute his claim of attainment based on our own intuition, we should investigate our reasons for doing so. I think we underestimate just how much influence a person's appearance has in our assessment of them-- if Ingram appeared more like a traditional Burmese forest monk, we'd be less critical of his claim. If Modus Ponens sees a quality in Ingram which he feels is evidence of Ingram's attainment, then we should closely scrutinize that perception to determine whether or not such a conclusion is warranted.daverupa wrote:Knowing the minds of others is an iddhi; projecting, objectifying, and proliferating over smiles is something else.
This is getting quite
I wil (try to)l stop posting because you are not reading my posts carefully. Rather, you are reacting impulsively. I never said that Ingram's body/face/eye language indicated that he is an arahat. I'm saying that something spiritually profound is going on there, that can't be faked with such ease. It can be jhanas, or any level of arya. I just don't know.
The only recent "progress" in the discussion of dhamma itself, was with culaavuso. I think you are trying to make something as complex and organic as the human experience into rigid theoretical models, culaavuso.
I'm honestly tired of this discussion. I think I've learned all I had to learn within this discussion.
Daverupa, sorry for the detour into body language.