Welcome to my personal page. I founded the Dharma Underground, which lead to the wetpaint version of the Dharma Overground, which lead here to this version of the DhO. I am also a site administrator.

Having gotten frustrated with the world of on-line dharma blogs that were all about dogma, hierarchy, disempowering view about how it can't be done, mindless blind faith in absurd ideals and texts that were wildly out of touch with reality, and a whole host of other absurdities, I founded this place to form a save haven for people who were into hardcore practice, real attainments, helping people out in the spirit of mutual friends, open conversations about topics related to actual practice, and the like.

My home website is http://www.interactivebuddha.com

I make the following claims to attainments:

• I am an arahat, having attained that in April, 2003.
• I have mastery of the samatha jhanas, including various extended and compound jhanas and Nirodha Samapatti
• I have some experience with some other traditional attainments.
• I can access the state that this place calls No Dog.

I wrote the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, often abbreviated MCTB, which has influenced the practice of many members of the DhO.

I am an emergency medicine physician who practices in emergency departments in Mississippi and Northeast Alabama, where I live with my wife, Carol, and my cats Mavis and Elvira (Mistress of the Dark), along with a number of relatively tame raccoons, two of which we call Scruffy and Ramona.

I give a whole lot more bio information in MCTB, so look there for more.

I have many outside interests, including green building, cooking, dancing, playing and listening to music, the writings of Jack Vance, and a good deal more. Updates on my current practice, whatever it may be, can be found here: Current Practice Blog.

It is my sincere hope that this place will serve to add to the available literature and support of hardcore, empowered practice and that through the collective work of a group of dedicated, skilled practitioners that meditation technology and culture will be advanced, enhanced and adapted to this post-post-modern world.

A brief disclosure of finances, in case anyone cares: I have moved the DhO from Omegabit (which at the end was costing about $179 per month) to a tricked out MacMini that I paid about $2000 for and it runs on its own DSL line for about $50 per month. There are also other expenses in running this place, such as developing the PM feature (which Liferay 5.2.2 didn't have), which cost me about $1,500 out of pocket for the programming, the rotating logo option that was requested which was a custom portlet also, and recent upgrade to Liferay 6.1, of which the total bill was about $3000. I also get a small royalty on MCTB, my book, which generally runs roughly $400-800 every 6 months. There are other development costs here and there, though the DhO does benefit from the volunteer tech support of some of its members, for which I am very grateful. Thus, I after paying for the DhO server time and miscellaneous expenses, generally I lose money on all of this, which is just fine by me and consider it my small dana to the world of meditation.

I hope this community benefits you in some way.

Practice well,

Daniel