Tired of getting strange and sometimes hostile reactions when they attempted to have ordinary conversations about their achievement-oriented practice on other websites about meditation, Daniel Ingram and a loose international group of meditators from diverse backgrounds with the help of Vince Horn formed a password-protected website called The Dharma Underground where they could discuss hardcore practice, states, stages and the like free from the ordinary taboos and cultural complexities that plagued other sites they found.

They quickly realized that having the discussion among themselves seemed too limited and wasn't in keeping with the spirit of open, straightforward dharma, so they founded The Dharma Overground, which was originally a Wetpaint site, though it did serve its purpose of fostering discussions that basically couldn't occur anywhere else at that point.

The Dharma Underground website mostly dried up, as the Dharma Overground was much more interesting, and within a year the DhO had over 400 members. However, it lacked a proper wiki, which was much wanted by some members of the community, so it was reworked and is now here as you see it.

related links

• The Hurricane Ranch 2009 - Dharma Discussion - A dharma discussion recorded during the DhO's first in-person meeting.

• http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3733385 - transcript