I just read "Silicon Valley Monk," by our very own svmonk. What a great book!

Svmonk happened to mention it here recently, so I got a copy from Amazon for 99 cents but, according to a post from 7 years ago (which you can find here by searching for it), there are ways to get it for free too. 

It is one of the most honest and interesting accounts of contemplative life that I have read. The thing is that the author is not trying to teach or convince the reader. He is neither singing the praises of an existing system of practice nor floating a new and better approach. He just describes things as they happened. It is very much like reading a log here on the DhO, except that the writing is obviously more polished and the time frame is much longer.

The structure is nice. We cut back and forth between an account of a pilgrimage to the places where the Buddha lived and taught, which is only two weeks long, and the longer arc of the author's meditative life, which spans 40 years. 

The pilgrimage is led by Stephen Batchelor, who is a towering figure in the field of early Buddhist studies and secular Buddhism, who also lived for years as a monk. For me, a trip like that sounds incredible from the get go, and so that may explain why I liked the book so much. Also, quite a bit of the discussion of Buddhism is either quoted from Stephen Batchelor or rooted in his theories, which, again, was very comfortable for me. But Svmonk also shares his own views and insights, which are well presented. 

For example:
"In a fundamental way, the Buddha’s awakening was diametrically opposed to the traditional goal of spiritual practice in India. That goal was the turning of attention to the source of experience rather than to the flow of experience. The spiritual seeker arrived there by withdrawing the attention from the external until the luminous source of consciousness was seen, the unconditioned and eternal atman. This is what the Buddha Buddha was seeking, but what he actually found was something quite unexpected. Rather than directing attention towards the transcendent, the luminous, the unitary, the eternal, and the blissful, the Buddha turned attention towards the mundane, the ordinary, the suffering, the impermanent, and the specific. He found that enlightenment isn’t the discovery of a transcendent reality behind the phenomenal world because there is no such transcendent reality; but rather that true enlightenment lies in the perspective from which phenomena are experienced. This spiritual vision is unique both to India and to the world."

There are, of course, also conclusions that differ from my own, and that is very much part of the appeal.

But the bulk of the book is description, not philosophy. Svmonk had a breakthrough fairly early in his meditation career which had a lot of similarities with my own experience for many months after a retreat, which again gave me a close connection to the text. But there were other things that I know little of, including the author's interests and disappointments in teaching meditation, and a long and careful account of the psychosis that gripped him at a jhana retreat. It's fantastic to have such a personal account made available to us! I imagine that, for example, Matt and (maybe at a later time) his friend would be interested in reading this. 

The book is not one that is going to teach you how to meditate or convert you to a new worldview, but if you would like to sit down with a fellow yogi and hear what it is like to have a life of practice, you will not be disappointed.

okay, 0.99c and hopefully some of that warms the pocket of SVM!

You can get this book for free though you will have to join this site:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/495629

For God's sake . Pay the  0.99 cents

For God's sake, calm down.  

​​​​​​​I already own and have read this book. I bought a hard copy for way more than $0.99 back closer to when it was first published, and svmonk was semi-regular here. Also, I doubt that svmonk gets much remuneration at all out of getting a small portion of $0.99 per Amazon.com sale.

Aren't silicone valley monks the richest monks, second to the Monaco monks?   

The only reason that there is a 99 cent price is because Amazon wouldn't let him give it away for free. He's not in it for the money :-)

And what about the WalMart family of monks, the Rothschild monks, the Rockefeller monks, and the Carnegie monks?

Hi Martin,

Glad you enjoyed the book! In addition to Smashwords which Chris mentioned, another place you can get it for free is Google Play.

I originally intended the book to be a report on the pilgrimage my wife and I did with Stephen and Martine Batchlor but after I wrote the first draft and sent it to Stephen, he suggested I write more about my practice experience. Since my practice experience was very mixed, I had some reservations, but decided to set it as a contrast between the Buddha's spiritual quest, which I followed and learned more about on the pilgrimage, and my own. Whereas the Buddha's spiritual quest was a spectacular success, informing a tradition and ongoing philosophical line of thought that lives to this day, mine was a spectacular failure. Since there are many books about successful contemporary spiritual quests, including Daniel's fine book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, I thought the book might have relevance to people experiencing difficulties on the spiritual path. I subsequently made contact with some folks who were working on this issue, though at the time I wrote the book it was little discussed. Most of the books and online material was by and about people who encountered difficulties with abusive teachers, and not about the barriers they encountered in their own mind.

As I've report before in this forum, I believe I eventually did achieve stream entry, or maybe I should say stream entry occured, since there was really no "me" involved, on a seven day sesshin with Shinzen Young in LA in 2015 right after I self-published the book, but I have not gone back and updated it Occasionally, I've considered contacting a publisher and asking if they would like to publish an updated version, but I've been too busy with other things. Regarding my practice today, my conclusion from the ego-inflation that occured after stream entry occured was that my mind does not deal well with the altered states associated with intensive mediation practice, so I don't do meditation retreats any more. Today I do 40 minutes of meditation a day, vipassana in the morning right after I wake up and concentration in the evening before I go to bed. I'm also not sitting with a group, though that's primarily because there are none within a convenient bike commute distance from my house that I would feel confortable attending. Eventually, I probably will join a local group though.

     svm

Thanks for the follow-up! I only joined this message board five years ago, so I would not have seen your post around stream entry. I'm glad that happened. I hope you are enjoying the benefits of it.

I am also on a hiatus from sitting with a group. I like sitting with a group because of the exposure to new ideas, so every few years I will spend a year or so with a group. I hope you find one that you like when the time is right. 

Just finished a speed read of the book. Kinda skipped quickly over the travelog, focused mostly on the retreats and the very nice summations of the more practical dharma interpretations of the suttas (by steven batchelor, etc.). 

Two big take aways --- or anyway there are ideas that I'm pondering and still formulating...  (this isn't tied to what SVM did in the book, just ideas that popped up for me in reading the book.

#1 - there really isn't a good correlation between "daily sitting practice" and "performance on retreat". In a way, these are totally different skill sets. Daily practice can result in progress or it can lead to a kind of "check the box" mentality where you put in the time each day but you aren't necessarily progressing. Or it might lead to a kind of willpower that lasts one hour but falls apart on retreat. If someone has years of daily practice, it might even lead to a false confidence when going on retreat where the risks are ignored... 

#2 - themed retreats (jhana, metta, POI, dzochen, mindfulness, tantra ) might be stupid, because a person's experience is NOT going to be driven by the theme of the retreat. Jhana shows up on vipassina retreats, POI shows up on jhana retreats, POI shows up on metta retreats, things get tantric on a jhana retreat, etc. etc.  Suggesting that the retreat is going to use a particular practice that will necessarily result in a particular experience... is such BS.  A retreat leader needs to be prepared to go wherever the retreatant's practice goes.  And there is no way SVM should have spend a month "trying hard for nimitta" and not getting guidance that he was basically in reobservation and breaking apart. (I spent a week in a kind of A&P-reobs loop and that depleted me completely.) He needed the option of asking for more frequent check ins with much better guidance on how to gently accept an gently endure when his mind was rebelling. 

Actual a #3: who is pinlaung sayadaw and what books on jhana type stuff was so interesting/explanatory? My google-fu must be very weak because I can't find a text reference online.

Retreats sound entirely too risky. I'm happy now that I never did any such thing. I'm too much of a chicken.

I did two solo retreats in 2010! The first 3 day one was like milk and honey! So I decided to do the 2nd solo 3 day retreat and melted away on day one after a few hours of meditation (Calm-abiding Shamatha btw). Had no clue what happened to my lovely meditation, it went to utter shit and unpleasantness and I could not concentrate for shit! Sounds familiar?  

BTW I would never go for those 10 day or god forbid 3 months long retreats! Scary stuff! 

Retreats are actually great. They about equivalent to a year of practice every 10 days (in terms of hours it's a half year of hour sits, but worth about double due to the continuity).

But they are not sprints, not even marathons, they are expeditions --- a gentle but renunciate attitude and consistent adaption  is everything. 


(We should maybe start a retreat thread if we want to continue this conversation...)

I'm sure that's true. During the meat of my practice, I was managing a busy career and raising four kids. I just never had the time to go on a retreat as I had other priorities. But somehow, I didn't seem to need retreats. A strange confluence of forces grabbed hold of my destiny and dragged me along, retreats or not.

I think when retreats are out of the range of possibilities, people either make the most of their home sits... or they kinda think "i'll never get enlightened without a retreat, so I'll just sorta blow of taking these home sits seriously". You are definitely a great example of what happens when people choose the first approach!

Up to a certain point, I can take credit for being stubbornly involved in consistent daily practice. After that point, all the credit belongs to stream-entry and the resulting involuntary ride.