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
