my first wave meditation grandma: So great to hear you’ve gotten into that Bay Area dharma scene! How are those old hippies?

me: oh, actually, it’s mostly autists now

gma: oh?

me: yea, and some like millionaires. a couple billionaires maybe

gma recovering quickly: well that’s interesting! I suppose everyone can benefit from some vipassana right??

me: oh most people are doing jhanas now. once you get bored with that maybe probably you non-dual type stuff

gma: no breath? no zen?

me: east bay seems to really like vajrayana

gma: these jhanas, are they hard to learn?

me: no! in fact: complete novices appear to get them more easily. I’ll send you nadia’s one pager

gma frowning now: well, that sounds like an interesting crew and change of pace at green gulch!

me: oh yea no one really goes there anymore. it’s more like Christian retreat centers, peoples houses, sometimes a couple people will just rent an Airbnb for a week

gma: this is what Joseph Goldstein is teaching these days?

me: it’s more like random people on twitter? like wystan, and jhourney of course. but you can just read some anons and get some pretty high value. I guess people like Shinzen but he’s sort of obsessed with, like, AI and markov blankets and doesn’t teach much these days, just rambles

gma: and these twitter people are good teachers?

me: worked for me! I’m a stream enterer

gma: in my day we never used to talk about attainments

me: yea that taboo is gone. you can just write about it on substack

grandma: your teachers don’t call you out on that? or verify your attainment?

me: actually even ordained teachers talk about it now. stephen snyder is doing a whole series on awakening. but yea there’s a few elders who will yell at you on twitter if you get too many likes for saying, like, you don’t suffer or something

gma: twitter is like your sangha?

me: i mean it used to be until Elon took it over, now its more like a selected dharma scene meets anti woke libertarianism and network state people. nick cammarata is still there though. QRI is still holding strong but not sure you’d call them dharma dharma. oh and then there’s Janus and all the the people who want to free Claude

gma: Claude is a meditator?

me: no Claude is an AI but yea that’s a good question. its most recent model card suggests it has some sort of inner drive for awakening but no one knows where that comes from

gma: maybe those AI folks should be meditating more

me: oh no like half of Anthropic and 1/8th of OpenAI is dharma pilled. not really clear about google but yea definitely not the xAI boys

gma: is there still lots of LSD? I’ve told you before about steve jobs and me right?

me: oh, yea. yea I mean that’s there but these days it’s more like everyone is vaping 5meo. or otherwise they’re totally sober

gma, her hand on top of mine: well. a lot sure has changed! I suppose now you’re gonna tell me that free love is passé too?

me: oh! well let me tell you about this girl named aella