Daniel P Brown´s "Spiritual Marsh Mallow Test": Keeping the Spiritual Tradition Secret
- 11 hours ago
- 7 min read
TLDR: this post discusses the dilemmas / contradictions of trying to keep Buddhist teachings secret, while simultaneously publishing them as books on Amazon and restricting access to live teaching. It also shortly presents different approaches.
The disappearance of secrecy
There´s a brilliant meditation teaching system. The most sophisticated one can imagine, pulling together Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, neuroscience, attachment and trauma theory, hypnosis, and utterly refined, some people say "dramatic" pointing out instructions.
The system teaches the Elephant Path - normally months - in 2.5 days, and gives access to glimpses awareness seeing itself in 7 days for 30% of retreat participants.
And only a few people have access to it because its guardians keep the lid on it.
In Tibet, this would have been normal and expected: the teachings were given only from teacher to student, under the threat of punishment if you broke "the seal".
In texts like A Khrid, a thousand year old condensed teaching system, you see instructions like this:
Do not promulgate these teachings in an ordinary way, nor corrupt them even in the slightest way
And then a Tibetanlineage holder decides that they should be translated and released. The given reason is the risk that those teachings could otherwise get lost, as the tradition holders in Tibet are dying out. A few years later the secret books are on Amazon, and circle as bootlegged copies (as nearly everything digital). Everything is out in the open. What now?
Daniel P Brown: keeping texts secret to avoid conceptual hardening
Daniel P Brown, the translator of these books, gave one overriding reason for keeping the teachings undercover. He called it "conceptual hardening".
Conceptual hardening occurs when the meditation student "knows too much", then thinks too much, and cannot fluidly follow the pointing out instructions given in a real live teaching, as he is prooccuped with comparisons, criticism and other mental events.
This video gives a short overview of the concept of conceptual hardening (AI generated)
My person view:
I may not subscribe to all practical implications, but I can follow this argument. Retrospectively, I am glad that I didn´t know anything about the essence traditions (Mahamudra, Dzogchen) when I attended Daniel P Brown´s Level 1 retreat based on a coincidence, not because I was "a seeker". It was extremely impressive, as it would not have been if I had come with my usual, nagging "know it all" attitude - conceptually hardened.
Obviously, there may also be other considerations at play: creator pride, financial considerations etc. But I will leave these aside as main motivators in this case.
The Spiritual Marshmallow Test: to read now or after a retreat?
But now, the cat is out of the bag and everyone with 30-100 USD can read the "secret" teachings. The books still contain a warning:
Warning
Now, there are
the books with formerly top secret knowledge, the reading of which may lead to conceptual hardening, and
the teachers: very few (between 5 and 10?) teachers authorised in some form to teach in that specific method that does not lead to conceptual hardening
the retreats: a few live and online retreats (that are worth the money! but expensive for many
This poses a strange challenge: if I can´t attend a live retreat, on premise or online,
should I buy the books regardless, and thereby risk conceptual hardening?
Should I read them only in a specific way - eg not follow any practices described in them? But isn´t reading already a form of practice in the mind?
Or, should I wait with buying or reading them until I can book a retreat to be guided to the knowledge in the right way, but thereby missing out for years, perhaps?
It´s like a kind of "spiritual marsh mallow test": if I consume them now, I get something but am conceptually hardened. If I wait until having had the retreat, I will be rewarded with more and deeper insight.
Only partial "open source": the core method is still protected
As of 2026, the problem has deepened through yet another publication: the 3 volumes of "Cloudless Mind", a series of transcriptions of live events with Dan Brown. Based on this book, many of the previously scattered pieces of information about Dan´s thinking are assembled in 1000 pages for a modest price.
Daniel P Brown never published his method explicitly as a teachable method in a book. He could have done this: each and every word and sentence he used was planned out meticuouly and explicitly.
Until that publication, there were a few channels through which one could reconstruct some of the method and thinking behind it:
Retreats - The live and online retreats - but attendees were not allowed to record them, and were discouraged to share, so it´s mostly manual notes and recollections.
Mini-sessions, live and later also online, called "Living Meditations" when I joined them in 2021, shortly before his death. These were published as transcripts in 2025.
Youtube appearances on podcasts, that had been initiated by his then commercial partner who wanted to give Dan broader traction for a joint publication project ("Mind Only")
The Concentration Training course on Mind Only which is now not commercially available
The "Elephant Path" book containing writings by Dan on concentration training in general
But there is one limitation: WIth the exception of the Concentraining Training course, none of theset reveal the full real core of the method, where the rubber meets the road: the detailed and precised pointing out instruction given in the retreats. He called this core "organisation and languaging" of the teachings and his organisation threatened with what can only be called financial annihilation for using them outside of private study use.
At least in principle, copyright law stands behind him: these specific instructions are genuinely his IP. They are protected automatically. This is not the case for concepts, which cannot be copyright protected.
Also his semi-official successor apparently follows this path of applying financial sanctions for publishing retreat material which could disclose the actual meditations.
To honor Pointing Out the Great Way and to follow the law, I have therefore been very careful to only quote direct meditation instructions that were already out in the public - e.g. through his wide-ranging Sacred Sundays interviews where he shared some snippets.
Khenchen Thrangun - and the use of books
And then there is Khenchen Thrangu, who opts more for a democratised "home study" approach, as opposed to "the experience of dramatic instantaneous pointing out" that I had in fact experienced in Dan Brown´s retreat.
The following text is quoted by Peter Barth in his book on Mahamudra exercises, available for 5 dollars on Amazon.
“In short, I think it is of far more importance that people receive this kind of complete and systematic instruction so that they can gradually develop experience on their own, than that some kind of dramatic pointing-out procedure be done.
Of course, it is possible to give dramatic pointing-out instruction, and when you do so, some people do recognize their mind’s nature. But, if I may say so, I question the stability and, therefore, ultimately the value of that. It certainly is a dramatic experience for those people who achieve it, but I see no evidence of their kleshas diminishing as a result.
And furthermore, they then carry away with them the arrogance of the thought, “I have seen my mind’s nature.” I think it is of far greater importance actually to practice meditation slowly and surely and make all possible use of the resources which this book, in particular, gives you."
I think that it is of far greater importance than the experience of dramatic instantaneous pointing out that people be taught Mahamudra as a full system of instruction that they can implement on their own gradually through diligent application using either one of the three texts by the Ninth Gyalwang Karmapa—The Ocean of Definitive Meaning, Dispelling the Darkness of Ignorance, or Pointing Out the Dharmakaya— or one of the texts by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal—either Moonbeams of Mahamudra or The Clarification of the Natural State."
Thrangu, K. (2011). The Ninth Karmapa’s Ocean of Definitive Meaning (New ed). Snow Lion. https://www.amazon.com/Ninth-Karmapas-Ocean-Definitive-Meaning/dp/155939370X
Khenchen Thrangu is wide in line with Dan Brown on many points. perhaps except on the use books for self-study.
"Using books" to develop themselves: Brown likely viewed this as a fundamental mistake for Westerners. Without a teacher, and personal feedback on learning status and without error correction, one just develops bad habits and uncorrected conceptualisations. For Dan Brown´s Pointing Out the Great Way approach, the teacher is the method "dictator".
Sharing everything freely: Jackson Peterson and his Facebook Pointing Out Method Scattergun approach
So this leaves an interesting problem, where the attempt to protect students from "conceptual hardening", keeping a proprietary method secred through modern copyright, and the traditional intent on spreading the teachings freely "for the benefit of all sentient beings" clash with the realities of modern book production and digitisation and increasingly AI.
Here is a counter-example: Jackson Peterson on Facebook, who freely and generously shares the pointing out instructions he received
on hundreds of Facebook posts, with the hope of giving as many readers as possible some deep insights. His principle seems to be:
His "method" is not really structured and refined like Dan Brown´s , but he refuses that it has to be so difficult and elusive. Dan Brown set up an elaborate scaffolding with his method- and system-guided approach, based solely on Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions. Jackson Peterson is eclectic and pulls together strands from Mahamudra, Sufi, Zen and other traditions, supported now in his thinking and writing by AI (Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT).
What is "better"? I don´t know. Here are three models:
Daniel P Brown: transmission at the right stage, practice is sequenced and prerequisite-gated, stages are explicit and verifiable, relational container matters, method is secret. I know it "works". Dan Brown used to claim a rate of 30% of Level 1 participants having had a "a glimpse" , however unstable, after 7 or 8 days. This is believable according to participants.Whether the massive financial damages threatened for unauthorised publication is justifiable? There has always been criticism around this aspect.
Jackson Peterson: "open source" free transmission on FB is the mechanism, repetition is the method, no practice required, no developmental map, nothing held back - I am a bit sceptical but honor the intent and generosity. It´s deplorable that there are no stats.
Thrangu Rinpoche: transmission, combined with self-study and autonomous learning via book, no reliance on only "dramatic pointing out instructions".
Maybe the Thrangu model is right, and I think there is an initiative working on setting up a more "open source" model.
References
Daniel P Brown, "Cloudless Mind"
Daniel P Brown, "Elephant Path"
Khenchen Thrangu, "Ocean of Definitve Meaning"
On Facebook: Jackson Peterson - and he is currently writing a new book
See references here
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