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The tweet that started it all:
(Note: The below are suggestions for 45-60-minute meetings. For shorter meetings, multiply by perhaps 0.35 to get a ballpark suggestion.)
For meditators (aspiring/dedicated):
$0 per meeting (donations gratefully accepted)
For non-meditators:
sliding scale rough ranges; something comfortably sustainable (depending on meeting frequency) in:
- NEETs/students $1-$100
- professional/trade $1-$300
- FAANG/finance $1-$500
- C-suite/founder/HNW $1-$1500++
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- Click here to donate/pay:
- Click here to schedule:
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[Tweet image: Bart Simpson writes, “Enlightenment can’t be transmitted in the context of a commodified relationship” over and over again on a school blackboard]
The image above sparked a discussion, and here are some excerpts:
2021-12-02
Mark L
Yeah it’s fuckin’ crazy. I’ve turned it around from every angle–book, video, online course, whatever, and I can’t find a way to do even a nominal paywall without feeling like it breaks the whole thing. The only thing that works so far seems to be a sliding scale down to zero (post-pay only; no pre-pay unless someone un-prompting-ly offers or insists). It’s such an annoying constraint, lol. But otherwise something gets subtly warped.I’m sure I’m subtly warping other things, including something in this neighborhood, too. But in any case I’ve bumped up against this over and over and over and over again, trying to creatively find a way around it.I have no idea what’s going on with teachers who charge money. Even when I’m like, “well, I could reach more people and/or offer some higher quality things, if I paywalled some stuff. And I could even offer no-questions-asked scholarships.” But a part of me is like, nope, that won’t work. No paywall, even if people can choose their own price and set it to zero. Everything I do that’s even tangentially related to meditation has to be open access. I’m still looking for a way around this. Maybe it will eventually involve a paywall down to zero, but something still doesn’t sit right with me. It seems like something gets broken. (edited)
[…]
I think it’s like a “sharpness” that obscures the “true nature of reality” in a way that introduces a “wrinkle” in the mind of the student, or something. Or like somehow charging money is precisely “lying” about something. I think a student could detoxify such a wrinkle but it’d still be a “profound betrayal.” Like it’d be less messed up if the teacher was ignorant. But even more messed up of the teacher “knows.” There’s something incredibly karmically “sharp” about money. I have some suspicion that after I cross some skill/attainment threshold I’ll be able to charge money, but I also have some suspicion that that’s not a thing. I do think I’ll have more spaciousness to make money in other ways though, if I choose to do so or I need to. Or I’ll get better distinctions around what is and isn’t meditation/enlightenment teaching and I’ll be able to more deftly work around it. I also suspect I’ll continue to become a more flexible and skilled and effective writer and teacher, and more people may want to give me more money more often!
I’m interested in the puzzle of somehow non-coercively ending up with billions of dollars, if that’s possible, so we’ll see. It’s an interesting puzzle!
Anyway the book will always be ground-truth canon [such that anything can be], open-access, and kept up-to-date, bleeding edge, and comprehensive with respect to communal and my personal evolving understanding, by prior agreement and possible ongoing karmic whatever, unless it becomes super obvious that there’s something better, that still preserves the spirit of that in whole, or I need to take care of myself or a family member or something.
[…]
I can walk away or “refuse service,” for all sorts of reasons, but I can’t say, “I will [only] give you this if you give me that.” It doesn’t have to be money, per se. Re “saying,” there’s complicated stuff with body language, tone, and implicature, whether or not something is explicitly said; I’m not saying I’m definitely not doing subtle coercive stuff or anything.
Like not paywalling, per se, doesn’t automatically mean there’s definitely not something relevantly weird going on, maybe ofc.
The idea of small-scale and large-scale “karmic reverberations” is a really big part of it, too. Like what behaviors actually mitigate, are actually a sink for the large scale karmic cycle of violence versus keeping it going or kicking off even more
title: buddhas, anti-buddhas, civilization, and the importance of method [draft]
https://meditationbook.page/#171
https://meditationbook.page/#171
:man-shrugging: :man-shrugging: :man-shrugging: .
[…]
> What do you mean by “karmically ‘sharp'”?
it introduces a “challenging solve” for the system [this may or may not be clarifying…]
like it’s relatively more likely to create a long-range puzzle or a “switchback” situation with respect to long-range wayfinding (I think)
worst case like a “full” (significant) “inside-out”. these are my intuitive neologisms. I mostly haven’t codified this anywhere, yet, heh. (incidental unless I embed it in a larger framework)
anyway, not the end of the world, recoverable, even a “profitable challenge,” for some people, but, in a vacuum, it would be like [to myself] “you had one job.”
*
Update 20220714: This has been a stable unwritten policy, but based on a couple conversations it seemed good to publicly explicate it—(I thought I had somewhere? but i don’t see it on this page). First, to recap, everything is sliding-scale-based. Probably new for lots of people because it’s never come up: The sliding scale actually applies to up to one meeting per week. but if someone wants to meet more than once per week, then each meeting that week costs $N, including retroactively. (it’s “N” because the amount is variable, depending on a bunch of factors. it’s usually somewhere between $150-$250 in 2022). So if someone met with me once already in a week, and then we met again, then the full cost for the week would be $400, if N=$200. (of course I’d discuss this before the second meeting.) [OR, if someone, sliding-scale-based, was already paying/donating >$200, say, $250, then the full cost for the week would be at least $250+$N = $450, when N=$200 (or more if they’d like to match their donation/payment from earlier in the week).] The reason for all this is at least three-fold. First, working with someone is exponentially harder on sub-week timescales. There’s a lot more sort of not-yet-decayed context to to keep track of, to kind of max out value for a second meeting (or more). And, second, the policy makes my week more diverse, so i can see more people, more regularly. Third, I think most people, most of the time, won’t benefit much from more than one meeting per week, so I typically want to gently discourage it.
For calibration, I meet with almost everyone no more than once per week. The policy above rarely gets exercised–maybe three times per year, on average? It usually doesn’t come up until someone asks for another weekly meeting. In rare cases I suggest it because it seems like it’d be a slight-but-clear trajectory boost or would make something less rocky. I think I’d do this more than three times per year, but usually when people ask I have no more open times for that week. It is definitely possible to schedule multiple times per week, in advance, but historically I’ve gently or firmly discouraged it. Of course, if someone was having a hard time, and we both-enough felt like meeting would be helpful, and they couldn’t pay $N*2, then I would definitely work something out with them.
And, also for calibration (see the bullets up top) any amount once per week is ok (the more the better, ha! [inflation!]). Some people pay $0 per meeting, some people pay $5, some people pay hundreds (often meeting less than once per week but not always—the three most common meeting frequencies are once per week, once every two weeks, and once every three-ish(??) months).
(Note: All the above applies to 45-60 minute meetings. I don’t have something worked out yet for 2+ 10-20 minute meetings in a week or 45-60 and 10-20 combos. Tentatively, within-week combos might cost 0.85*N for each (versus the suggested 0.35*[whatever one might sliding-scale pay for a 45-60 minute meeting when that’s the only meeting in a week].)
(To fully generalize, I should maybe go “full quadratic,” where, two meetings per week each cost N, three meetings per week cost N*2(?) and so on. Subject to change; 1:1 intensives don’t actually come up very much, maybe given the nature of my material sort of revolving around personal independence, and so on!)
Anyway, I just kinda banged this out. Please let me know if something isn’t clear or seems weird/wrong. I know it’s dense and somewhat ungrammatical, as per usual.
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