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Daniel James is a rich white cis het male who has lived the American dream - please forgive him if you can. He is not affiliated with anyone or anything - everything he writes is entirely on him. He lives in New York City, amazed and grateful, with the Fantabulous Smoochy. He turned 63 in 2025. Daniel is a practitioner of insight meditation, which means the mental training that leads to Awakening, as presented in the Pali Canon, the Old Books of the Early Buddhists. He practices in accordance with the suttas, the discourses of the Buddha. He has been practicing for the sake of Awakening for almost 25 years. He was first drawn to the Buddha's Path by the writings of Joseph Goldstein and Stephen Batchelor. His teacher was Rob Burbea. Daniel claims to have attained the first three levels of the Gradual Awakening taught by the Buddha. This is a bold claim. While there are many people who have attained the First Level, and a few who purport to be Fully Awake, there is no one who offers an account of their experience of the Second & Third Levels, explaining how they got there and what it's like to be there. Daniel's book thus provides something that no other source, ancient or modern, has ever offered: an empirical account of the progress of Gradual Awakening, together with a scientific hypothesis that explains how and why it unfolds as it does, and instructions for realizing it yourself. Daniel is a worldly person and lives a worldly life. He has a personality and a sense of humor. This seems to confuse some people, who imagine that progress in Awakening ought to manifest through asceticism and self-seriousness and a studied niceness. ""Spiritual does not mean unworldly,"" he observes irritably. ""Ascetic self-denial is neither a cause nor an effect of progress in Awakening,"" he asserts emphatically. ""Anyone can smile and act monkish,"" he adds gratuitously. Daniel has been lucky enough to study at some of our most prestigious educational institutions. He attended nursery school at the Westchester Ethical Society, and later graduated from Mamaroneck High School (Go Tigers). He earned a bachelors degree from Harvard, a masters degree from the University of Toronto and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also studied at a bunch of places where he declined to complete the relevant degree requirements. After law school, Daniel served as law clerk to the Hon. Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, Jr., US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a good-hearted man and a serious-minded judge, who he is proud to have served. He then did time as a corporate M&A and securities lawyer, mostly while based in London. He quit after 20 years. By ""quit"" he means got fired. (Bastards.) Daniel plays guitar and sings and writes songs, mostly in a blues idiom. He thinks his stuff is actually pretty good, even if the world does not agree. (Bastards!) He likes both cats and dogs, but is really more of a cat person. He finds that dogs are lacking in self-respect, and hard to take seriously. Daniel's favorite movie is Casablanca. He identifies strongly with Bogart, for obvious reasons. He now lives just a few blocks away from where Bogie lived, here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He attaches undue significance to this fact, and inevitably finds an excuse to mention it at parties. (Smoochy's favorite movie is The Palm Beach Story. She says that the Joel McRae character reminds her strongly of Daniel. This pleases him, though he wonders if it isn't some sort of veiled insult.) Daniel is alienated from almost everyone in his family, but it's their fault. If he were choosing a superpower, Daniel would opt for the gift of tongues, fluency in all of the Earth's languages. He stole this idea from Smoochy, but now believes he thought of it first. Some people find Daniel overly intense and insistent when it comes to the Buddha. He is sorry about that, but unwilling to change. Okay, he's not that sorry. Et voil.

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