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till_sunfield's review
3.0
The book is a good and easy-to-read guide for Vipassana meditation. For the meditation techniques, it's quite comprehensive, accompanied and coupled with a plethora of Buddhist concepts and background information. It's a bit disappointing that there isn't much discussion of the brain science on this topic, as the title suggests. It employs somewhat simplified models of consciousness, akin to the Global Workspace Theory, and mentions some proposed benefits of meditation practice, but that's about it. I also think some sections could have been slightly shortened to reduce the size of the book.
qwertybook's review
5.0
Before picking up this book, I had been meditating for about 11 months or so, and even though they said that there's no wrong way to meditate, I felt that there was something not quite right about how I went about doing it. Now that I finished reading the book, I can see what I did "wrong" and "right", and by applying what I've learned I managed to improve the overall quality of my meditation sessions.
jasoncomely's review
5.0
Groundbreaking stuff. Culadasa is a meditation master who describes step-by-step the journey to becoming truly awakened. I have currently plateaued at (what he calls) stage five, but I'll revisit this book once I start making progress again.
omikun's review
5.0
Definitely a book I'll be coming back to over time, probably once a year. The idea that the mind is actually composed of many subminds, each with their own tendencies and preferences like members of a family, is fascinating and supported by another book on psychiatry "The Body Keeps the Score"
Also, that meditation is about expressing an intention the way learning to bat in baseball is expressing the intention of hitting the ball with a bat. You don't will yourself to hit, but through trial and error your subminds hear the intention and organize themselves around this effort until they unite and perform in unison at the task. Where as learning the hit a ball will only train your mind and body to do that one task, learning to focus will train your mind to... focus on anything! The various forms of euphoria in the later stages of meditation is also aspirational and gels with the book "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollins on how LSD showed one guy what enlightenment is like and gave him the motivation to meditate!
Also, that meditation is about expressing an intention the way learning to bat in baseball is expressing the intention of hitting the ball with a bat. You don't will yourself to hit, but through trial and error your subminds hear the intention and organize themselves around this effort until they unite and perform in unison at the task. Where as learning the hit a ball will only train your mind and body to do that one task, learning to focus will train your mind to... focus on anything! The various forms of euphoria in the later stages of meditation is also aspirational and gels with the book "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollins on how LSD showed one guy what enlightenment is like and gave him the motivation to meditate!
ein's review
5.0
Великолепный и очень подробный учебник по медитации, на три головы обгоняющий все остальные подобные книги. Еще стоит взглянуть на "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha".
ogd's review
3.0
Some personal comments from a former practitioner that perhaps someone may find useful.
At first it looked like a gift from heaven, a perfect, in-depth, precise manual from alpha to omega and perfectly suited to someone of my temperament. A geek's bliss. Shinzen got me into meditation, after all. Had I found it in my earlier years of meditation practice, this might have added fuel to my already red-hot dedication. But since I've found it already after a major breakthrough (which, looking back, happened only partially thanks to Vipassana, and more thanks to death awareness and... Grace), I couldn't get it to work. It was this constant and subtle sense of "I" who's doing "it", "me" striving for something, almost imperceptible underlying tension. Over the past 6 years I progressed only when I took attention away from myself, stopped doing things for myself, and surrendered each of my days to God. When I focused on not sinning rather than on transcending suffering, suffering became a non-issue, a scenery to this beautiful journey of life.
Looking back at my Vipassana buddies and my earlier self, I wonder, what good comes out of this, if any at all? Most of the practitioners are still quite heavy sinners devoid of spontaneity, believing in a self-contradictory mix of philosophical ideas that justify their abortions, promiscuity and dishonesty. Often willing to "sit through" issues, where the more fruitful and courageous approach would be to think through issues and get their act together… Surrender, friendship, courage, forgiveness, hope, faith and love are somehow forgotten in the pursuit of subduing the subtle distractions or whatever.
The invitation is to add a line to the poem, a pattern to the tapestry, a motive to the symphony, to make life beautiful. What good are your jhanas if you're still an asshole? Or more eloquently, in the words of St. Paul:
"If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing."
At first it looked like a gift from heaven, a perfect, in-depth, precise manual from alpha to omega and perfectly suited to someone of my temperament. A geek's bliss. Shinzen got me into meditation, after all. Had I found it in my earlier years of meditation practice, this might have added fuel to my already red-hot dedication. But since I've found it already after a major breakthrough (which, looking back, happened only partially thanks to Vipassana, and more thanks to death awareness and... Grace), I couldn't get it to work. It was this constant and subtle sense of "I" who's doing "it", "me" striving for something, almost imperceptible underlying tension. Over the past 6 years I progressed only when I took attention away from myself, stopped doing things for myself, and surrendered each of my days to God. When I focused on not sinning rather than on transcending suffering, suffering became a non-issue, a scenery to this beautiful journey of life.
Looking back at my Vipassana buddies and my earlier self, I wonder, what good comes out of this, if any at all? Most of the practitioners are still quite heavy sinners devoid of spontaneity, believing in a self-contradictory mix of philosophical ideas that justify their abortions, promiscuity and dishonesty. Often willing to "sit through" issues, where the more fruitful and courageous approach would be to think through issues and get their act together… Surrender, friendship, courage, forgiveness, hope, faith and love are somehow forgotten in the pursuit of subduing the subtle distractions or whatever.
The invitation is to add a line to the poem, a pattern to the tapestry, a motive to the symphony, to make life beautiful. What good are your jhanas if you're still an asshole? Or more eloquently, in the words of St. Paul:
"If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing."