The No-Nonsense Meditation Book

The No-Nonsense Meditation Book PDF Author: Steven Laureys
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472980506
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
'Meditation could retune our brains and help us cope with the long-term effects of the pandemic' - New Scientist 'Readers in search of an introduction to mindfulness that's free of woo-woo promises should look no further.' - Publishers Weekly 'For a boost to your wellbeing don't miss the brilliant The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, which unites brain science with practical tips' – Stylist ---- Rigorously researched and deeply illuminating, world-leading neurologist Dr Steven Laureys works with celebrated meditators to scientifically prove the positive impact meditation has on our brains. Dr Steven Laureys has conducted ground-breaking research into human consciousness for more than 20 years. For this bestselling book, translated into seven languages worldwide, Steven explores the effect of meditation on the brain, using hard science to explain the benefits of a practice that was once thought of as purely spiritual. The result is a highly accessible, scientifically questioning guide to meditation, designed to open the practice to a broader audience. A mix of fascinating science, inspiring anecdote and practical exercises, this accessible book offers thoroughly researched evidence that meditation can have a positive impact on all our lives.

The No-Nonsense Meditation Book

The No-Nonsense Meditation Book PDF Author: Steven Laureys
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472980506
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
'Meditation could retune our brains and help us cope with the long-term effects of the pandemic' - New Scientist 'Readers in search of an introduction to mindfulness that's free of woo-woo promises should look no further.' - Publishers Weekly 'For a boost to your wellbeing don't miss the brilliant The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, which unites brain science with practical tips' – Stylist ---- Rigorously researched and deeply illuminating, world-leading neurologist Dr Steven Laureys works with celebrated meditators to scientifically prove the positive impact meditation has on our brains. Dr Steven Laureys has conducted ground-breaking research into human consciousness for more than 20 years. For this bestselling book, translated into seven languages worldwide, Steven explores the effect of meditation on the brain, using hard science to explain the benefits of a practice that was once thought of as purely spiritual. The result is a highly accessible, scientifically questioning guide to meditation, designed to open the practice to a broader audience. A mix of fascinating science, inspiring anecdote and practical exercises, this accessible book offers thoroughly researched evidence that meditation can have a positive impact on all our lives.

Chan Before Chan

Chan Before Chan PDF Author: Eric M. Greene
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824884434
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
What is Buddhist meditation? What is going on—and what should be going on—behind the closed or lowered eyelids of the Buddha or Buddhist adept seated in meditation? And in what ways and to what ends have the answers to these questions mattered for Buddhists themselves? Focusing on early medieval China, this book takes up these questions through a cultural history of the earliest traditions of Buddhist meditation (chan), before the rise of the Chan (Zen) School in the eighth century. In sharp contrast to what would become typical in the later Chan School, early Chinese Buddhists approached the ancient Buddhist practice of meditation primarily as a way of gaining access to a world of enigmatic but potentially meaningful visionary experiences. In Chan Before Chan, Eric Greene brings this approach to meditation to life with a focus on how medieval Chinese Buddhists interpreted their own and others’ visionary experiences and the nature of the authority they ascribed to them. Drawing from hagiography, ritual manuals, material culture, and the many hitherto rarely studied meditation manuals translated from Indic sources into Chinese or composed in China in the 400s, Greene argues that during this era meditation and the mastery of meditation came for the first time to occupy a real place in the Chinese Buddhist social world. Heirs to wider traditions that had been shared across India and Central Asia, early medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived of “chan” as something that would produce a special state of visionary sensitivity. The concrete visionary experiences that resulted from meditation were understood as things that could then be interpreted, by a qualified master, as indicative of the mediator’s purity or impurity. Buddhist meditation, though an elite discipline that only a small number of Chinese Buddhists themselves undertook, was thus in practice and in theory constitutively integrated into the cultic worlds of divination and “repentance” (chanhui) that were so important within the medieval Chinese religious world as a whole.

The Buddhism Secrets of Cats

The Buddhism Secrets of Cats PDF Author: Alan Peto
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735400303
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
What if cats are secretly Buddhist monks?The journey into the secret lives of Buddhist cats started with a mysterious note that led the author on a journey halfway around the world. He discovered a hidden Buddhist temple in the mountains that was the center of a secret society of Buddhist cat monastics.Revealed to humans for the first time in this book will be their ancient Buddhist teachings of the "Kitten Eightfold Path", the "Purring Sutra", the "Ten Kitten Herding Pictures", the real reason why cats knock drinking glasses off tables, and much more.As you will soon learn, the "typical house cat" is anything but typical?they are Buddhist masters! Passed down for generations, the Buddhism Secrets of Cats is a highly skilled practice that cats are taught when they are kittens and practice for a lifetime. You will never look at your kitty the same way after learning their behaviors are actually Buddhist techniques!

The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation

The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation PDF Author: Eric M. Greene
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824884442
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In the early 400s, numerous Indian and Central Asian Buddhist “meditation masters” (chanshi) traveled to China, where they established the first enduring traditions of Buddhist meditation practice in East Asia. The forms of contemplative practice that these missionaries brought with them, and which their Chinese students further developed, remained for several centuries the basic understanding of “meditation” (chan) in China. Although modern scholars and readers have long been familiar with the approaches to meditation of the Chan (Zen) School that later became so popular throughout East Asia, these earlier and in some ways more pervasive forms of practice have long been overlooked or ignored. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the content and historical formation, as well as complete English translations, of two of the most influential manuals in which these approaches to Buddhist meditation are discussed: the Scripture on the Secret Essential Methods of Chan (Chan Essentials) and the Secret Methods for Curing Chan Sickness (Methods for Curing). Translated here into English for the first time, these documents reveal a distinctly visionary form of Buddhist meditation whose goal is the acquisition of concrete, symbolic visions attesting to the practitioner’s purity and progress toward liberation. Both texts are “apocryphal” scriptures: Taking the form of Indian Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese, they were in fact new compositions, written or at least assembled in China in the first half of the fifth century. Though written in China, their historical significance extends beyond the East Asian context as they are among the earliest written sources anywhere to record certain kinds of information about Buddhist meditation that hitherto had been the preserve of oral tradition and personal initiation. To this extent they indeed divulge, as their titles claim, the “secrets” of Buddhist meditation. Through them, we witness a culture of Buddhist meditation that has remained largely unknown but which for many centuries was widely shared across North India, Central Asia, and China.

Clear Light of Bliss

Clear Light of Bliss PDF Author: Kelsang Gyatso
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Within all of us lies a source of infinite bliss, clarity of wisdom, and compassion for others. In this unique and highly praised book, based on Buddhaʹs Tantric teachings, the contemporary Buddhist Master, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, presents authentic methods for discovering this inner wealth for ourselves. In a clear and precise way, he explains step-by-step how we can generate a deeply peaceful and concentrated mind by harnessing the subtle energy system within our body. With this blissful awareness we can uncover our true nature, destroy ignorance and suffering at its root, and swiftly become a source of inspiration and benefit for others. -- Publisher description.

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects PDF Author: Alexandra David-Neel
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 9780872860124
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This is an account of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Buddhism, a method of mediation and enlightenment that was developed by the great Indian teacher Nagarjuna. In a collaboration between the Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel and her friend, the Tibetan lama Aphur Yongden, these teaching are presented clearly and elegantly, intended for the layman who seeks a way to practice and experience the realization of oneness with all existence. Alexandra David-Neel was born in 1868 in Paris. In her youth she wrote an incendiary anarchist treatise and was an acclaimed opera singer; then she decided to devote her life to exploration and the study of world religions, including Buddhist philosophy. She traveled extensively to in Central Asia and the Far East, where she learned a number of Asian languages, including Tibetan. In 1914, she met Lama Yongden, who became her adopted son, teacher, and companion. In 1923, at the age of fifty-five, she disguised herself as a pilgrim and journeyed to Tibet, where she was the first European woman to enter Lhasa, which was closed to foreigners at the time. In her late seventies, she settled in the south of France, where she lived until her death at 101 in 1969.

The Experience of Samadhi

The Experience of Samadhi PDF Author: Richard Shankman
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834824019
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Dharma practice comprises a wide range of wise instructions and skillful means. As a result, meditators may be exposed to a diversity of approaches to the core teachings and the meditative path—and that can be confusing at times. In this clear and accessible exploration, Dharma teacher and longtime meditator Richard Shankman unravels the mix of differing, sometimes conflicting, views and traditional teachings on how samadhi (concentration) is understood and taught. In part one, Richard Shankman explores the range of teachings and views about samadhi in the Theravada Pali tradition, examines different approaches, and considers how they can inform and enrich our meditation practice. Part two consists of a series of interviews with prominent contemporary Theravada and Vipassana (Insight) Buddhist teachers. These discussions focus on the practical experience of samadhi, bringing the theoretical to life and offering a range of applications of the different meditation techniques.

Minding Mind

Minding Mind PDF Author:
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1590306856
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Minding Mind is an extraordinary compendium of instruction manuals dealing primarily with ways of attaining the mode of experience characteristic of the highest form of meditation in the Zen tradition—pure, clear meditation arriving at being-as-is. The seven meditation manuals included here are some of the greatest treasures of the Zen tradition. · The Treatise on the Supreme Vehicle is attributed to Hongren (602–675), who is known as the Fifth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism in China. The method taught in this manual is basic and quintessential in theory and practice, setting the stage for the texts that follow. · Models for Sitting Meditation was composed by Chan Buddhist Master Cijiao of Changlu in late eleventh-century China. Little is known of Cijiao, except that he was not only a master of the powerful Linji school of Chan Buddhism but also a patriarch of popular Pure Land Buddhism. The combination of Chan and Pure Land Buddhism, especially in the domain of concentration technique, is commonly found in the records of early meditation schools of China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Vietnam. · Guidelines for Sitting Meditation was written by Foxin Bencai, a younger contemporary of Cijiao. The instructions of Foxin and Cijiao, both quite brief, address problems of deterioration in the quality of meditation practices and prescribe simple remedies to counteract confusion and misalignment in order to foster the proper state of mind. · One of the main concerns of Dogen’s teaching activity was to alert people to the shortcomings and dangers of incomplete Zen meditation and partial Zen experience. In A Generally Recommended Mode of Sitting Meditation, one of Dogen’s first written works, reflects this concern and outlines an approach to its resolution. · Secrets of Cultivating the Mind was composed by Chinul (1158–1210), founder of the Chogye order of Korean Buddhism. Ordained as a monk at the age of eight, Chinul had no teacher. His first awakening occurred as he read a Chan Buddhist classic when he was twenty-five years old. After that, Chinul went into seclusion in the mountains. Later he perused the whole Buddhist canon and went back into solitude in a mountain fastness. During this period, Chinul experienced another awakening while reading the letters of one of the great Chinese masters. Based on classical teachings, Chinul’s Secrets of Cultivating the Mind is a highly accessible primer of basic Buddhist meditation, defining and contrasting the principles and methods of sudden and gradual enlightenment. · An Elementary Talk on Zen is attributed to Man-an, an old adept of a Soto school of Zen who is believed to have lived in the early seventeenth century. Man-an’s work is very accessible and extremely interesting for the range of its content. In particular, it reflects a modern trend toward emphasis on meditation in action, which can be seen in China particularly from the eleventh century, in Korea from the twelfth century, and in Japan from the fourteenth century. · Also included in this collection is Absorption in the Treasury of Light, written by Dogen’s main student, Ejo (1198–1282). Born into an ancient noble family, Ejo became a Buddhist monk at the age of eighteen. Reflecting Ejo’s background in the esoteric branch of Tendai Buddhism as well as his classical Zen studies, this work shows how to focus on the so-called Dharmakaya, or Reality Body teaching of Buddhism, underlying a wide variety of symbolic expressions. This type of meditation, using scriptural extracts, poetry, and Zen koans (teaching stories) to register a specific level of consciousness, is called sanzen. There is a great deal of Zen literature deriving from centuries of sanzen, among which Ejo’s Absorption in the Treasury of Light represents a very unusual blend of complexity and simplicity, depth and accessibility.

10% Happier

10% Happier PDF Author: Dan Harris
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006226544X
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
#1 New York Times Bestseller REVISED WITH NEW MATIERAL Winner of the 2014 Living Now Book Award for Inspirational Memoir "An enormously smart, clear-eyed, brave-hearted, and quite personal look at the benefits of meditation." —Elizabeth Gilbert Nightline anchor Dan Harrisembarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable. After having a nationally televised panic attack, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. A lifelong nonbeliever, he found himself on a bizarre adventure involving a disgraced pastor, a mysterious self-help guru, and a gaggle of brain scientists. Eventually, Harris realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head, which had propelled him through the ranks of a hypercompetitive business, but had also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out. Finally, Harris stumbled upon an effective way to rein in that voice, something he always assumed to be either impossible or useless: meditation, a tool that research suggests can do everything from lower your blood pressure to essentially rewire your brain. 10% Happier takes readers on a ride from the outer reaches of neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America’s spiritual scene, and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives.

Buddha and the Quantum

Buddha and the Quantum PDF Author: Samuel Avery
Publisher: Sentient+ORM
ISBN: 1591812364
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Buddha and the Quantum is about the connection between meditation and physics. Many books show parallels between consciousness and physics; a few of these attempt to explain consciousness in terms of the physics of everyday experience.