Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Henepola Gunaratana

Ebook, 2011

Status

Available

Call number

294.34435

Collections

Publication

Wisdom Publications (2011), Edition: 20th Anniversary Edition, 223 pages

Description

This step-by-step buide to Insight Meditation is truly practical and direct. This new edition includes the complete text of its bestselling predecessor and a new chapter on loving-kindness, an especially important subject in today's fractious world. - Publisher. If you'd like to read about meditation and then go back to your regular life, don't get this book. Henepola Gunaratana, a monk from Sri Lanka and venerated teacher of Buddhism, warns us that vipassana meditation is "meant to revolutionize the whole of your life experience." In one of the best nuts-and-bolts meditation manuals, he lays out the fundamentals of basic Buddhist meditation, the how, what, where, when, and why, including common problems and how to deal with them. His 52 years as a Buddhist monk make Mindfulness in Plain English an authority on a living tradition, and his years of teaching in America and elsewhere give it the clarity and straightforwardness that has made it so popular. If you'd like to learn the practice of meditation, you can't do better.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member james0802
What a wonderful, thorough yet accessible introduction to meditation!
The introduction promises that it is written for those who actually want to meditate, and want to start now. It is not about theory or philosophy, but rather simply nuts and bolts.
It delivers.
Tremendous.
LibraryThing member bordercollie
This detailed instruction on vipassana meditation concludes with the search for a self: "You find nothing. In all that collection of mental hardware in this endless stream of ever-shifting experience, all you can find is innumerable impersonal processes that have been caused and conditioned by
Show More
previous processes. There is no static self to be found; it is all process. You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home."
Show Less
LibraryThing member motjebben
This is a masterpiece in simplicity for explaining Vipisanna meditation practice to one of Western background. Vipisanna could be most simply translated by the word "insight" and is a clear awareness of what is happening as it is happening. It is much more that cannot easily be put into words, but
Show More
Gunaratana does a terrific job of coming close.

It is a fast, enjoyable, plain-speaking read. Learn what Vipisanna meditation is and how to practice it.
Highly recommended!
Show Less
LibraryThing member thegreatape
An odd mix: kept switching back and forth between pragmatic-sounding approaches to meditation and kinda out-there metaphysical/philosphical tangents. Felt repetitive, but that could have just been the attempt to put this material in "plain English".

No rating until I actually have been putting this
Show More
stuff into practice for a bit and see where it takes me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Eavans
The first half is very useful… the second half is not. Follow the instructions and leave the fluff for later.
LibraryThing member chadmarsh
A short, easy-to-read introduction to vipassana meditation written by a Sri Lankan-born Buddhist monk who currently teaches and resides in West Virginia. This is a useful book for those just beginning to meditate or those just beginning to take their practice of meditation seriously. My only
Show More
complaint is that some of Bhante G's "parables" seem slightly contrived. Nonetheless - or perhaps because of this - their meaning always shines through.
Show Less
LibraryThing member HippieLunatic
This is a book I have been reading for about a year, off and on. I am thankful I have finally finished it, as it it a powerful book, helping me to define a course I really need to start traveling in my life. Defining mediation and the course to be successful at it, as well as expressing some of the
Show More
challenges that even masters face, I felt as though this is an attainable goal in my everyday life.
Show Less

Language

Original publication date

2002

ISBN

9780861719990
Page: 0.2234 seconds