I started a new meditation book a couple of weeks ago. It is coming along pretty well and I think it might be ready in a couple of weeks.
This book will be different from my first, “Meditation for Beginners – A 22-Day Course” available at Amazon. That book is a bare-bones outline of what is needed for a successful meditation practice. It will be perfect for some people, and not so perfect for others. Such is the nature of books – one book cannot cover all aspects of meditation. So, I’ll write two, or three.
Title for the next book is not apparent yet. Maybe, another “Meditation for Beginners” and make it a series with the same main title.
This week I was able to meet again with my friend, David Collett, from Australia. He is currently staying at Wat Pah Nanachat in Warin Chamrap, a district of Ubon Ratchathani province in Thailand’s Northeast.
We had some great conversation about meditation and what is needed. We are both OK with the idea of religion being a physical act, not a religious one. We talked for hours and were able to meditate at Wat Nong Pah Pong for a bit. Yes, believe it or not, I meditated. Then I did it the next day too – about an hour by myself, I went back. I’ll go tomorrow too, if I can fit it in the schedule. I’ve got a long-haul motorbike ride tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.
This new meditation book will be a Big Picture kind of book. It will cover everything, and yet do it in a way that doesn’t put anybody to sleep (hopefully). It’s a fine line between dishing out volumes of information and keeping it interesting. I think if the reader is interested in the topic then the book will be an easy and fun read. I’ll try my best to make it so.
Look for the book in a couple of weeks. I’ll likely just release it at Amazon, as I’m trying there exclusively for a while to see if I can get more books out there and read. Amazon seems to have the biggest group of readers on the planet, might as well go with them exclusive for a bit and see what happens.
If you have any questions or need an opinion or an ear, let me know what’s going on with your meditation practice and I’ll see if I can help. Let me qualify that… I only know about Vipassana style, Anapanasati type meditation… focusing on the breath or some other object… I don’t know anything at all about other styles.
The new book is:
Meditation for Beginners – Secrets for Success
Cheers!
Vern
Hi Vern
Have just finished reading your book Meditation for beginners. A 22 day course. Found it very valuable and straight forward. Have been meditating for about a month but fairly consistently the last 3 weeks. In that time I have experienced some jhana like experiences. Interestingly a couple of times when I focused on the jhana event it went away.
I certainly concur with you that you must just dissolve into the meditation and not strive to achieve anything out of it. Just meditate keeping a quiet mind and the rest will come when ready.
I was brought up very religious but have become dissolutioned with the institutions of religion. I believe the very very early christian church was really just groups of people that had similar ideas about an individual relationship with God or maybe jhana. The institutions over thousands of years have diluted or possibly removed the personal and pure experiences that can come from meditating. It appears that Buddhism has done the same. It would appear to me that a relationship with God /overpowering love /jhana or whatever you may call it is very much a personal and beautiful experience and can’t be achieved by sharing an institutional experience.
Hi John,
Thanks for your note. I’m also working on another book, it’s more comprehensive, and should help another set of people get into jhana, hopefully easier. That’s amazing you are having something like jhana after just a month of meditation. What exactly are your experiences?
Where are you in the world? We live in southern Thailand. If you make it this way, let me know…
Cheers,
Vern