My friend, David Collett, in Australia just wrote to tell me he wrote up a review on his website for the latest Meditation for Beginner’s Book – Secrets for Success. It is quite a nice one too! Thanks David!
See the review here.
Oops, the site is down. Well, you can find it at Amazon, I grabbed most of it that would fit and put it there a while back.
Actually, I’ll put it below.
Book Review by David Collett of Vern Lovic’s, Meditation for Beginners – Secrets for Success:
In business there are many books written on what we should all be doing to improve; yet many of the authors are simply writers who have not created a successful business themselves. If you went and spent time with the author, you won’t see them running a successful business.
For me there is no difference in the way I observe Vern behave or speak in person compared with what he writes about on meditation. That is very important.
In chapter 1, Vern covers twelve areas where he feels there has been a change in his life since he started meditating on the breath. The twelve areas he identifies from his own direct experience can all be described as a change in attitude and/or a change in the way he emotionally responds to external events as well as what is happening internally. Just those changes alone, ignoring the Jhanas completely, help to explain where the motivation comes from to want to write about meditation and to share it with others.
The activity is so innocent, quick and costless yet provides such large dividends across many areas, when one begins to realize some of the benefits, it is hard not to want to share it with others, so at least they could try it themselves if they want to.
That’s the feeling I get with Vern. He knows from his own experience that simply spending some time with the breath each day completely and unexpectedly changed his life for the better.
If you found a small money tree in a forest somewhere that grew leaves of $100 notes and it only produced two per day, it is likely you wouldn’t tell anyone about it. You would keep it to yourself.
If that same little tree was producing 400 to 500 $100 notes a day, in time you would realize there is too much just for you. You would want to tell others about it. That’s a little how good meditation feels. It feels really good and you just wonder to yourself why more people aren’t doing it.
Vern’s Note –
David actually met me here in Thailand a couple years ago when he came for an extended meditation retreat over a few months at Wat Pah Nanachat in Ubon Ratchathani. This is a forest wat meditation center for foreigners – anyone that speaks English.
I found David to be extremely knowledgable about meditation and we had the most engaging conversations over a couple of hours.
I do hope to see him again!