Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Mindfulness in Plain English or Wherever you Go, There you Are?
I just started Beyond Mindfulness and the author has recommended mindfulness as a prerequisite to concentration (and then seemed to contradict himself but whatever) and I can see the usefulness of it. I would read Mindfulness in Plain English but I would either have to spend more money and wait for it to come in the mail or read it off the computer monitor... which I don't especially care for. Has anyone read Wherever you Go, There you Are? Do you think it would be a good alternative? I will probably still read Mindfulness in Plain English eventually either way but I already have a copy of Wherever you Go, There you Are.
0
Comments
I have listened to Jon Zinn's Full Catastrophe of Living and that is also great. He wrote Wherever You Go There You Are (is that correct?)..
Anyhow I think Jon Zinn really grounds people in the experience of their bodies. There is his emphasis. Just my take. Its been a long time since Mindfulness in Plain English, but he talks more about a meditation context for the mindfulness, though they both touch into both meditation and daily life.
Zinn talks about and leads you through the process of taking a single raisin and taking it in with all your senses. the feel of it in your hand. How your hand is so good at twirling and manipulating it. The weight and the shapes of all the ridges. The smell and the way your teeth accept it expertly and the bite. The texture of the bite...............and it is something you experience for your self. A raisin!
Henebola or whatever in Mindfulness in Plain english explains very clearly why mindfulness is helpful. At one point he says it won't help you in the ways you expect or hope for at first. You might think of a solution to a problem your uncle is having in meditation. That statement made meditation seem more natural to my mind and not mystical.
Those are the two pieces that I remember from each: the raisin and the uncle.
It is clearly written, easy to understand, easy to apply, and presents an EFFECTIVE method of meditation which is something not easily found in books... It even goes into dealing with specific areas of difficulty in meditation that you would not know about or how to deal with unless you were very advanced. This aspect in and of itself makes it worth its weight in gold
You could read it at borders, get it from your local library, print it up. You can even borrow my copy if you're actually going to read it
If your goal is to practice sitting meditation then I think "Plain English" is the better choice. He anticipates well the problems you are likely to have, and gives recommendations that he backs up with clear explanations.
Do the sitting meditation. It will be worth your while. It will enhance your ability to be mindful throughout the day.
Also, the concentration vs. mindfulness confusion is commonplace. Don't spend time worrying about this. "Beyond mindfulness" is an advanced book and he is probably referring to a higher stage of concentration. In MiPE he is talking about developing a relatively low level of concentration in order to cultivate your meditation practice. You should probably not bother with "Beyond mindfulness" at least until you have spend a few hundred hours following MiPE.
DO NOT over intellectualize this. It's a practice. Spend more time doing it and you will learn for yourself.