Which of these authors is properly teaching meditation?

[DreamBliss]

At another thread I started discussing Buddhist beliefs some information came to my attention that leads me to believe that meditation, as taught by Yogani in Deep Meditation, will, like Transcendental Meditation, result in a click out that a Buddhist author has given the term laxity to. Basically you sink into your mind, the meditation, rather than whatever the other, proper way is. Something about dissolving awareness VS focused awareness.

 

The point here is I want to find proper teaching on meditation, but I am limited to certain authors at my library. I will list them here and I am asking simply which of these teach meditation properly with the goal of focused awareness. I am also asking for any free videos out there by any reputable teachers you may know of. Your help is, as always, appreciated!

 

These are pretty much the only books/authors I can access at this time:

John Kabat-Zinn

Joe Dispenza, "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself"

Rodney Yee, "Meditation for Beginners"

Susan Smalley, "Fully Present"

Will Johnson, "Breathing Through The Whole Body"

Jack Kornfield

Patricia Monaghan, "Meditation, The Complete Guide"

Lara Owen, "Growing Your Inner Light"

Chogyam Trungpa

Ian Gawler, "Meditation, An In-Depth Guide"

Shunry U Suzuki, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"

Joan Budilovsky, "Complete Idiot's Guide to Meditation"

Jonathon Ellerby, "Return To The Sacred"

Tulku Tarthang

James Austin, "Selfless Insight"

Ronald Siegel, "The Mindfulness Solution"

Sant Rajinder-Singh

Michael Bernard Beckwith, "Spiritual Liberation"

Steven Clevenger, "Going Within"

Maritza, "Meditation for Beginners"

Stephan Bodian, "Meditation for Dummies"

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, "Spiritual Disciplines Handbook"

Eva Wang

Cheri Huber, "The Secret Is There Are No Secrets"

Richard Chilson, "Meditation"

John Daido Loori, "The Art of Just Sitting"

Wayne Dyer, "Getting In The Gap"

Stephanie Jean Clement, "Mediatation for Beginners"

Michal Levin, "Meditation"

Shinzin Young, "The Beginner's Guide To Meditation"

Pema Chodron

Alan Watts, "Still The Mind"

Lawrence LaShane, "How To Meditate"

Swami Janakananda Saraswati, "Yoga"

John Novak, "How To Meditate"

Ernest Wood, "Concentration"

 

There are a few others and a book by Thich Nhat Hanh which I assume will be very good, so I will get that for now and wait for opinions on the others. The library I can access, it's catalouge, is here:

http://catalog.fvrl.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi.exe/?ps=Mgj0mm40Cp/FV-DIST/327530007/60/1182/X

 

I left out the fluffy, puffy, non in-depth (as far as I could tell) stuff. But I may have missed something important. Please let me be clear! What I can get from the library is all I can get, unless you wish to mail me a book, and if so (with my deepest thanks) you can PM me for my mailing address. So if these are all garbage, well I guess I'll just have to depend on YouTube :/

 

Hey thanks for reading, please post your feedback on these authors/books in regards to whether or not you believe, in your direct experience or closely indirect experience, they are teaching meditation properly.

 

Namaste!

- DreamBliss

[DreamBliss]

A bit of an update here...

 

I went through my own library, slowly built up from a few booksales over the last few years. I have two titles, one is by Lama Anagarika Govinda entitled, "Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness." The other is by Charles Leadbeater titled, "The Inner Life." These worth reading?

 

Also off the subject of meditation, but on to authors in general, what are your thoughts on Josephine McCarthy and Meg Blackburn Losey? How about Robert Moss and Bruce Moen? What about Sandra Ingerman and Petey Stevens? My purpose for asking is to weed out the false or misleading teachers if I can.

 

Thanks!

- DreamBliss

[Jetsun]

I understand the confusion, im still confused myself, but in the beginning I thought meditation was just one pointed focus so you have your focus and keep bringing your mind back to it and it didn't really matter what the focus was. But my understanding now is that this method in Buddhism anyway is more just a training of the mind in the skill of concentration and then in conjunction with that training you should do analytical meditation too meditating on things like imperminence and karma. So the one pointed mediation method I thought was the whole deal is just part of a wider system, it can lead to some high states and benefits but on its own it is limited and incomplete. I can't really comment on the authors, my advice would be to find someone you admire and want to emulate and then follow their method as then you can see in them your own future if you persist so you can have some faith that what you are doing brings good results.

 

 

[Leif]

I'm not able to help you to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I'm sure most of them properly teach meditation the thing is just what type of meditation, towards which audience, and at which level they start and stop.

 

Also the approaches differ, there are some good books that just talk around the stuff in 300 pages and give you the very basics which you still have to literally dig out from there, then there are some only 30 pages short where you get way more in terms of method and there's no fluff. And as everybody is different, some of us like the first and others the second type more.

 

When I have recently went through selecting the source to start my meditation from, I first researched on differences between various schools (zen, theravada, mahayana, vajrayana, esoteric christianity, ...) to select the school. Even within the school the approaches differ and you might one one method more suitable for you than the other.

[Apech]

You could do better than govinda and his multi-dimensional wotsit and I think Leadbetter was a theosophist.

 

Overall I was going to say don't learn meditation from a book ... then I realised I did just that my self (Concentration by Mouni Sadhu) ... but in hindsight it was a waste of time.

 

Either:

 

a) just sit and do some simple breath watching/counting which you can get from anywhere - and most importantly use this as a basis for exploring your mind;

b ) go and see a teacher in person and get proper one:one instructions.

[GrandmasterP]

Leadbeater was indeed a Theosophist and a very dodgy one at that.

Meditation s best learnt from a teacher rather than from a book.

QiGong is 'moving meditation'.

HTH

[DreamBliss]

Here's the rub... I spent two hours giving you a list of the resources I have access to. Those are all the resources I have access to. I have no meditation teacher I can go to, no way to pay for a class, and so far no sign of any Buddhist or any other meditation focused based spiritual gathering in my area. Just a bunch of churches, that's it. I have a bicycle and I live about 3 miles from a very small town. The only reason I can access all these books is because the library here is amazing, hooked into a bunch of other libraries, and as you can see there is a bunch of good material.

 

So unless you have a DVD recommendation for me, that is in the library system I have available, or a YouTube video, or some other free resource, maybe even a teacher who would be willing to travel all the way over here and teach me in return for meals and a place to stay, I have no other options. Do you realize how frustrating it is to ask for help, be very clear that you don't have the money for anything, and still be told that you should go take a class or find a teacher? ARRGGG! OK, breathing in, releasing, letting go...

 

Thank you for your posts so far. I will consider your advice about Govinda and Leadbeater. But I wonder... Are theosophists really all that bad? Also what's wrong with, "... multidimensional whatsit..." There are other dimensions out there, are there not? So presumably some people have visited them, and some of those have written of them, and some of those have written things in an accurate, detailed, truthful way, so why not read such material? Considering that what I want to ultimately do, travel physically between worlds, is, in the end, multidimensional travel, it would be nice to know if there are any good guidebooks

 

Right now, per TI's suggestion, I am listening to one author, Shaila Catherine, and she is talking about the Buddhist system of jhana meditation. Her instructions for counting match Josephine McCarthy's, and that book is about the magician's path, so for me that tells me that as Catherine was recommended, and her instructions match McCarthy's, then McCarthy's work must be pretty accurate, or at least drawn from accurate sources. I need to re-read John Daido Loori's instructions in his Zen Art book, because I started ZaZen with them but must have misread or something because I got the idea to count the inhales and exhales, 1-10. Now it seems, verified by two sources, its exhales only, 1-10-1.

 

What I am trying to do here, my goal, is separate of any particular school. I want to move away from Deep Meditation or Transcendental Meditation which, by another poster's quote, dissolves thoughts and leads to laxity, and instead do meditation that keeps the mind focused and aware. So any author that teaches dissolving type meditation leading to laxity is trash, to me at this point until I have researched more, and any author that teaches focused attention/awareness meditation is good. That's how I want to "...sort the wheat from the chaff..."

 

I have no problem with multidimensional teachings, magical teachings, theosophists teachings, or any other spiritual school's teachings, heck it could be from the Kaballah or Sufism - don't matter. I don't care how off-the-wall it may seem to you. All I care about is that the teaching is not deliberately or unintentionally misleading. In my opinion, if any part of a teaching is giving incomplete or wrong instructions for a well known and tested process the whole teaching should be avoided!

 

That's it. I have heard some of the earlier spiritual writings left stuff out. So I would probably want to avoid any such authors. I don't care of the author is lying about their experiences, only if the training they provide is accurate. I go with my gut. Tried some Sylvia Brown, didn't like her (as an example.) Don't know why. I like McCarthy and Losey. But my senses are no match for others better read, trained and more experienced that I.

 

Please help me out as best you can. I appreciate your time and effort in this. I have a long journey ahead of me. The less time I can spend on the island in the mud in the illusion of beauty the better (obscure Homer's Odyssey reference there.)

- DreamBliss

 

P.S. I try to do Matthew Cohen's Fire or Water Qi Gong. Trouble is it's 40 minutes and I just don't feel like spending the time most of the time. But yes, I am aware that this and Tai Chi among other things are a sort of moving meditation.

 

@Apech

Thank you for the instructions. This is pretty much, from what I have gathered so far, the next step in jhana meditation. You focus on your breath, then the counting, eventually your meditation object becomes your mind. I guess I just want to be sure I understand the process crystal clearly, so I don't make another mistake. It seems I may have made a big one with Yogani's, "Deep Meditation."

Edited November 13, 2012 by DreamBliss

[Jetsun]

Personally I think Buddhists have the clearest instructions and meditation maps, other traditions have their methods which might be great but they are more of a risk, so out of your list I would start with Jack Cornfield.

 

If you have access to other books the books by the Dalai Lama are often the most straightforward. Or another reliable source is the book 'In this very life' by U Pandita, as this is the book the Burmese freedom fighter Aung Sun Su Chi (probably spelt wrong) used to teach herself to meditate while she was held in captivity, you can tell by her that it hasn't made her mind lax and has helped to give her great fortitude, she never had a teacher either only a few books, this one being the main one she used.

 

[Andrei]

Search for Spiritual Reality by Deepak Chopra on youtube.

From the books authors I recommend Eva Wong.

[doc benway]

Here's another perspective on meditation that I find is worthwhile -

This Light in Oneself: True Meditation by Jiddu Krishnamurti

it may be accessible at your library. It is not a method per se as JK eschewed all methods.

But it is sort of a method of transcending methods.

 

Another good resource is Peter Fenner. His material is credible, simple, accessible, and effective. A friend loaned me his Radiant Mind CD set and I found it very well presented. His website is fairly commercial but has good info - www.radiantmind.net.

[Leif]

There are some solid free ebooks out there, too,

http://sayadawutejaniya.org/teachings/

http://www.buddhanet.net/

http://www.buddhanet.net/xmedfile.htm

eg. Sujiva's books

 

then shamatha podcasts at http://podcasts.sbinstitute.com/ - full retreat audio freely available

 

and this one is classics for Vipassana and short to it:

http://archive.org/details/TheSatipatthanaVipassanaMeditation

[DreamBliss]

Thanks for the suggestions! Put on hold on Wang/Wong's book and downloading Chopra's vids. Can't get any of steve's recommendations. May have to skip Kornfield, nothing seems to be specifically on meditation. Can't find Jetsun's otehr suggestions. Looking into Leif's next.

 

Thanks again!

- DreamBliss

[寒月 Hanyue]

Here's the rub... I spent two hours giving you a list of the resources I have access to.

 

P.S. I try to do Matthew Cohen's Fire or Water Qi Gong. Trouble is it's 40 minutes and I just don't feel like spending the time most of the time. But yes, I am aware that this and Tai Chi among other things are a sort of moving meditation.

 

If you want 'proper' meditation, go for 'proper' qigong too, this dvd is more than worthless and quite a joke. Seriously don't waste your time. It's kinda pretty, and he has a Chinese girls in the back blah, but well....

 

Best,

[寒月 Hanyue]

These are pretty much the only books/authors I can access at this time:

 

Rodney Yee, (Physical Yoga teacher, wouldn't learn meditation from him)

Jack Kornfield, (not my cup of tea, but heard good things)

Shunry U Suzuki, (Love Shunryu, but not a step by step,)

Stephan Bodian, "Meditation for Dummies" (absolute rubbish)

Eva Wong, (I generally like her)

Alan Watts, (I'm grateful for what he did, worth reading but he didn't understand it all)

Lawrence LaShane, "How To Meditate" (Never liked this book nor his opinions)

 

Don't know if it is in your library system, but David Fontana's 'The Meditators handbook' is probably still my favourite introductory basic guide. It's what I recommend as an entry level book that gives a good overview of why you have the different approaches to meditation you do, and basic examples of the different kinds. His view on meditation influenced me deeply, and I have been taught anything that has changed that, only reinforced it.

 

Can you do inter-library loans? Sometimes the cost is quite reasonable.

 

Best,

Edited November 14, 2012 by snowmonki

[idiot_stimpy]

Meditation - Do nothing

[GrandmasterP]

Nothing at all wrong with Theosophists DreamBliss but outside of India they are a dying breed. The London Society has had to sell its HQ for lack of members and funds and they are a shadow of what they once were in the UK. not a lot know that western Buddhism started as a Theosophical Lodge and that background has coloured many approaches to Buddhism from a western theoretical perspective. Christmas Humphries was the main player back in he day and Alan Watts old Dad was the treasurer plus Alan himself who started out as a Theosophical Lodge Buddhist and never strayed very far from it until his passing.

Take your point about being isolated, our spiritualist friends in the USA face similar problems of distance between centres and lack of teachers locally. Here in England being very small there is something close by everybody who chooses to attend.

Edited November 14, 2012 by GrandmasterP

[Jeff]

Meditation - Do nothing

 

Or, do everything being present...

 

[GrandmasterP]

Cultivation is easier on the erse.

[thelerner]

My newest favoritest author is Ajahn Brahms. particularly his book 'Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond' despite the tittle its not new agey and has a good grounding and instruction from a renown monk with a great sense of humor. You can hear many of his dharma talks for free it at DIYdharma.org; a great site for hearing and downloading audio teachings from great teachers ( including guided meditations).

[DreamBliss]

If you want 'proper' meditation, go for 'proper' qigong too, this dvd is more than worthless and quite a joke. Seriously don't waste your time. It's kinda pretty, and he has a Chinese girls in the back blah, but well....

 

Best,

 

Please please please do not tell me that Matthew Cohen's exercises are wrong! I don't know how much more I can take right now

 

@ Everyone Else

I guess I will open this thread to suggestions of Qi Gong exercises that teach the techniques properly. Please list the authors/DVDs/exercises here that you recommend. Ideally for me, to ensure I stick with it, the exercises should be 10-40 minutes long, with 15-20 minutes being ideal for me.

 

Man how many other things have I been doing wrong? Is there anyone out there on the internet tracking these authors and teachers and telling folks who is doing stuff right and who isn't? That would sure be a big help!

 

Hey thanks for the suggestions everyone. Much appreciated!

- DreamBliss

[GrandmasterP]

Save your money DreamBliss all you ever need to know about QiGong is here, all free too..

http://jsqg.sport.org.cn/en/index.html

 

[寒月 Hanyue]

Please please please do not tell me that Matthew Cohen's exercises are wrong! I don't know how much more I can take right now

 

Wrong? I watched the dvd, a fellow student lent it to our teacher. It is shit, and not worth bothering with. Find something worth taking the time with. Half of what he is going on about is simply not what he is doing.

 

Besides anyone who actively tenses their muscles, because a camera is pointing at them, while supposedly doing "qigong" well, how do take them seriously?

 

The only thing it is good for is the same as any light workout video.

 

I apologise if this is upsetting, this is my view and not everyone may agree.

[寒月 Hanyue]

Save your money DreamBliss all you ever need to know about QiGong is here, all free too..

http://jsqg.sport.org.cn/en/index.html

 

Sorry disagree BIG time.

 

Best,

[DreamBliss]

OK, well, part of the learning process I guess. So I need to find some new exercises. I'll post a list of what I current have in my library, see what stuff is being taught right and what isn't. I'll start another thread for that.

 

Thank you for your honesty -

- DreamBliss

[Tibetan_Ice]

Dreambliss

 

Shaila Catherine, and the 1 hour video is a good introduction to breath meditation.

Ajahn Brahm is very good too: "Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond".

 

Alan Wallace is very good too.

 

http://www.sbinstitute.com/node/1715/podcast

 

Alan Wallace has a PHD and has translated many books for various Buddhists. He is one smart dude.

His books are exellent, espescially if you are above average intelligence and appreciate a larger vocabulary.

Alan has some quided meditations, each will give you the insight needed to progress.

What I appreciate most about Alan's teachings (which really come from the famous Buddhists like Padmasambava and the Dalai Lama, Dzogchen, awareness of awareness) is that his understanding goes all the way and he can convey his understanding and instructions easily and effectively.

Further, all the podcasts are free and online.. I've been listening to them for months and practising them too..

 

TI