Richard Shankman

In our busy modern world, it's easy to get stressed out. In The Art and Skill of Buddhist Meditation, mindfulness teacher Richard Shankman offers a foundational guide to the art and skill of Buddhist meditation, showing you how to construct a calming daily practice that unifies two major Vipassana Buddhist traditions concentration meditation and insight meditation. Whether you are a beginning or intermediate student of Buddhism, this book provides a user-friendly meditation regime. New readers are presented with a strong foundation in multiple meditation approaches, while those who've been training for a while will be able to better integrate what they've already learned with new and unfamiliar approaches drawn from other streams of Buddhist thought. This new, integrative, and simple approach to meditation will help you to better manage stress, quiet your busy mind, and cultivate a lasting sense of well-being.

The Art and Skill of Buddhist Meditation offers a practical guide to building a strong meditation practice by unifying mindfulness, concentration, and insight into a single, integrated approach. Mindfulness and insight - clearly knowing what is happening in ones present moment experience - and concentration - the ability of the mind to remain steady and undistracted - are foundational elements of meditation, yet people are often confused about how these aspects of the practice fit together. Should they be doing insight meditation or concentration practices? How does concentration fit into insight meditation? To help, The Art and Skill of Buddhist Meditation offers specific guidance for cultivating both insight and concentration in meditation. This book will be of interest to both beginning and experienced meditation practitioners who wish to familiarize themselves with, deepen their understanding of, and increase their practical skills in mindfulness, concentration, and insight meditation. New meditators who want hands - on skills they can easily put into practice will find the step - by - step instructions accessible and easy to understand. Experienced practitioners will find a complete and useful guide for deepening insight and cultivating the deeper stages of concentration known as jhana. This book also discusses the most common experiences that can arise as the meditation process unfolds, and will help you find the approaches and techniques that work best for you.

Dharma practice comprises a wide range of wise instructions and skillful means. As a result, meditators may be exposed to a diversity of approaches to the core teachings and the meditative path--and that can be confusing at times. In this clear and accessible exploration, Dharma teacher and longtime meditator Richard Shankman unravels the mix of differening, sometimes conflicting, views and traditional teachings on how samadhi (concentration) is understood and taught. In part one, Richard Shankman considers the range of teachings and views about samadhi, examines different approaches, and considers how they can inform and enrich our meditation practice. Part two consists of a series of interviews with prominent contemporary Buddhist teachers. These discussions focus on the practical experience of samadhi, bringing the theoretical to life and offering a range of applications of the different meditation techniques.