Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It's a guide to Vipasanna meditation, the central practice of Burmese buddhism. Two reasons why HN readers might fi

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It's a guide to Vipasanna meditation, the central practice of Burmese buddhism. Two reasons why HN readers might find it interesting: a) The author claims to have gained enlightenment - yes, enlightenment with a capital 'E', the thing the original Buddha achieved under his tree, and he claims that you can do the same. b) if you're thinking "ok, this writer's a new age nutcase, moving on...", the author's day job is as a medical doctor and he applies a strong scientific sensibility to his experiences. The whole thing is written in a very rational, down-to-earth style. He also rants about how new age practioners in the west have turned meditation into this aimless, chill-out practice when actually in certain Asian countries it's seen as something with definite stages and goals. My view of meditation is that it's basically about training and hacking your mind. There's three main practices: concentration training, which is what it sounds like - focusing your mind on one object; insight training, which is basically running netstat on your perceptual system; and morality, which is integrating your learnings from meditation into an ethical life. Potential benefits: - better ability to concentrate and avoid procrastination - you can learn to feel happy all the time. It's not that you never feel negative emotions, but they're always be an undercurrent of peace and relaxation when you learn to stop fighting negative feelings. - you can access mental states which are not too unlike those caused by taking certain drugs, without the negative side-effects (though it is possible to get "meditation hangover"). - most importantly, you'll learn to train your mind to put it to whatever tasks you deem important. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1904658407/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nohao-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1904658407 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1904658407/ref=as_li_ss_t...