100th Monkey Books

Meditation and Prayer



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Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
Larry Rosenberg with David Guy (1998) 215pages

Every student's practice is peculiarly his or her own and comes together in its own way. My practice has unfolded over many years, and it focuses on a particular discourse of the Buddha. But it was some time before I saw the real value of this teaching... The Anapanasati Sutra is composed of sixteen contemplations, which divide rather neatly into four sets of four. The first four contemplations concern the awareness of breathing as it manifests in the body. The next four focus on feelings, everything that we perceive by means of our sense organs. The third set of four focuses on the mind, the mental formations and emotions that we concoct when we add ideas to our feelings. And the last four move on to pure vipassana, seeing into the lawfulness underlying all phenomena. Basic to all of these contemplations is the breath, which is used in them as an anchor, a reminder, to keep the practitioner in the present moment...The sixteen contemplations, then represent a natural process. They might not unfold in exactly that order, and some of them might stand out more than others. But most of these aspects of body and mind eventually, and quite naturally, show up if you sit and look into yourself over a period of time...So you can use the sutra as a training program or as the description of a process, but, however you use it , you can't force these steps. They will happen in their own time; you can't bring them about. You can prepare the ground, certainly, and make a sincere effort, but ultimately your body and mind do what they want, and you won't have much say about it. - from the author's Introduction (Shambhala)



Breath Sweeps Mind: A First Guide to Meditation Practice
Edited by Jean Smith (1998) 289pages

The Buddha's first instructions are the foundation upon which various Buddhist traditions have built their teachings. Breath Sweeps Mind: A First Guide to Meditation brings together these timeless teachings to explore the questions of what meditation is, why one would meditate, and how to establish a meditation practice. Meditation has been called the Great teacher; and we can learn from it, as Buddha did, is the truth. (Riverhead )



The Everyday Meditator: A Practical Guide
Osho International Foundation (1993), 207pages

The book tells you that meditation is a matter of stopping the thoughts that continually pass through your mind - worry, plans, fantasies, possibilities, fears - all those things you have become accustomed to. In fact, before someone told you it was possible to stop thinking - to give the mind a rest - it never occurred to you that you were thinking all the time anyway. Or if it did, that this was necessarily a problem...The purpose of this book is twofold: First, to kill most or all of the preconception that we have about meditation and to knock over the majority of methods that are proposed as aids to meditation. You cannot "learn" meditation - you will only how to think you are meditating. Secondly to create a life in which meditation exists all the time - every hour of every day - for you. For meditation exists all around us, - we only have to take hold of it. - from the Introduction (Charles E. Tuttle)



The Healing Power of the Mind: Simple Meditation Exercises for Health, Well-Being, & Enlightenment
Tulku Thondup (1996) 207pages

This book is a practical guide for anyone wishing to find peace and to heal worry, stress , and pain. It is a compendium of teachings on the wisdom of healing that I have learned from the holy scriptures of Buddhism and have heard from the soothing voices of great masters. The book has three parts. The first is an overview of everyday living and meditation, the necessary ingredients for healing. The second part presents specific exercises for healing mental, emotional, social, and spiritual problems. Physical problems are difficult to heal, but they, too can often be helped by exercises that generate peace, strength, and positive energy, the ultimate fount of our physical well-being. The final section presents several Buddhist meditations that are concerned not only with everyday problems but also with awakening the presence of Buddha qualities that we all possess and with opening the infinite healing power of the Buddha mind for our selves and others. - from the author's Introduction (Shambhala)



The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: A Handbook of Mental Training Based on Buddha's Way of Mindfulness
Nyanaponika Thera (1962) 223pages

The purpose of these pages is to draw attention to the far- and deep-reaching significance of the Buddha's "Way of Mindfulness" (Satipatthana), and to give initial guidance to an understanding of these teachings and their practical application. This book is issued in the deep conviction that the systematic cultivation of Right Mindfulness, as taught by the Buddha in his Discourse on Satipatthana, still provides the most simple and direct, the most thorough and effective, method for training and developing the mind for its daily tasks and problems as well as for its highest aim: mind's own unshakable deliverance from Greed, Hatred and Delusion. - from the author's Introduction (Weiser)



Learn to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Self-Discovery and Fulfillment
David Fontana (1999) 159pages

Meditation enriches the whole of daily life in a way no other discipline can, Combining inspiring illustrations with more than twenty unique exercises, David Fontana guides us toward mastery of this rewarding art. Learn to Meditate shows you how to

Meditation enriches the whole of daily life in a way no other discipline can, Combining inspiring illustrations with more than twenty unique exercises, David Fontana guides us toward mastery of this rewarding art. Learn to Meditate shows you how to



Mandala: Luminous Symbols for Healing
Judith Cornell (1994) 154pages ( including color illustrations)

This book is a convergence of Eastern and Western thought - merging the meditative practice of sacred art, the insights of quantum physics in to the nature of light, and the ancient wisdom. Each chapter is a blend of spiritual philosophy, transpersonal psychology, and exercises designed to promote healing of mind, body, and soul. This approach results from a time many years ago when I created mandalas when I had cancer and experienced a spiritual awakening. This creative process helped me to integrate the reductionism of the scientific worldview with my intuitive experiences of wholeness and luminous states of consciousness. The sacred symbol of the mandala enabled me not only to find the healing power within myself but also to recover from a sense of psychological fragmentation. During the healing process, I came to experience and express mystical states of consciousness.
- from the author's Introduction (Quest Books)



Mandalas of the World: A Meditating & Painting Guide
Rudiger Dahlke (1985/1992) Drawings by Rudiger Dahlke & Katharina von Martius, 286pages

This book that you just opened is not even a finished book yet! In contrast to most other books, it needs your collaboration and willingness to find its true form. Yes, this time instead of reading a book, you actually entered on a path. Neither will you find a structure at the beginning - that structure or order will become evident on your path. This path also does not lead straight from the beginning to the end, but rotates in circles and spirals around the center - that center that is also your own. The path of this book will come close to the center and then withdraws from it - it will touch and let go again - it will travel around in a circle, according to the Mandala... This book wants to become the Adriadne -thread to guide you through your personal labyrinth: a guide to your own Mandalas, to the experience of the universe as Mandala. - from the author's Preface (Sterling)



Meditation: The First and Last Freedom - A Practical Guide
Osho International Fdtn (1996) 286pages

This book is a compilation drawn from Osho's profound work on meditation. It contains a wide variety of methods which can help us to discover what he calls "Meditation: the First and Last freedom."...I have heard Osho described it as "just freedom": living in the here and now, moment to moment, living neither in the memory and oppression of the past nor the dreams of the future...With meditation the mind becomes a useful instrument, instead of enslaving us with its constant chatter...Osho tells us that: "Witnessing simply means a detached observation, unprejudiced; that's the whole secret of meditation."... Through the meditations that are in this book, you will discover what witnessing is... you are invited to experience your own inner sky. - from the Introduction by Swami Deva Wadud (St.Martin's )



Meditation for Beginners (audio)
Jack Kornfield (1998) one 90 minutes cassette

Mindfulness meditation is the time-honored practice of calming the spirit and clearing the mind for higher understanding. On this complete guide - created specially for beginners - renowned teacher Jack Kornfield offers a straightforward, step-by-step method for brining meditation effortlessly into your life. Now you can discover how easy it is to use your breath, physical sensations - and even difficult emotions - to create tranquility and loving kindness in your everyday life. (Sounds True)



The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience
Daniel Goleman (1988) 214pages

For the beginning meditator, the book provides a comprehensive, accessible overview of the different kinds of meditation, from Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, Jewish, and Christian to Transcendental, Tantric, Kunladini, Tibetan Buddhist, Zen, and those developed by Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti, and introduces the reader to the basic elements of their practice. For the experienced meditator, Goldman explores the distinct levels of consciousness developed as a result of long-term application. (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam)



Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space (2nd edition)
Robert Masters & Jean Houston (1972/1998)

Consciousness is always altering, as that is its very nature - to expand, contract, exalt, depress, go inward, go outward, and even ride a flat line into nothingness. The task, it would seem, is to learn how to self-orchestrate along the continuum of consciousness, and that is what I have tried to teach people to do. - from Jean Houston's Preface to the Second Edition (Quest Books )

Mind Games anticipate the play-learning systems of the future, opening that future to you now. Mind Games are education, ecstasy, entertainment, self-exploration, powerful instruments of growth. Those who play these games should become more imaginative, more creative, more fully able to gain access to their capacities and to use their capacities productively. The players should achieve a new image of human beings as creatures of enormous and unfolding potentials. The players should become increasingly hopeful that the powers of the human being are sufficient to deal with the problems that confront us. The players should emerge from these games convinced that the human potential is not something we know that has to be surpassed; rather the potentiated human is still something to be realized. And the Mind Games are a means of advancing toward what must be the main goal of every person in our time - putting the first human being on the earth.
- from the authors' introductory words in Book One (Quest Books )



Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day
David Steindl-Rast with Sharon Lebell (1998) 118pages

Music is not merely a rhythmic arrangement of notes, but derives its life from the matrix of silence out of which it arises and into which it inevitably flows. And it is the silence between the notes that gives them meaning and grace. The Great Silence is the silent rest before the day chant its recurrent melody of the hours...Monasticism's central message, expressed through the chant, is the supreme importance of time and how we relate to it: how we caretake and respond to the present moment, to what is before us now. The message of the hours is to live daily with the real rhythms of the day. - from the author's concluding chapter (Seastone)



Neurospeak: Transform Your Body While You Read
Robert Masters (1994) 107pages

NEUROSPEAK - this book - affords the possibility of making specific changes in the organization and functioning of various parts of a human body. More important, this little book is a way of gaining exciting new knowledge about a means by which the human body can be changed. I think of the book as providing entertainment as well as self-knowledge, offering readers experiences such as they have never had access to before...The message of NEUROSPEAK is that just as words, ideas and images can forge mental and bodily shackles around us, so then knowledgeable use of them can set us free - and free at any level of our being. - from the author's Chapter 2 "What Will I Achieve?" (Quest Books)



Praying Body and Soul: Methods and Practices of Anthony de Mello
Adapted and enlarged by Gabriel Galache, S.J. (1997) 144pages

Anthony de Mello suggests that we can always learn to experience our happiness. We can learn to wake up, to let go, and to let God. We can start to give prayer its place in our lives. This book offers an intimate retreat with Anthony de Mello, who was a master-teacher of both the Eastern ways of meditation and the Western traditions of prayer, especially the Ignatian Exercises. - "A Note to the Reader" from the Publisher (Crossroad )



Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield (1987) 195pages US$13 C$17.95

Seeking the Heart of Wisdom was born out of the authors' twelve-year collaboration in teaching vipassana meditation retreats throughout the world. These intensive retreats, ranging in length from weekends to three months, provide opportunities for a simple and direct investigation of the mind and body. Through the development of concentrated awareness, insight in the changing nature of phenomena deepens in a very personal and immediate way. This, in turn, leads to an understanding of the causes of suffering in ourselves and others and to the possibility of compassion and genuine freedom. Two of the main lineages that have been interwoven throughout the book are the forest monastic tradition of Ven.Achaan Chaa and the practice of intensive satipathana vipassana meditation as taught by the late Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw. Together they help to provide the breadth of perspective and depth of understanding that characterize the wisdom of Buddha. - from the authors' Preface ( Shambhala)



The Zen of Seeing: Seeing / Drawing as Meditation
Drawn and handwritten by Frederick Franck (1973) 133pages US$18 C$27.50

Seeing /Drawing is a way of contemplation by which all things are made new, by which the world is freshly experienced each moment. it is the opposite of looking at things from the outside, taking them for granted. "What I have not drawn, I have never seen," says Frederick Franck, and he goes on to show that "once you start drawing an ordinary thing, a fly, a flower, a face, you realize how extraordinary it is - a sheer miracle...." (Vintage)


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