Wildmind's meditation blog
Wildmind's blogs are where you'll find book reviews, commentary, podcasts, and articles that don't fit neatly into the more structured guides to meditation that you'll find on the main part of the site. Articles are arranged below by date, and you can also browse by author and category using the links on the left.
“Never Turn Away: The Buddhist Path Beyond Hope and Fear” by Rigdzin Shikpo
Tejananda, Buddhist practitioner, meditation teacher, and author of The Buddhist Path to Awakening, gives an overview of a new, fresh approach to translating the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism into a western idiom.
Rigdzin Shikpo (Michael Hookham) was one of the earliest Western students of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa, who died in 1987, was a brilliant yet controversial figure. But whatever his flaws, he was undoubtedly one of the key … Click to read more »
“The Meditator’s Atlas: A Roadmap of the Inner World” by Matthew Flickstein
What is the Buddhist Path? Can we become spiritually awakened through meditation alone, or do we have to take a more rounded approach? If we’re already free, why do we need to follow a path anyway? Looking for answers, Tejananda, long-term Buddhist practitioner and meditation teacher, follows The Meditator’s Atlas on a spiritual road trip to purification.
The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) is Buddhaghosa’s classic commentary on the way to full awakening. Buddhaghosa … Click to read more »
“The Attention Revolution – Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind,” by B. Alan Wallace
Available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
The Attention Revolution is a thorough outline of the stages leading to the achievement of shamatha—full mental stabilization—according to Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Anyone buying the book in the hope of a quick fix, though, is fairly soon put right. The achievement of shamatha, Wallace tells us, is liable to involve “five to ten thousand hours of training—of eight hours each day for fifty weeks in the year.”
At this … Click to read more »