Book and Reference Guide

I checked this book out at the library and enjoyed it so much that I had to buy it for reference. It's packed with good information on all aspects of meditation, including myths, history, a wide variety of practicies and excercises for the beginner as well as the more experienced meditator. I recommend it especially for the beginner.

Rating:


Too much extraneous clutter for this beginner

There's something paradoxical about the idea of an "Idiot's Guide to Meditation." Describing the outward forms of meditation is easy but describing the subjective experience is harder, as is actually doing the meditating. There's real discipline involved in developing mental focus through meditation. Somehow, with all the jumping around from one topic to another in this book, that seemed to get lost in the mix.

Myabe that's where my problems with this book come from. There is so much information given about so many different methods that the basics get buried. The authors throw in various traditions, terminologies, positions, theories, and a few women's magazine quizzes were thrown in, not to mention frequent "Bliss Bytes" and "From A to Om." The book seemed scattered and a little too New Agey for my tastes. Personally, I found Lawrence LeShan's classic "How to Meditate" to be better grounded, more instructive, and a more helpful guide for this idiot.

Rating:


Little disappointed after reading

There are many books on meditation, and I bought this one and Meditation by Sri Chinmoy. Main reason was that all the reviews were excellent. But Chinmoy's book is superior in every aspect. This book is more a dictionary or overview on meditation and technique than useful practitioners manual. Plus it contains misunderstanding of some basic classification of Yoga styles and separating one and the same thing in different groups. To give you easily understandable example if Biologist gave you a list of life forms that goes like: Animals, Plants, Carrots, Bacteria, ... you would question his knowledge.

Rating: