Why Meditate?: The Essential Book About How Meditation Can Enrich Your Life (Illumina Series)

Editor Clint Willis has gathered twenty-five pieces, each of which answers the question "Why meditate?" from a different perspective. These include work (with a selection by Lewis Richmond), children (Jon Kabat Zinn), service (Ram Dass), death (Sogyal Rinpoche), fear (Pema Chodron), compassion (Thich Nat Hanh), and kindness (Sharon Salzberg). Other authors explore themes of happiness, success, failure, romance, marriage, illness, worry, fun, and therapy. Also included are writers such as Annie Dillard, Thomas Merton, and Rainer Maria Rilke whose work, although not explicitly about meditation, teach lessons about mindfulness and other related themes. This book is written for those who have only heard of meditation and want to know more, as well as beginning and experienced meditators who wish to deepen and broaden their practice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156924586X
• ISBN13: 9781569245866
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Artists, writers and philoso[hers write on meditation

This is the only book I have seen recently that has a complete collection of essays from people from all walks of life, writing about what it means to them personally to meditate. The contributors include writers, meditation teachers, practicing buddhists and ordinary people. They write about what brought them personally to meditation and how they used it at the time of grief, death of a person close to them, compassion in their marriage or in raising children. Some of the essays made me cry, some made me laugh. And for me personally it became clear that we all experience meditation differently. Only a lucky few experience enlightment. But what is important is to be consistant and practice regularly. The practice, when set with intention and dediction will bring result, in its own time. What is important is to separate oneself from the rest of the world a little bit of the time, in solitude, contemplation and peace and just focus on oneself, one's well-being and and calm. The rest will come to its place. We have to learn to live in the present, let go of the past and not anticipate future since we do not know what the future brings. Meditation is experinecing life and death, love and compassion, pain and peace - acknowledging those feelings and emotions and letting go. Once there is complete emptiness and unattachment, one can glide thru life as both participant and quiert observer of life around us and people in it. Wonderful book for people seeking higher thuth, students of zen and everyone else curious about meditation.