Easing Awake

Available in Paperback ($20), Kindle ($9).

Many meditators put too much of the wrong kind of effort into meditation. They think the mind needs to be controlled, disciplined, shaped, or trained. This is like trying to stand up in a hammock: it’s difficult to do, destabilizing, and completely unnecessary.

There is a natural kindness and intelligence in the mind-heart that can easily be obscured. As meditators, our job is not to get a grip on the mind. It is to discover the clarity and wisdom that is inherent in it. It may take effort and discipline. But wise effort is not to control. It is to reveal.

(From the Introduction so Befriending the Mind. Click here to read the entire introduction. For a few other chapters, click the links below.)

Also see Buddha’s Map, Beginning the Journey, Kindness and Wisdom Practice, Meditator’s Field Guide, Resting in the waves, Presence, and Deepening.

Introduction

Befriending

1. Vulnerability

2. The Demon’s Blessing

3. Dancing with the Demons

4. Kindness and a Patient Heart

Inner Landscape

5. Experience

6. Feeling Tone

7. Dissolving Suffering