The Buddhist jhanas--successive states of deep focus or meditative absorbtion--demystified. A very practical guidebook for meditators for navigating their way through these states of bliss and concentration. One of the elements of the Eightfold Path the Buddha taught is Right Concentration: the one-pointedness of mind that, together with ethics, livelihood, meditation, and so forth, leads to the ultimate freedom from suffering. The Jhanas are the method the Buddha himself taught for achieving Right Concentration. They are a series of eight successive (...) states, beginning with bliss and moving on toward radically nonconceptual states. The fact that they can usually be achieved only during prolonged meditation retreat tends to keep them shrouded in mystery. Leigh Brasington is here to unshroud them. He takes away the mystique and gives instructions for them in plain, accessible language, noting the various pitfalls to avoid along the way, and then providing a wealth of material on the theory of jhana practice--all geared toward the practitioner rather than the scholar. (shrink)

Zen philosophy of language is discussed by exploring the concepts of live and dead words, involvement with meaning and involvement with words, and the three mysterious gates as they are employed in Pojo Chinul's huatou meditation. A comparison is made between the Zen use of language and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of visibility, Julia Kristeva's idea of the semiotic and the symbolic, and Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety, in an attempt to provide a paradigm to understand the Zen Buddhist vision.

In Thailand the pre-reform Therav?da meditation system, bor?n kamma??h?na, is now practised only by small and isolated groups. To promote detailed comparative study of bor?n kamma??h?na, the tradition of it taught at Wat Ratchasittharam, Thonburi, is explored through a translation of a text on?n?p?nasati attributed to Suk Kaitheun, the head of its lineage. This is followed by a detailed discussion and comparison with the description of the same technique in the Visuddhimagga. Some close connections between these two sources are identified (...) and it is speculated that, despite features concerning nimitta, bodily location, terminology etc. that are diagnostically distinctive for bor?n kamma??h?na, its method for?n?p?nasati can be seen as a rational development of earlier techniques advocated by Buddhaghosa. (shrink)