Abiding in Emptiness
A Guide for Meditative Practice
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
An incisive look into the early Buddhist teachings on emptiness, and a manual for bringing those teachings into our everyday lives.
Before the growth of the Mahayana and the Perfection of Wisdom, the Buddha gave his own teachings, to his attendant Ananda, on the importance of emptiness (Pali sunnata, Sanskrit sunyata) in formal meditation and everyday practice. In this volume, renowned scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo explores these teachings and shows us how to integrate them into our lives.
Bhikkhu Analayo draws from instructions found in the Greater and the Smaller Discourses on Emptiness (the Mahasunnatasutta and the Culasunnatasutta). In each chapter, he provides a translation of a pertinent excerpt from the discourses, follows this with clear and precise explanations of the text, and concludes by offering instructions for practice.
Step by step, beginning with daily life and concluding with Nirvana, Bhikkhu Analayo unpacks the Buddha’s teachings on the foundational teaching of emptiness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meditation teacher Anālayo (The Signless and the Deathless) presents a wise if somewhat esoteric exploration of emptiness and its relation to Buddhist tradition. Drawing on two texts from the Pāli Buddhist canon (the Greater and Smaller Discourses on Emptiness), Anālayo considers emptiness as it relates to the formal practice of meditation, daily life, seclusion, the earth, infinite space, infinite consciousness, signlessness, and nirvana. For each topic, he interprets a relevant Discourses passage to distill its core concepts and provide practice instructions. (Readers may find the latter most pertinent, though some instructions may be easier to follow than others: for example, the chapter on infinite consciousness asks readers to avoid distraction by "directing attention to the knowing part of the mind, which by dint of its receptive nature is not involved in the agitation created by... mental activity"). Anālayo reminds readers that even when it comes to meditation, they should avoid "clinging to any of the resultant experiences by appropriating them as ‘ours,' " because the practice is "not about getting something but about shedding something" and "opening the heart." The author's erudition impresses, and while there's a lot to sift through, readers will find plenty of gems ("Distracted thinking can become an integral part of the meditative experience... insofar as recognition of its occurrence provides an occasion for exploring and better understanding the way" the self operates). Those with a background in Buddhism will get the most out of this rigorous guide.
