About the Book and Author

Now Featured in the Patheos Book Club
The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
The Buddha's Way of Mindfulness
By Nyanaponika Thera
Foreword by Sylvia Boorstein

About the Book

"This is the book that started it all—the book that, with great clarity and ardor, introduced Vipassana and mindfulness to the West. I still have and cherish my dog-eared, heavily underlined and annotated copy from way back when—with the price tag still on it: $3.00. Of course its content is timeless—and universal. All teachers of mindfulness-based programs would do well to carefully read and re-read this book and reflect upon the ways in which mindfulness is described in terms of both bare attention and clear comprehension."
—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness for Beginners and Full-Catastrophe Living

"It's wonderful to see this new edition of an invaluable, classic meditation guide. Nyanaponika Thera's The Heart of Buddhist Meditation is sure to benefit many."
—Sharon Salzberg, Co-Founder of The Insight Meditation Society

This is a classic text on the essence of Buddhist meditation. It is an excellent, in-depth description of mindfulness practice and its benefits. It includes a concise explanation of clear comprehension, which is the kind of mindfulness you use in the course of your daily life. It also presents an easily understandable explanation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

This new edition of The Heart of Buddhist Meditation includes an introduction from noted author and teacher Sylvia Boorstein:

"The Heart of Buddhist Meditation was the first serious, didactic Dharma book I read. It was the early nineteen-eighties. My teacher, Jack Kornfield, suggested it as the beginning formal training of my becoming a Mindfulness teacher. I have that original copy and I am touched by how many underlined passages, how many exclamation points in margins, how many addendums of my own written in tiny scrawl appear in its fading pages."—from the foreword

Although the Buddha lived over 2500 years ago, his teachings on meditation are among the most effective methods for healing the pain of grief, finding inner peace, and overcoming the sense of dislocation caused by living in the 21st century. Mindfulness is a method not only for committed Buddhists. It is for everyone interested in mastering the mind.

About the Author

Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994) was a German–born Sri Lanka-ordained Theravada monk, co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society, author of numerous books, and teacher of contemporary Western Buddhist leaders such as Bhikkhu Bodhi.