Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation

i dont know where to start with this book. basically, its been one of those life-changing reads to me, along with siddhartha. the amount of wisdom and philosophical info in here is mind-boggling, but somehow alan watts is able to make you understand as though it were the simplest thing in the world. its as though he were a good friend sitting with you explaining things over coffee. its hard to grasp everything in here in one read because there is so much in this small book. i needed to read it a few times for everything to really sink in. it is so unbelievably enlightening and powerful, i want everyone i know to read it!

Alan Watts was popular about thirty years ago...and still he is untouchable in the arena of those who transmute for Westerners a deep yet very realizable understanding of the mystical path. Think Jung and Campbell - timeless messengers of higher truth.This is no highbrow philosophizing for so-called "adepts." This is the best combination of common person-meets-Zen approach I have encountered.Works well in conjunction with "Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation and Other Devices" by Christopher Hyatt: both are edgy, at least slightly more hip approaches - that better account for the integral elements of humor and happenstance - than other works on the subject.

Alan watts is a brilliant writer and this book is nothing short of extraordinary. It is a compilation of speeches and seminars the late Alan Watts gave during his lifetime. I read the book knowing little about Zen, but found after reading it that I always knew. That is the beauty of Zen. We have always known the truth - there is a better way to live - only we have been socialized to feel as though we are seperate and need to conquer something or everything. Mr. Watts points out that this is a fallacy and that there is no need to feel seperate. Instead, he offers that we are a part of one organism and there is no need to conquer. Life is just being in the moment. This book really has made a difference for me.

Watts explains thought and encourages the listener to release the grip of mental chatter and slide into the meditative state that is the wellspring of inspiration. Using humor and allegory, he finds many different ways of stating the truth. Chiding the Western mind for its overuse of force of will and muscle, Watts emphasizes that if you practice meditation in order to achieve perfection, you're not meditating. Through his own ease of being, he guides a meditation step by step, taking his audience into a gentle, sometimes playful state of mind through his skill as both a meditator and a speaker. Both beginner and experienced meditator will get a lot out of this material.

Watts became famous as an intellectual and then as a student of Buddhism: this provides several talks he gave in later years, recorded by his son and published in book form, and will interest any who want an introduction to meditation's concepts.