No ox no self no beef no book

For the record: I have no beef with Ajarn Brahm or his book Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond. Just in case you're wondering. No really. I read the book with relish. It's well written. It's very practical. But most of all it finally demystifies the higher states of meditation (or janas as Ajarn Brahm and the other Theravada Buddhists call them). In fact: it demystifies meditation as a whole a little more and I'll always give major kudos for that.



The first couple of chapters are particularly useful. Brahm gives us restless and stressed out people from the western tv/computer/cellphone-generation valuable preliminary exercises that most meditation books skip. Finally someone who realises that there's quite a discrepancy between us here now and those guys and galls way back when a couple of thousand years ago.

What? No criticism? Hold your horses. Because Brahm could maybe have been a little more thorough in explaining common beginners mistakes in posture, breathing and so on. And in a book titled Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond it might be considered to be a little weird to take jabs at everything that is is not Theravada. But can you blame the man for being human?

The only thing (hence my remark in my previous post) is that by describing the janas in detail the reader automatically creates a mental picture of them. And automatically you start striving for them. No matter how many times Brahm stresses that it's just an account personal experiences meant to give you an idea of where you're at and you shouldn't cling to the description the stages or advancement in general: you will, unless been in the janas already ofcourse.

That's why I would only recommend the first part of the book. The second part about the janas you can read after thirty years or so. Or better yet, you can read Food For the Heart about/by Ajarn Chah: less practical and a little more mystical but none the less crystal clear, funny and a gem of a book. No wonder. After all: Ajarn Chah was Ajarn Brahms teacher.

To be fair: Ajarn Chah would probably disagree with me. He would say to forget about reading part one now and part two later. Forget reading that book of transcribed talks by him as well. Forget about reading these lines for that matter. Too much reading never got anyone anywhere. He'd say: just do it! (And he said so way before Nike by the way). Just do it and sit down and be in the present moment and you can do no wrong.