Yates) Culadasa (John - The mind illuminated: a complete meditation guide integrating Buddhist wisdom and brain science for greater mindfulness

Praise for The Mind Illuminated

Culadasa has given us a clear, detailed, contemporary map of meditation, beautifully attuned to our household lives. Through his mastery of both the science and art of conscious living, Culadasa imparts the practices and confidence we need to walk the path of liberation through all the stages to Awakening. I love his friendly, encouraging teaching!

T RUDY G OODMAN , P H D, guiding teacher at InsightLA

In a time where meditation and its twin sister, mindfulness, have become the fads du jour , Culadasa gives us the real deal in this encyclopedic handbook. If youre serious about meditation, The Mind Illuminated should be on your bookshelf.

L AMA M ARUT, author of A Spiritual Renegades Guide to the Good Life and Be Nobody

Essential reading for anyone interested in meditative development from any tradition. At once comprehensive and also very easy to read and follow in practice, this is the most thorough, straightforward, clear, and practical guide to training the mind that I have ever found. A remarkable achievement.

D ANIEL I NGRAM , MD, author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

The Mind Illuminated is an extraordinary accomplishment. Culadasa has distilled his many years of meditative practice and teaching, his deep background in Theravada and Vajrayana traditions, and his extensive knowledge of cognitive science and neuroscience to provide a unique and highly practical guidebook to meditation practice. The granular detail that Culadasa provides regarding various experiences along the path and his practically grounded advice for dealing with obstacles and developing specific skills are unique in the published literature on meditation. Regardless of the particular tradition in which one practices, or the amount of ones practice experience, there is a cornucopia of wisdom and detailed guidance here that merits careful study and practice. This is a true jewel of a book that belongs on the desk or night table of every meditation practitioner.

S ENSEI A L G ENKAI K ASZNIAK , P H D, guiding teacher at Upaya Zen Sangha of Tucson; Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona

With wisdom, clarity, and grace, Culadasa has written an invaluable manual for awakening. I believe this book will become one of the Top 10 Must Reads for anyone on the spiritual path for years to come. Helpful for beginning meditators and valuable for advanced meditators who are already committed to meditation but have not yet experienced the fruits of consistent practice.

S TEPHANIE N ASH, mindfulness coach and integrative counselor

Writing with warmth and clarity, Culadasa brings a lifetime of investigation into Buddhism and neuroscience to his descriptions of the tasks and nuances of meditation. Though it is often encouraged, a meditation practice is not often explained. The Mind Illuminated provides comprehensive, step-by-step guidance about how to actually do it, how to handle the many hindrances that might stop us from practicing, and how the mind benefits when we do meditate regularly. A masterful and inspiring guide, Culadasa encourages us to savor the process that leads to becoming fully conscious.

S USAN S UNTREE, author of Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California and editor of Wisdom of the East: Stories of Compassion, Inspiration, and Love

This book does an outstanding job of both constructing a cognitive theory of how the mind works and presenting a detailed handbook for learning and mastering meditation. The result is a beautiful integration of theory and practice, whose parallel strands lead to experientially, and account for conceptually, the radical shift in consciousness we call awakening.

R ICHARD P. B OYLE, author of Realizing Awakened Consciousness

The Mind Illuminated provides among the greatest syntheses Ive ever seen of concepts from across the spectrum of psychological research and theory. The book integrates knowledge from areas as diverse as cognition and neural systems, psychoanalytic notions of unconscious processes and catharsis, theories of William James, and third-wave strategies for emotion regulation. It also provides a valuable step-by-step instruction manual for mental training to focus attention while developing self-insight and deep psychological healing. The secular nature of the instructions allows for bringing meditation into the therapy relationship without dogma and without the risk of either supporting or contradicting clients religious views.

T UCKER P ECK , P H D, clinical psychologist and recipient of the Varela Award from the Mind and Life Institute

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This book is dedicated to my loving and beloved wife, Nancy. Without your support and measureless patience, I could never have finished it. It is also dedicated to my sons, Charles and Sean, who at times thought they had lost their father to this project.

S O HOW does a neuroscientist end up as a meditation master? The two disciplines are different, to be sure. My training in brain science deals with neurons and synapses, while my study of meditation is concerned with matters of attention, introspective awareness, and investigating the nature of subjective experience. But in many ways, Ive found that the two modes of understanding the world are more complementary than one might think, and theyve given me a unique insight into how mindfulness actually changes the brain and our perceptions of the world around us.

Ive always been a seeker. For as long as I can remember, Ive been fascinated by both the mind and the physical sciences. I always felt there must be a way to make sense of and unify our understanding of the world. What I sought, and what eventually crystalized into a lifelong passion, was nothing less than a search for ultimate Truth. Little did I know what a long and convoluted (but ultimately rewarding) journey I would take to find it.

I spent my teen years reading philosophy and psychologyKant, Husserl, James, and Jung in particular. Despite the many insights they offered, it was disappointing to discover how little we knew about the mind, especially as compared to the precision and rapidly increasing depth of our knowledge of the physical world.

So I then turned to religionChristianity, specificallyin the hope of finding answers. Inspired by the writings of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing , I thought this might offer a path to my goal. After about three years of dedicated study and practice, I became a seminarian and was soon immersed in Church history, philosophy, theology, and interpretive doctrines. But after another year and a half, I left, disillusioned at how unrepresentative the great mystics were of the modern church. Another dead end. However, I was not deterred in my search for Truth.