Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana

With over a quarter of a million copies sold, Mindfulness in Plain English is one of the most influential books in the burgeoning field of mindfulness and a timeless classic introduction to meditation. This is a book that people read, love, and share - a book that people talk about, write about, reflect on, and return to over and over again. Bhante Gunaratana is also the author of Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness, Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English, The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English, and his memoir Journey to Mindfulness.

This book is excellent for learning about vipassana meditation. I found it extremely helpful and useful. The other book that is equally useful is „The Illuminated Mind“. I found it very useful to read both books since they nicely complement each other.

Hmm. This was completely impenetrable when I was first curious about meditation and looking for good, no-nonsense introductory texts. Now that I have a more established meditation practice, I noticed it on my shelf and decided to revisit it.I still feel that it's incredibly dogmatic and overbearing for a supposedly 101-level text, but now that I have some basis for understanding, I gleaned some interesting insights from it (such as the distinction between concentration and mindfulness). It gets pretty technical in a way that was off-putting for me as a complete newbie (i.e. too much information too quickly) but might be good for someone at an intermediate level, who has already experienced a bit of meditation and had a chance to get a sense for how they want their practice to grow.If you're getting into meditation for the first time, I would recommend [b:Full Catastrophe Living 5496611 Full Catastrophe Living Zach Savich https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328757896s/5496611.jpg 5564524]. If you're curious about Buddhism, I would recommend anything by Pema Chodron.If you know an intermediate amount about both of those things, this one might be a good next step – though for me, I think I'm going to stick with my Headspace app and not worry too much about whether I'm breathing incorrectly.