The book claimes to overview and relate various medative tradtions. It doesn't. It forces everything into a set pattern and ignores large chucks of tradition and the teachings of other traditions. The references to Christian prayer are just plain wrong, there is no mention of hesychasm, and the obvious tie in with bhakti devotion totally misstates christian belief and practice. Similar problems are seen with Judaism and Isalem. Some of the Daoist stuff also is very very different from what I've learned. I get a distinct sense the authors just tossed in everything they heard of and forced it to fit into their belief system, without a lot of research. Save your money and buy something else. From Amazon.com
This book is a compilation of spiritual practices and techniques, mostly derived from the Chinese (Taoist) and Indian (Hinduism, Buddhism) schools of philosophy and religion. The book is first and foremost, practical. Each technique is carefully described, along with other historical and bibliographical notes. These notes are useful for more inquisitive readers who wish to learn more about a particular method or topic. The idea of all these spiritual practices is the attainment of self-realisation. This can also be called "enlightenment" or "seeing the Tao". The authors make a great deal of effort in trying to make this point; possibly because people get side-tracked, looking for mystical experience's or the attainment of superpower's, which have nothing to do with the real spiritual path. The authors also emphasise proper behaviour and virtuous actions. In fact they say, before a person can make any real progress (on the spiritual path), he must accumulate merit from performing good deeds. This is quite strange and unique. I have not come across any other material, other than the books of Nan Huai Chin (BUY them), that talk about moral conduct. I therefore recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn the HOW's and WHY's of meditation practice. The book also should be commended because it try's to make an effort in explaining the spiritual path, in terms of Western science. All to often, meditation books tell us, that a particular technique has been around for 1000 years and that's it! No further explanation as to why it actually benefits us or how the body actually gets healthy (it's true) through meditation. I hope this tells you what you want know!
From Amazon.com
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