Experience of Meditation: Experts Introduce the Major Traditions

A fulfilled life and happiness is more than physical comfort or buying new things. It involves awareness and development of our inner being and consciousness. The major meditation traditions of the world, each in their own way, aim at the creation of an inner peace and happiness which provides a solid foundation for action and compassion in the world. This book describes the techniques and experience of the major meditation traditions impacting the West in the words of highly respected practioners of each tradition. Taken together, they constitute a solid overview of meditation and how the major traditions are similar or different from one another. 

This book describes the techniques and experience of the major meditation traditions impacting the West in the words of practitioners of each tradition. Taken together, they constitute a solid overview of meditation and how the major traditions are similar to and/or different from one another.

Jonathan Shear was a Fulbright Scholar in philosophy of science at the London School of Economics, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley where he received his doctorate. He has enjoyed daily practice of Eastern procedures such as Zen, TM, taiji ("t'ai chi") and qigong for more than forty years, and is an internationally known expert on meditation experiences, publishing and lecturing in India and China as well as the West. For the past nineteen years he has taught philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was also a founding editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, is an experienced meditation instructor, and a formal disciple in one of China's major taiji systems.