Product Description

Known for bringing "insight" meditation to the West and for his many best-selling books, including A Path with Heart (over 100,000 copies in print), Jack Kornfield now offers a collection of his most popular teachings with Buddhist Meditation for Beginners. Specially designed gift set includes four complete audio learning courses: • The Beginner’s Guide to Buddhism—Jack Kornfield illuminates Buddhism’s most essential teachings, and how they make it possible to overcome challenging mental states such as fear, confusion, and anger. • Meditation for Beginners—Comprehensive introduction to the vipassana ("insight") practice of meditation to cultivate a profound inner calm and awaken to the truth. Exercises include four complete meditations. • Meditations of the Heart—Step-by-step meditations cast light on Buddhism’s cornerstone, the Four Noble Truths. These meditations take less than ten minutes each to practice; yet will take you to the heart of essential Buddhist teachings on opening to the truth, forgiveness, fearlessness, and more. • The Beginner’s Guide to Forgiveness—Drawing from his background in meditation and psychology, Jack Kornfield reveals the path to forgiveness and the way out of our pain. Jack Kornfield’s best-selling meditation programs present him at his best: engaging, intelligent, helpful—and easy to follow.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56952 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 6
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
Jack Kornfield, Ph.D. co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, in 1975 and later, the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. His books include After the Ecstasy, the Laundry and the national bestseller A Path with Heart (over 100,000 copies in print).

From AudioFile
The title of this collection is slightly misleading. While it does introduce Buddhist meditation, it also includes lectures and interactive exercises on meditation in general, as well as specific meditations on forgiveness and opening ones heart. Jack Kornfields voice is gentle and perfectly paced as he guides listeners through these exercises. Kornfield balances Buddhist teachings on spirituality with accounts of his own experiences and doses of self-deprecating humor. One shouldnt listen to this audio while driving because Kornfield guides listeners to reflect on inner states (often with closed eyes), but otherwise this is a strong introduction to meditation for those in any tradition. The one weakness is that because the production comprises several presentations, there is some repetition of jokes and stories. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

grounded inspiration
As a psychotherapist interested in Buddhism I discovered Jack Kornfield recently and was pleased his book was indeed what I was searching for. His life endeavour is to balance his first-hand Buddhist experiences with living in the Western world. He reveals theory and insight in a personal intelligent way: a diverse presentation also offering practical examples of meditations. Although he reveals meditation as something one can do immediately from where one is now in the world, he does not present meditation as an instant cure, realizing that deep emotional difficulties can need other therapeutic interventions as well. The book for me is one of grounded inspiration.

Meditation
Excellent tapes for beginning to meditate. Kornfield, as always, speaks about spirituality in a straight forward manner. His instructions and suggestions accurately anticipate some of the problems with beginning meditation and he makes the process much easier. Many of his suggestions are helpful while not meditating as well. I can't think of a single negative thing to say about these tapes.

it's ok, but...
these are fine as an introduction to the principles of meditation and buddhism. they convey many of the basic ideas and address many of the common roadblocks to meditation practice, not really a whole lot better or worse than the many other available guides.

but where is it written that meditation CDs have to have soft hooty native-american-type flutey sounds, and a guide that sounds like a kindergarten teacher on valium?

sure, i wouldn't want a meditation teacher that sounded angry or anything...but his voice actually got to the point where it sounded absurd to me; i found it hard not to laugh a few times at his inflections getting a bit odd and pointless.

whatever, there's still good lessons here for beginning meditators, if you can overlook a voice trying just a bit toooooo haaaaaaarrrrrd to be soooooooooothiiiinggg.