Hot off the Press: 'Introducing Mindfulness'
On Mon, 28 September, 2020 - 16:30
We’re delighted to introduce you to the newly published Introducing Mindfulness: Buddhist Background and Practical Exercises by Bhikkhu Anālayo.
Anālayo has been writing about mindfulness as a scholar, practitioner and meditation teacher for two decades. In 2004 we published his ground-breaking study of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta based on his comparative studies of early Buddhist texts. He is one of a handful of people who can read and research texts in Pāli, Sanskrit and Chinese. It is a real delight when someone with this kind of depth of knowledge and experience brings all his mastery to bear on a simple book that introduces mindfulness.
This book introduces mindfulness with examples and practices from the Buddhist tradition. Without assuming any prior knowledge, it leads the reader through a series of progressive mindfulness exercises. In the first few chapters, Anālayo invites us to become more mindful as we eat and engage in other daily activities. He also encourages mindfulness of others and the impact we have on them. In this way, mindfulness is linked closely with mettā and ethics.
As the book progresses, Anālayo invites us into more formal walking and seated practices, drawing on his long study of core meditation suttas such as Satipaṭṭhāna (the foundations of mindfulness) and Ānāpānasati (the mindfulness of breathing). By the end of the book, we are training the mind through awareness of impermanence, fabrication and compassion and we’re engaging with the whole of the Buddhist path: ethics, meditation and wisdom.
This is not only a book for people interested in exploring mindfulness for the first time. It is also a skilled and thoughtful intervention into many of the debates about the nature and status of mindfulness in its secular forms and in non-dual and vipassana Buddhist practices.
Anālayo ends the book with a reflection on how globalising mindfulness can help us to engage with the current ecological and climate emergency. Instead of the untrained reactions of denial (greed), anger (hatred) and resignation (delusion), he suggests we can use mindfulness to give priority to community welfare. Above all, he urges us to use the protective function of mindfulness for the collective good.
You can buy Introducing Mindfulness now from our website or your local bookshop for £13.99. It will be released in the Americas in early December, but if you’re willing to pay the postage, you can get your copy through our website before its US release.
To celebrate the release of this and one other book by Anālayo, we’re going to be discounting some of his other books during October. Click on our Monthly Sale page from 1 October to see what’s on offer.
And finally, a few quick reminders:
- You can still download our latest free eBook, What is the Dharma?, until 5 October.
- If you sign up as a member on our website, you get 10% off all purchases.
- If you spend more than £20 in the UK or Europe, or £30 elsewhere, we’ll post you your books for free.
