Her kommer en stor anbefaling på en bog, som ramte plet for mig: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation af Nyanaponika Thera. Jeg fik selv fat i en laset udgave fra 1972 hos en antikvar, men den er stadig til at få fat i fx her på Saxo.

Den er knivskarp og til tider tør på den lækre måde, og jeg vender ofte tilbage til de grundlæggende idéer fra bogen i min egen meditation. “Bare Attention” er et kernebegreb gennem bogen:

“Mind is the very element in and through which we live, yet it is most elusive and mysterious. Bare Attention, however, by first attending patiently to the basic facts of the mental processes, is capable of shedding light on mind’s mysterious darkness, and of obtaining a firm hold on its elusive flow. The systematic practice of Mindfulness, starting with Bare Attention, will furnish all that knowledge about the mind which is essential for practical purposes, i.e. for the mastery, the development and the final liberation of mind.”

Og

“A specimen of research that is to be examined with the help of a microscope has first to be carefully prepared, cleaned, freed from extraneous matter, and firmly kept under the lens. In a similar way, the ‘bare object’ to be examined by wisdom, is prepared by Bare Attention. It cleans the object of investigation from the impurities of prejudice and passion; it frees it from alien admixtures and from points of view not pertaining to it; it holds it firmly before the Eye of Wisdom, by slowing down the transition from the receptive to the active phase of the perceptual or cognitive process, thus giving a vastly improved chance for close and dispassionate investigation.”

Bogen bygger på Satipatthana-suttaen – ja, endnu én af dem, kunne man jo indvende, men den her bog kom for første gang på engelsk i 1954 og er en klassiker, som har haft stor indflydelse på udbredelsen af vipassana i vesten. Joseph Goldstein fik den i hånden i 1966 fra en munk, som synes det var en god måde for ham at komme i gang med at meditere på:

“Ven. Nyanaponika describes in some detail the application of bare attention, the strengthening of four kinds of clear comprehension, and the foundational steps of meditation practice. What made all of this so transformative for me was understanding that mindfulness is not some esoteric, mystical state accessible to only a few but a down-to-earth quality of mind that I could touch and develop in my ordinary life.”

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation er skrevet af den tyskfødte munk Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994, født Siegmund Feniger). Han drog fra Europa til Sri Lanka i 1936, hvor han blev ordineret og var senere med til at stifte Buddhist Publication Society og stod i spidsen for det i tredive år.