Brain Training with the Buddha: A Modern Path to Insight Based on the Ancient Foundations of Mindfulness

by Eric Harrison

Overview

The essential guide to training your brain for mindfulness—modern, science-based, and with no Buddhism required.

Publisher’s note: Brain Training with the Buddha was previously published in hardcover as The Foundations of Mindfulness.

Lifelong meditation teacher Eric Harrison intimately understands the benefits of mindfulness, from improved focus and better judgment to relaxation and inner peace. He’s helped tens of thousands of students to achieve these goals by rooting his practice in the Buddha’s original text on how to meditate and live mindfully: the Satipatthana Sutta.

Brain Training with the Buddha offers a secular perspective on this ancient wisdom that requires no familiarity with Buddhism itself—only openness to the Buddha’s original teachings. Harrison’s translation of this sutta (the first in modern English) comes with guidance for anyone looking to train their mind by applying its thirteen steps to mindful living today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615196197
Publisher:	The Experiment
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	319,431
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 5.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Eric Harrison was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1949. He graduated from Victoria University with a BA in English literature and music, and started his working life as a schoolteacher and journalist. Between 1974 and 1985 he spent a total of 18 months doing retreats in the Burmese, Tibetan, Zen, and yoga traditions. While he appreciated the opportunities to do long retreats, he found he had no appetite for Buddhism itself.

When Eric opened the Perth Meditation Centre in 1987, he chose to use secular, rational, and science-based language to explain meditation. He later supplemented his knowledge with five years’ study in biology, cognitive science, and Western philosophy. This approach made his work acceptable to the many doctors and psychologists who referred clients to him, and to corporations that have employed him since. He has now taught 30,000 people how to meditate, and his previous six books, including Teach Yourself to Meditate and The 5-Minute Meditator, have been translated into 14 languages.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Some Useful Terms 15

Part 1 The First Foundation: Mindfulness of the Body

1 The Standard Meditation Practice 19

2 Anxiety and the Overactive Mind 27

3 The Breath Meditation 34

4 The Miraculous Sigh 44

5 The Body Scan 50

6 Controlling Thought 63

7 Why Focus on the Body? 77

8 To Sit or Not to Sit 91

9 Mindful Action 101

10 A Journey into Open Monitoring 113

Part 2 The Satipatthana Sutta

11 An Overview of the Satipatthana Sutta 128

12 The Foundations of Mindfulness 133

13 The History of Translation 138

14 Sati: The Analysis of a Word 148

15 How the Sutta Works 165

Part 3 Other Foundations: Mindfulness of Emotion, Mindfulness of States of Mind, and Mindfulness of Thought

16 Emotion at the Atomic Level 179

17 Painful Emotion 193

18 States of Mind 202

19 Optimizing Emotion 216

20 Embodied Thought 232

21 Attention 246

22 Good Judgment 261

Part 4 Modern Applications of Mindfulness

23 The Scientific Evidence 277

24 The Story of Modern Mindfulness 288

25 The Modern Definition 299

26 Using the Language 308

Notes 315

References 322

Index 325

About the Author 330

Editorial Reviews

"The Satipatthana Sutta is one of the Buddha’s foundational teachings on mindfulness. This commentary by a staunchly non-Buddhist mindfulness teacher makes for a stimulating and, at times, provocative read."

David Michie

"A deeply engaging book which both Buddhist meditators and secular mindfulness practitioners around the globe will find useful. To help clarify mindfulness, Eric Harrison explores the relationships, overlaps, and divergences between western Buddhist meditation and secular mindfulness. Whatever your particular views and preferences on the subject, [Brain Training with the Buddha] will help you locate them. I also enjoyed Eric’s translation of the Satipatthana Sutta for its accessibility."

Sharon Salzberg

Brings clear thinking, practical wisdom, and welcome rigor to the widely popular concept of mindfulness.”—Publishers Weekly

“A deeply engaging book which both Buddhist meditators and secular mindfulness practitioners around the globe will find useful. To help clarify mindfulness, Eric Harrison explores the relationships, overlaps, and divergences between western Buddhist meditation and secular mindfulness. Whatever your particular views and preferences on the subject, [Brain Training with the Buddha] will help you locate them. I also enjoyed Eric's translation of the Satipatthana Sutta for its accessibility.”—Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

“The Satipatthana Sutta is one of the Buddha’s foundational teachings on mindfulness. This commentary by a staunchly non-Buddhist mindfulness teacher makes for a stimulating and, at times, provocative read.”—David Michie, author of The Dalai Lama’s Cat series and Mindfulness is Better Than Chocolate

From the Publisher