The contemporary meditation emoji is not terribly dissimilar from what some people believe to be the early representations in meditation from the Indus Valley at least 4000 years ago. But beneath that simple external posture are a remarkable number of different approaches. Scratching the surface here—David Fontana's 1992 The Meditator's Handbook discusses at least 40 approaches, across both Eastern and Western traditions—we'll briefly—oh, ever so briefly—introduce a number of these, and while any one of the approaches can easily occupy one or more seven-day retreats, and mature practice can take years, and plenty of people have done both, we wish to get beyond the popular literature, up to and including slick magazines at CVS, invariably with a beautiful blissed-out young blond White woman on the cover.

Suggested reading:

• Ajahn Chah. "Nibbana is giving up, letting go, and being free." (Oct-2018: this is veering into practice but that's sort of unavoidable on this topic) https://www.lionsroar.com/nibbana-is-giving-up-letting-go-and-being-free/
• Leigh Brasington. "Entering the jhanas" (May-2017; also heading towards practice) https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-jhanas/
• Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson. "How meditation changes your brain—and your life." (May-2018) https://www.lionsroar.com/how-meditation-changes-your-brain-and-your-life/
• And you might not want to meditate: https://elemental.medium.com/why-mindfulness-backfires-for-some-people-abaad2795e16

Link to slides from talk (PDF)

Other resources

Note: The popular literature on meditation is now vast, up to and including slick magazines at CVS, and invariably with a beautiful blissed-out young blond White woman on the cover. Since the focus of this course is not on practice, the list below covers just a few of the more influential and/or specialized texts.

• Guy Armstrong. Emptiness: A Practical Guide for Meditators.(2017)
• Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. Mindfulness in Plain English (1992) (Affectionately known as Bhante G., he is the abbot of the Bhavana Society, a monastery and meditation retreat center that he founded in High View, West Virginia, relatively close to here, and highly influential in Theravadan practice in the US.)
• Stephan Bodian. Meditation for Dummies. (2016) (I include this simply to note that it's actually pretty good.)
• Tara Brach. True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (2013)
• Leigh Brasington. Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. (2015) (also see the extensive resources on Brasington's web site: http://www.leighb.com/.
• Brasington's stump speech at UVA: https://www.shambhala.com/videos/leigh-brasington-on-the-jhanas/
• Pema Chödrön. When Things Fall Apart (1997)
• David Fontana. The Meditator's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Eastern and Western Meditation Techniques (1992)
• Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson . Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. (2017)
• Video of talk at, of course, Google corporate headquarters\—they're very much into "mind hacking" out there...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFa34u1hqw
• Jon Kabat-Zinn. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. (1994)
• Sharon Salzburg. Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995)
• Richard Shankman. The Experience of Samadhi (2008)
• Thera, Nyanaponika (1954), The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. (1954). (Arguably the single most important early book on Theravadan satipatthana meditation by a European\—the author was born in Germany in 1901 but was ordained and lived in Sri Lanka from 1936 to his death in 1957; his importance was such that his state funeral attended by the prime minister of Sri Lanka.)
• Rod Meade Sperry and the editors of Lion's Roar. A Beginner's Guide to Meditation (2014)