The Healing Power of Meditation

Synopsis

Meditation has developed from a New Age novelty into a powerful tool for alleviating suffering in the modern world. The book shares profound insights on meditation and the mind from the heart of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and reveals some of the very latest scientific evidence showing meditation's potential to benefit a wide range of people in surprising ways.

Once a symbol of the counterculture, meditation is now a household word, routinely discussed in the media, used by the advertising industry to promote all kinds of products and lifestyle choices, and practiced in its various forms—both spiritual and secular—by millions of people across the planet.

Ask the pioneering contributors to this book where they think all of this will lead, and they describe a not-too-distant future in which meditation is practiced as a matter of course in schools, hospitals, hospices, retirement homes, offices, jails, and households around the world—not in the name of any particular religion or belief system, but simply because it is good for us. The one who put meditation on the map 2,500 years ago, the Buddha himself, would no doubt be very happy indeed.

Contributors:

   • Dr. Frédéric Rosenfeld—The Benefits of Meditation: A Scientific Reality
   • Sogyal Rinpoche—The Buddhist Approach to Understanding the Mind and Meditation
   • Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn—Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Medicine and Psychiatry
   • Dr. Clifford Saron—Training the Mind: The Shamatha Project
   • Dr. Sara Lazar—Meditation and Neuroscience
   • Dr. Erika Rosenberg—Meditation and Emotion
   • Dr Lucio Bizzini—Therapeutic Applications of Meditation (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy)
   • Dr. Edel Maex—Therapeutic Applications of Meditation (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction)
   • Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche—Meditation Methods in the Buddhist Tradition
   • Rosamund Oliver—Being Present When We Care
   • Ursula Bates—Mindfulness in the Public Health Service in Ireland
   • Dr. Cathy Blanc—Meditation as a Means of Taking Care