This is my go-to book for necessary and sufficient information related to mindfulness practice. I'm not sure that is because the essays are clear, easy to read, and cover the essential ideas surrounding skillful practice, or simply that I attended Gil's talks in Palo Alto twice a week in the 1990s and went on retreats with Gil and his colleagues. Perhaps it's because, true to the message it contains, it is offered for free.The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice, Gil Fronsdal, Insight Meditation Center, 2008, 160 pages (original pub date 2001)
- GoodReads page info and links to Kindle ($3), Paperback ($16), etc.
- the entire book as a single PDF file from the Insight Meditation Center for free
The essays in this book grew from transcriptions of talks Gil Fronsdal gave to the Insight Meditation Center group that then met twice weekly at the Quaker meeting hall in Palo Alto, California, not far from its now permanent home in Redwood City.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
how it works
Many of us have hearts that are encrusted with anxieties, fears, aversions, sorrows, and an array of defensive armor. The non-reactive and accepting awareness of mindfulness will help to dissolve these crusts. The practice has a cyclic quality; it is self-reinforcing. At first, the practice will allow us to let go of a small amount of defensiveness. That release allows a corresponding amount of openness and tender-heartedness to show itself. This process encourages us to drop even more armor. Slowly, a greater sense of heartfeltness supports the further development of mindfulness.
As our neurotic thought patterns drop away, layers of judgment and resistance atrophy, and the need to define our selves through hard-held identities relaxes. As this happens, the natural goodness of the heart shines by itself.
The impulses to be aware, happy, compassionate, and free, all come from the goodness of our hearts. As we connect to these intentions and allow them to motivate our mindfulness practice, the practice becomes heartfelt.
about intention
The Buddha said, “What I call karma is intention.” In other words, the teaching of karma is about the intentional choices we make in the present. The present moment is to be appreciated mindfully and relaxed into, as we do in meditation. But it is also where we choose how to step forward into the next moment. The more clearly we see the choice, the greater the freedom and creativity we have in making it.
The present moment is partly the result of our choices in the past and partly the result of our choices unfolding in the present. Our experience of the next moment, the next day, the next decade, is shaped by the choices we make in relationship to where we find ourselves right now. Intended acts of body, speech and mind have consequences; taking these consequences into account offers important guidance in our choices for action.
But these consequences are not fixed or mechanical. Intended actions tend toward certain consequences. After all, the interactive field of causality is immense. Sometimes the consequences of our intended actions are submerged in the wide ocean of cause and effect. But, even so, the world tends to respond in a certain way if we act with intentions of greed, hatred or delusion. It tends to respond very differently if we act with motivations of friendliness, generosity, and kindness