Guided Meditations: For Calmness, Awareness, and Love

These three meditations from the Buddhist tradition will help you develop greater depths of calmness and self-awareness, and will help you to cultivate greater appreciation for yourself and lovingkindness for others.

As is traditional in Buddhism, these guided meditations do not contain musical accompaniment.

I found Bodhipaksays cd to be a breath of fresh air. His soft clear voice is perfect to lead meditations. He carefully sets up each meditation in easy to follow steps. This kind of clarity is only found with someone who has been doing something for a long time. It is easy to tell that Bodhipaksa is passionate about what he does. (Bodhipaksa is a member of the Western Buddhist Order, and has been a practicing Buddhist for eighteen years, and teaching meditation for more than a decade)

Relevant to todayys society, where the pace of life is way too fast, and stress is at an all time high. Relax and Rejuvenate with Bodhipaksa and this is guided meditation CD, it is like having your own private meditation teacher.
I can't wait for the book!!!

Wendy Aitken BSc BEd
Certified Kripalu Yoga Instructor
Reiki Master
Meditator


Great introduction to "classical" Buddhist meditation   September 1, 2004
Paula Tillen (Milwaukee, WI USA)
71 out of 73 found this review helpful

I'm a semi-experienced meditator in the "classical" (for want of a better term) tradition of mindfulness or Vipassana meditation. I've found Bodhipaksa's disc to be a wonderful way for beginners to learn to meditate, and for those who are experienced to become refocussed and more skilled. It's not necessary to be a Buddhist practitioner to enjoy and benefit from working with this disc, though. Anyone who is interested in establishing or deepening a practice will find it useful. It's very no-frills, gentle but austere. I would recommend it not for one who wants something nice and "relaxing" (in a new-agey kind of way), but for one who is serious about establishing a solid practice... which is not, after all, about relaxing and feeling good (although those are sometimes pleasant by-products), but about sharpening mental discipline and awareness.


Relaxing, but don't expect more   September 5, 2006
J. Saxon (Indian Trail, NC United States)
71 out of 74 found this review helpful

For folks who want to learn to truly meditate, there are better "tools", such as Sharon Salzberg's (Co-Founder of Insight Meditation Society) Insight Meditation: A Step by Step Course, which has two very good CD's and an excellent instruction manual. It's worth the price just for the CD's though. However, this is not to take anything away from a very sincere, and kind effort on the part of Bodhipaksa on this CD. For experienced meditators, you will find far too much voice and not enough silence. The CD is more of a hypnotic, relaxation inducing session (akin to hypnotherapy) with a lot of "suggestion" in terms of what you should experience or feel, and little or no "coaching" in awareness. This is certainly not a knock on the sincerity of the narrator and there is much benefit to be gained from this CD. It's more a question of skill level and what you wish from a meditation CD. If you simply want someone to guide you in relaxation while you suspend your attentive faculties, this works great. And, that is what I want at times! However, once you experience the awareness and insight aspects of meditation, you will actually see deep relaxation/drowsiness as a hindrance. (I know that is hard to believe, but true!) So, if you wish to become more skilled in Metta and/or Insight (Vipassana) meditation, then your safest and best bet is to seek out folks associated with the Insight Meditation Society or S.I. Goenka's network. Both of these organizations are highly successful, have long histories, have excellent reputations, and are strongly rooted in a long tradition. May you be happy and at ease.


A very good CD, but more geared toward those beginning meditation   January 5, 2007
Patrick D. Goonan (Pleasanton, CA)
51 out of 51 found this review helpful

I have been meditating for over 20 years and I teach meditation. In general, I follow the Buddhist Vipassana methods although I'm always open to learning new things. I bought this CD to check it out because I am always looking for new resources for people learning meditation.

This specific CD contains three basic meditations: mindfulness of breathing, loving-kindness and walking meditation. The first two are rather common to find, but instruction on walking meditation is a bit more unusual to find on audio.

I found all of the meditations to be simple, straightforward, uncomplicated by distracting music and well thought out. The first two do an excellent job of covering the basics and are quite good for a beginner. There are many fine points to both these meditations that one can learn later from a book such as MINDFULNESS WITH BREATHING by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu or Sharon Salzberg's book on Loving-Kindness Meditation.

I'm glad a walking meditation was included on this CD and I think this one is a good start. However, I felt this section of the CD could be better and include more instruction. There are many levels to walking meditation and perhaps the author felt it was most important to start somewhere and give people a simple practice to start.

I have found walking meditation to be particularly useful for busy Westerners and learning the various levels and fine points of this practice important. There are not a lot of audio resources for this information, but the Insight Meditation package by Salzberg and Goldstein does a pretty good job. However, their voices are not nearly as pleasant as Bodhipaksa. This additional instruction may help you to take your practice of walking meditation further, however.

Overall, I think is a very good CD and I would recommend to beginners particularly Westerners without reservation. At the same time, I would also recommend that beginners continue to grow and pick up additional resources as they progress particularly with respect to walking meditation.

I would like to mention that all of the meditations are a good length for beginners, easy to follow and stress basic points. For some beginners, thirty minute meditations may be a bit long, but you can always take the CD, learn the principles and practice any length you desire. A strong point of these CDs is there is not so much information that a beginning practitioner is not overwhelmed or trying to follow to many fine points where diminishing returns sets in.

I notice some people mentioned trouble falling asleep in other reviewers, this is a normal part of the struggle of learning to meditate. Focusing on upright posture, narrowing the attention in tighter to the object of concentration or openning the eyes briefly with a soft gaze can help at the beginning stages of practice. For people who still have trouble, 10-15 seconds of rapid breathing through the nose as described in pranayama yoga practices of Dr. Andrew Weil's tapes on breathing could also help.