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The book opens with an interview. Questions, quite penetrating questions that many people would like to ask about Vipassana, are raised by interviewer Alan Atkisson who tells us at the time of the interview that he has not ever experienced Vipassana. The interviewee is S N Goenka.
A starting point for many, as in this interview, is how to deal with so many points of view in the world? How to make sense of so many spiritual paths? Is it or is it not a case of “anything goes”?
S N Goenka answers by showing how differences arise between people and groups only at the intellectual level. By the practice of purifying the mind a person can remove the fog of confusions and begin to see nature as it really is; it is at the experiential level that a person can begin to truly understand points of view, not otherwise.
In the chapters that follow, S N Goenka discourses on Vipassana meditation both from the standpoint of issues that arise in meditation itself, and also from the standpoint of the same issues as they arise in life and society. How one handles both are in fact one and the same thing; this is the application of natural insight within oneself and in ones relations with the world at large.
This book is an insight-provoking source both for those who have already experienced Vipassana and who wish to reflect on their practice, and for those who have not and would like to get a feel for how this technique really works in meditative practice and in life.
Contents:
- S N Goenka: A Teacher for the World
- Vipassana Meditation and the Laws of Nature: An Interview with S N Goenka by Alan Atkisson
- Essays by S N Goenka
- The Universal Message of Peace: Address to the Millennium World Peace Summit, August, 2002
- The Meaning of Happiness
- Religion
- Anger
- The Art of Living
- How to Defend the Republic
- Awareness of Natural Respiration
- Walk the Path Yourself
- The Importance of Daily Meditation
- Awaken in Wisdom
- The Essence of Wisdom
- Work Out Your Own Salvation
- Freedom from Addiction
- The Merits of Dana
- List of Vipassana Meditation Centres
- Publications of Vipassana Research Institute
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