Mindfulness Books: Reviewed

 I posted a few weeks ago about reading some new books on mindfulness and meditation: Start Here Now by Susan Piver and Start Here, Start Now by Buhante Gunaratana. Both were short and small, making them fast reads. Indeed, I finished the first one two days after picking it up, probably a new record for my adult life. 

Overall, I found them both interesting, but not entirely relevant. I don't intend to get into Buddhism meditation in a strict way, so the first one was a nice intro to one specific kind of meditation, it wasn't really what I was looking for. The second was a littler more generalized and I found it more useful. It wasn't as strict, but still incorporated a lot of aspects of Buddhist meditation. I enjoyed some of the helpful hints to improve meditation.

Overall, I'd like to continue to develop my meditation. Both of these books talked about longer periods of meditation than I usually do (I'm at about 5 minutes a day), and one even had the outline of a whole weekend "retreat" at home to explore meditation. While I certainly don't have a whole weekend to dedicate to meditation, I think that maybe working up to 10-15 minutes a day is a worthwhile goal.

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