Abiding in Emptiness: A Guide for Meditative Practice

Meditation teacher Anā layo (The Signless and the Deathless) presents a wise if somewhat esoteric exploration of emptiness and its relation to Buddhist tradition. Drawing​​ on two texts from the Pā li Buddhist canon (the Greater and Smaller Discourses on Emptiness), Anā layo considers emptiness as it relates to the formal practice of meditation, daily life, seclusion, the earth, infinite space, infinite consciousness, signlessness, and nirvana. For each topic, he interprets a relevant Discourses passage to distill its core concepts and provide practice instructions. (Readers may find the latter most pertinent, though some instructions may be easier to follow than others: for example, the chapter on infinite consciousness asks readers to avoid distraction by “directing attention to the knowing part of the mind, which by dint of its receptive nature is not involved in the agitation created by... mental activity”). Anā layo reminds readers that even when it comes to meditation, they should avoid “clinging to any of the resultant experiences by appropriating them as ‘ours,’ ” because the practice is “not about getting something but about shedding something” and “opening the heart.” The author’s erudition impresses, and while there’s a lot to sift through, readers will find plenty of gems (“Distracted thinking can become an integral part of the meditative experience... insofar as recognition of its occurrence provides an occasion for exploring and better understanding the way” the self operates). Those with a background in Buddhism will get the most out of this rigorous guide. (Mar.)