Customer Reviews

The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience

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Sally Kempton's pen hasn't lost its power since the days she wrote for Esquire and New York Magazine, and helped galvanize a generation. Now she's translated into the American idiom the understandings she's gleaned in three decades of inner exploration. I for one am very grateful to catch up with her again. Even if you don't have a Guru, and don't feel ready for one, it's great to feel the light of Kempton's intelligence and heart shining on these big questions, to hear her own personal take on time-honored strategies for plunging into the depths of Being. Once again, she's tapped into the zeitgeist.

I've been using this book as my meditation guidebook for about two years now. It has consistantly inspired me. My meditation practice has gone much deeper during this time, and I give a lot of the credit to the exercises and explanations in Sally Kempton's book. Ms Kempton (Swami Durgananda) writes from her own experience as a long-time meditator, and for me she was able to shed light on questions that I've not seen answered elsewhere. It also contains lovely quotes from great meditation masters of different traditions, and a great deal of well-presented knowledge from the texts of yoga and Kashmir Shaivism. This is a book to grow with, especially if you meditate in a kundalini-based tradition. i have never found a book that answered so many of my questions. Highly recommended.

I am a poet and editor who has maintained a daily practice of meditation for over twenty years, during the course of which I have naturally read a number of books on meditation. Sally Kempton's "The Heart of Meditation" is quite simply the finest book on Eastern Meditation by a Western writer that I have yet encountered.
The book is clearly the work of an author possesing
a rigorous, wide-raging intellect, a generous heart, and uncommon common sense. "Heart" is both elegant in its overall structure and eloquently written, its clear and simple prose informed by a literary sensibility that makes it as compulsively readable as a good novel. It is both comprehensive and concise in conveying the intellectrual and metaphysical underpinnings of the Yoga of meditation, both inspiring and consistently practical in guiding the reader along pathways to a deeper meditative expereience.
Fittingly, the book is also beautifully designed, its expansive and elegant format reflecting its content. I expect to be giving it this Christmas both to friends who have expressed an interest in beginning to meditate and to experienced practitioners.
There is so much to be said about this book. For brevity's sake, I will mention three points in particular.
First, this is not a book about how to feel better about yourself as a person, how to be more compassionate to your fellow man, how to tap the wellspring of your greativity,
how to be more effective in the worplace etc. (though it is likely to induce any or allo of the above as side-effects!) As the author makes clear from the outset, this is a book about self-exploration, about how to access the deeper levels of consciousness and joyful awareness that our our birthright but that elude many of us, about how to expand our understanding of ourselves and of our world. It is a book by an experienced adventurer, herself for many years the disciple of two highly regarded Yoga masters, that invites the reader to go on a similar adventure, and is a book that is in many ways an adventure in itself. It is a book that is relentlessly focussed on the goal of life's adventure, the fulfillment of the Socratic injunction "know thyself".
Secondly, this is a book rooted in the experience Of Yoga meditation that draws on the teachings of several prominent strains of the Hindu tradition. There are a number of excellent books by Western writers on the practice of Buddhist meditation, but none that I am aware of of comparative quality on Yoga meditation - until now. Though meditation is a universal phenomenon, there are very real differences in the approaches toward the practice of meditation emphasized by different schools. Kempton's book is rooted in the experience of Kundalini Yoga which uses a seker's inner energy, his or her innate divine effervescence, as a guide to a more profound experience of the self. Kempton expertly describes the often surprising "pathways" this energhy can take as it guodes the seeker within, and provides the context through which we can understand ther variegated subtle inner realms they can lead us through (and beyond).
Finally, and most importantly, the book provides an extaordinary wealth of information about how we can become creative and "unstuck" in our meditation practice. Let me give just one example. Early in the book Kempton points out that people have different characteristic styles of processing information - she mentions the visual, the auditory,the kinesthetic, and the conceptual-schematic as examples. Depensing upon one's predominant styles some routes to deep meditation will be more easier and more effective than others. Through reading this book I realized that I major in the kinesthetic and minor in the auditory. Most of my mefditative experiences have involved sensing energy in different subtle centerts in the body, particularly the heart and throat, the seat of love and imaginative insight; mantra repetition has intensified these sensations. This book has helped me to value my own style of meditation, which is particularly well suited to my work as a poet. It provides a wide range of techniques, some drawn scriptural tradition and others drawn from the author's experience and experimentation, that will enable any meditator to discover and focus upon what techniques work best for him or her. Some of these techniques have had a major impact on my own practice.
In sum, I believe that this book amply deserves to become a classic modern text on the theory and practice of meditation. I truly hope it will find its way to the many readers who willl surely benefit from it.

This book takes meditation several steps farther than the usual 'how to', and offers one of the clearest guides I've seen to the subtle practices of kundalini energy-based meditation. As a longtime meditator, I've read many books that tell you how to get into meditation, but this is one of the first I've seen that tells you how to proceed once you're there. People who are used to the vipassana style of meditation or some of the yogic approaches will be surprised by the emphasis on feeling and inner energetic sensations that the author takes here. The chapter on mantra, for instance, goes beyond the usual approach to mantra as a device for thought control, to discuss the energetic aspects of mantra. The chapter on working with thoughts gives a process for accessing the energy behind negative emotions that I found particularly helpful. This is a great book for people who want to expand their meditation experience.

I have read many many books on meditation and have participated in meditation retreats, classes and discussions. True to other writings of Sally Kempton, this book is one of the easiest and most concise teaching of mediation I have read.

Kempton's abundance of meditation experience combined with her skill as a writer and her ability to know what so many students of mediation and yoga are really looking for, make for a rare and precious combination in any teacher, let alone an author.

I urge anyone interested in mediation to read this book, if you don't recieve one answer or tool you were looking for I would be very suprised.

This book is amazing, and has made a real difference in my meditation. I've been meditating for ten years, and since I've been working with it my meditation has actually gone deeper--much to my own surprise! It came to me through a friend who has studied with the author, and who suggested I use it as a work book. That's what I do. I read the explanations, then do the exercises. One bonus: The book has a troubleshooting section with advice about how to deal with common obstacles that come up in meditatation.

If any book can teach meditation, and enable practicing meditators to deepen their practice, this is it. Swami Durgananda is an extraordinary meditation teacher with a great reputation among her students. She writes from deep experience, in a completely practical and accessible way. She is firmly grounded in one of the ancient spiritual traditions that gave rise to meditation, yet her method of teaching requires no beliefs -- just good will and the intention to learn. Best of all, she is completely familiar with the obstacles that meditators face, and offers simple ways to deal with each of them. If meditation is what you want, this is the one book to read.

I do not generally enjoy spiritual reading, but when I took a meditation class six months ago, "Heart of Meditation" was the recommended text.

This book is a delight. Wonderfully readable, warm and funny, it is full of sympathetic and practical advice. Swami Durgananda understands the challenges we face sitting down to quiet our minds, and provides page after page of engaging exercise, advice, and stories from her own practice to encourage us forward.

Whether I settle in for a long read or simply pick up "Heart of Meditation" up and page through, I always feel like I've had a visit with a warm and loving teacher, someone who has enriched my life and meditation practice. When I'm done, I get up with a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and gratitude.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to say "Thanks!"

Whether you are a beginner to meditation or have been doing it for a while, Sally Kempton's "The Heart of Meditation" will deepen your practice.
Written while she was still totally aligned with the Siddha Yoga school, the book's only distraction is the heavy Guru-worship mentioned throughout. This is not in and of itself a bad thing at all-I am sure it has transformed many-but it may give you the feeling, if you are not careful in your reading, that without the Guru you can make no major steps in deepening your practice. I am sure that is not Durgananda's intent.
The book offers stories and experiments that are simply delicious. If you are "struggling" with meditation, it is highly likely that the experience you were hoping for (an unfortunate distraction, but also the hook in meditation) will occur during one of the exercises or discussions. If you are not struggling, then you may be able to See something you had not Seen before.
I find most books on meditation either austere or esoteric/obscure. This book has depth, joy, and excitement all the way through. Reading this book will strongly encourage you to go forward with an open mind losing the "am I doing it right?" mentality once and for all.

In "Heartof Meditation" Sally Kempton has done an amazing job of covering every aspect of meditation in a clear and easy to relate to way. The book is filled with practical exercises and many different ways of breaking through obstacles for every personality type. It is also well seasoned with beautiful quotes from a variety of saints, poets and authors. I've been meditating for 22 years and have read a lot of books on meditation; this is the first that approaches the topic from a highly creative and playful position. A true gem!