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Journey to the Center: A Meditation Workbook

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In Journey to the Center, Matthew Flickstein guides the reader step-by-step through a path to spiritual awakening that was mapped by the Buddha 2500 years ago. Written in straight-forward, practical terms, and with great clarity, this book provides the reader with the tools to chart his or her own personal journey through actual experience and contemplation by following the suggestions and exercises offered at each step along the way. Unlike books that keep you "in your head", this book offers the opportunity to experience what is being discussed, so that a firm foundation can be laid for a deep understanding of the nature of all phenomena and the freedom that awaits us at the end of our journey, where "we can finally claim what has always been ours from the start." In the form of a workbook, it provides space to record and journal your experiences. This allows guidance and insight to emerge from the best teacher of all, the one that resides within. This book is unique among meditation guides and I highly recommend it.

Occasionally a book comes along that opens doors for its readers, a book that changes lives. The quality that books of this import often share is simplicity--the ability to present deep understandings in a way that is approachable, easy to grasp. and grounded in the well-worn workings of our everyday lives. Journey to the Center is such a book. There is no esoterica, no mystery, instead the gift of clarity is taught in a quiet, humor-filled, stepwise approach that tunes us bit by bit to the here and now. The book begins with a question--who are we beyond our self definitions? With the ten oxherding drawings from the Zen tradition as a framing metaphor, the reader is led through successive sets of meditation instructions that initiate the process of answering that question. Each set of instructions is linked to an oxherding drawing that metaphorically depicts each step of the Way. Flickstein also gives us an insight to work with that is associated with each stage. Insights are articulated to draw us gently deeper into our journey, to help us look carefully at the assumptive underpinnings of our beliefs so that they become conscious and not merely automatic. It is our unconscious material, our automatic reactions to life's situations, Flickstein maintains, that create stress and difficulty in our lives. But reading this book is not only about discovering the subtle threads of awakening in our lives. There is a homey story-telling style and a warmth permeating these pages that is a pleasure to read. This is the Satthipathana Sutta of the Buddha, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, brought to life with teaching tales from many traditions, riddles, homey wisdom, and best of all, a beacon-like clarity that pushes the in-your-face directness of freedom into view. As Flickstein delights in pointing out, it was there all along. To illustrate the point of how we miss the obvious source of our inner wealth by becoming mired in external information, he tells the story of a poor man, dressed in rags, who every day leads a donkey across the border from one kingdom to another. The border guards suspect that he is smuggling something so each day as the man passes they carefully search the donkey's saddlebags. Each day they find nothing but straw. The man begins to dress in finer clothing, he moves into a larger house. The border guards resolve to look more closely because now they are almost certain that the man is smuggling something. But daily as they search the saddlebags, they still come up with only straw. Finally, a border guard retires. He runs into the man and says, "Look, I've retired. I can no longer hurt you. Please tell me what you have been smuggling bacause I know it was something!" The man replies, "Because I know that you can no longer arrest me, I will tell you. I was smuggling donkeys." In this gentle, folksey way, Flickstein is pointing us toward the most obvious source of freedom, that it is not changing the content of what we think that gives us inner freedom, but rather placing our attention on "how" we think. Journey to the Center is destined to become a classic in the Insight Meditation tradition. It will become a sourcebook for meditators like Joseph Goldstein's The Experience of Insight, or the clear and definitive work written by Flickstein's own teacher Bante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English. As Bante G Himself says in the book's preface, "This is not another book that you read passively--as if reading a novel curled up in a chair. This book invites you to put what you read into action. It is the kind of book that can change your life and point you toward greater peace and happiness"--the peace and happiness that is here all along.

Of the hundreds of manuals, articles, books and lectures designed to improve our psyche, this is the most practical, easy-to-read self improvement book I have ever come across. As a stress management therapist I plan to put this book on the top of my suggested reading list for my patients. Matthew Flickstein has taken the elusive, frustrating and confusing search for lasting happiness and points us in a direction unseen before. It's like a caterpillar confined to its 2 dimensional flat world suddenly grows wings and takes flight into another dimension. Flickstein shows us we've been looking in the wrong direction all along.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams that everything that we do is motivated by making pain less. This is why people follow the path of the Buddha or eat ice cream on a hot day. To reduce pain. Matthew Flickstein is a psychotherapist carrying a big stick in this book. The greatest classic in Insight Meditation is "Mindfulness in Plain English" by the Ven. Henepola Gunaratana. The preface to this book is written by him and it is full of accolades for this man and his work. So let's cut to the chase. Flickstein, Tara Bennett-Goleman , and Jack Kornfield hypothesize that NO MATTER HOW MANY HOURS YOU MEDITATE - IT WON'T DO ANY GOOD IF PAST ISSUES ARE NOT RESOLVED! As you can imagine, if this is true, a lot of people are wasting their time. Here is a quote from this book. Page 58. "This phenomena is similar to what happens during the sport of bungee jumping...the jumper falls through space, the bungee cord stretches to its fullest extent, then snaps back, taking the individual along with it. Similarily, if we jump into the context level of our minds without having dealt with our content issues, we can only go so far before we are snapped back by the issues to which we are emotionally tied." Flickstein explains that contextual issues are Insight Meditation. And content issues involve incidents in our past which simply cannot be resolved by meditation. But they can be resolved by exercises. I did the first exercises. I imagined my father coming into a room and I forgive him. We talk according to an algorhtym that Matthew has designed. And this exercise is supposed to resolve content issues. Today, I did the visualiztion exercise with my mother. I don't feel any different. But Matthew doesn't tell the reader whether he or she should do the exercise once, or five hundred times. The authour also states that low self-esteem is caused by faulty programming in the past. Both Zopa Rinpoche and Paramahansa Yogananda state that low self-esteem can be cured by helping and loving others. First. Then the self-esteem follows. The author wants you to sit for 45 to 60 minutes daily doing Insight Mreditation which deals with your contextual issues. Then he asks you to keep a journal in order to deal with your past "content" issues. But why would you even do Insight Meditation if it does very little good? If your past issues are not yet resolved? Matthew? Where are you?

A good workbook to help you come to terms with yourself and Buddhism.

Mathew Flickstein presemts a concise and accessible version on the practice of Vipassana meditation of the technical explanation found in the Visuddhimagga, the standard commentary on the Buddha's teachings. He presents a fresh and contemporary presentation of a profound ancient teaching. Provides a practitioner with the easily comprehensible guidepost, very helpful for one on the Path to the attainment of liberation.

For beginning enthusiast to the practiced, this book will support wherever you may be on your journey.