Shinzen Young is a rarity among meditation teachers. He is educated as a scholar in Buddhist studies and Asian languages. He lived as a Shingon monk in Japan, a branch of the Vajrayana school (a distant relative of Tibetan Buddhism), and has trained extensively in Zen and Theravadan Vipassana. Combine this with his studies of worldwide meditative traditions and you get a teacher with an extraordinary breadth and depth of experience and training, and decades of teaching experience. Shinzen is very articulate at describing meditation and spiritual practice with exceptional clarity. I have read many books by well-known teachers and I have attended several retreats. Yet, there were a few facets that were vague to me, but I didn't even realize it until Shinzen clarified it.

For example, "clear knowing" is a fundamental aspect of vipassana meditation. However, I understood what this meant much better after Shinzen explaining it as meaning a finer grained resolution of experience (e.g. the tiny microsensations that make up any larger bodily sensation), as well as discriminating clearly between the components of experience (seeing, hearing, feeling, mental talk, mental image, etc.). Concentration serves as an awareness-extending tool in the same way a microscope allows a biologist to see what was not apparent to the naked eye. Maybe his most famous formulation is Suffering = Pain x Resistance, where "pain" can be any form of distressing experience (sensations, emotion, or thoughts). Equanimity, then is non-resistance to these experiences. So, as we reduce our resistance, the pain may remain the same, but suffering is progressively reduced. These are classic concepts in meditative traditions, but here they are seamlessly integrated and placed in the broader context.

Shinzen further describes more subtle aspects of meditation practice and how these progress toward Enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a magical, mythological fiction, but in fact a real phenomenon, a shift in consciousness that happens to regular people who do sufficient and strategic practice, which greatly enhances a person's resilience, joy, wisdom, and compassion, magnifying their quality of life. Here is where the "science" part of the title really comes in. Shinzen is fascinated by the sciences and has a proficient understanding of them. He sees "spiritual" practice and science as two parallel but complementary human developments, where each can inform the other and collaborate. Ultimately the collaboration between these two endeavors may make enlightenment more accessible to a greater number of people, possibly changing the course of humanity for the better.

Much of the content of this book was released from his audio CD series, also called The Science of Enlightenment, which radically changed my understanding and practice. This text version is not a mere transcription of that series, however. It is updated with a lot of newer material.

For most of human history, a person who wanted to learn to meditate had one teacher who taught a single, unified approach, with a coherent set of practices and terminology. An American in the 21st century, however, faces a bewilderingly diverse array of traditions, each of which has its own practices and special terms. To complicate things further, many of these traditions use the *same* terms to mean different things and the same practices aimed at different goals.

Faced with this Tower of Babel, it's easy to superficially jump from one approach to another, not sticking with any practice long enough to make any meaningful progress. It's also easy to respond to this confusion by throwing one's hands in the air and simply giving up.

The value of this book is that it gives one a coherent mental framework with which understand all the world's meditation practices. This is the sense in which we can say the author presents a "science." Just as the scientific classification of animals equips a biologist to make sense of a newly-discovered species, this "scientific" classification of meditation practices equips one to make sense of the bewildering array of meditation practices they are likely to encounter in the modern "marketplace" of spiritual ideas.

The book has much to offer in addition to this, but this is the biggest payoff for a new reader in my opinion.

Shinzen Young's magnum opus. It describes awakening clearly, correctly, concisely, and precisely.

Shinzen describes what it actually feels like when you meditate. Whether you're meditating for the very first time, or whether you've done it for 50 years, he'll speak directly to you about what's going on in your practice. What's more, he makes it so simple and practical, a first grader could understand it.

If you want meditation to be more than just "relaxation practice"--in other words, if you want to change your life--get this book and follow the instructions. It's nothing complicated or fancy. It's just a set of skills. You practice happiness and clarity, and you get better at them. Just like cooking or running or painting or anything else. Shinzen shows you how to practice awakening.