How to Get into Buddhism and Meditation
3 things you can do to establish a meditation practice and a list of good books on Buddhism to read
I read my first book on Buddhism and meditation book in 2015 (a quick but potent read, The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh). Since then, I’ve read dozens more, established a daily mediation practice, and transformed my life in ways I didn’t think were possible.
I keep getting asked for book recommendations and meditation practice tips from people, so I put this post together of my top recommendations of my favourite books on Buddhism and meditation for beginners. Eventually, I’ll write more about specific Buddhism books, styles, and teachers that I’ve found helpful.
How to get into Buddhism and meditation
There are really only three things you need to do to get into Buddhism and give mediation a fair go. Do these three things for at least 8 weeks in a row, then see what the results (if any) there are in your life. These are the 3 tips my meditation teacher gave me, and helped me build habits that I maintain today.
1. Sit every day
Sit at the same time every day. I was so fidgety at first I couldn’t focus on my breath for more than a few seconds. Doesn’t matter, sit down, shut up. You’re building a new habit. Treat it like an experiment. Sit every day for 6 weeks, then asses if it’s working for you or not– not before.
Eventually, since I was sitting there anyways, I started to practice mindfulness. Momentum built from there. Consistency is more important than duration. Start with 5 mins a day, eg. after you brush your teeth. Add 5 mins per sit every few weeks. Today I sit between 30/45 mins a day, 1–2 times a day (after waking up and just before bed). Use one of the primers below to learn the basic techniques: mindfulness of breathing, counting meditation, and body scan.
2. Read dharma
‘Dharma’ in this sense, means any teachings, philosophy, or meditation practice manuals that convey the historical Buddha’s teachings to help you transform emotional reactivity (aka suffering) and cultivate the faculty of attention. When I started, I read all the books I could find.
There are a ton of books on Buddhism out there, some are packed with deep insights and actionable practices, others are new age-y and bogged down with sappy emotional platitudes. I will write more about books in the future, for now I’ve included my recommendations below.
3. Find a local meditation group
Search for your city + meditation and scope out some local groups to practice with. Like the contemporary Western dharma books, there’s a wide spectrum of quality when it comes to Buddhist meditation groups. Experiment. Visit as many groups as you can, once or twice to get a feel for them.
Talk to other people when you’re there, before or after. If there’s a teacher, definitely talk to them–the teacher is crucial to get to know, and will be a good measure for the group. Every group has a different energy and atmosphere. You won’t gel with all of them. When you find one you like, sit with the group once a week.
How to meditate: 2 practical (secular) primers:
Recommended Reading
Here are some of the best Western Buddhist books I read when I got started:
- Waking Up — by Sam Harris (check out Sam’s entire Eastern Philosophy & Meditation reading list, and his excellent meditation app)
- Sit Down, Shut Up & Hardcore Zen — by Brad Warner (Check out Brad’s blog and his youtube channel, love his style)
- Full Catastrophe Living — by Jon “Godfather of MBSR” Kabat-Zinn
- Mindfulness (In Plain English) — by Henepola Gunaratana
- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind — by Suzuki Roshi
- The Mind Illuminated — by John Yeats, PHD
- When Things Fall Apart — by Pema Chödron
- Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior — by Chogyam Trungpa
- Thoughts Without a Thinker — by Mark Epstein, M.D.
- The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching — by Thich Nhat Hanh
Then there’s Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention — by Ken McLeod*
*Ken’s book describes the Buddhist path to attention, and reading it restructured the way I experience and live my life. It’s clarity and concision deeply unsettled me the first time I tried to read it, so I left it. I’ve since kept coming back to it again and again. The practices in it are detailed, pragmatic and designed specifically for Western audience.
Most modern meditation books deconstruct ancient Buddhist practices and present them in a secular, scientific/medical context. Which is fine. Some Western teachers, like Ken, go straight to the source material and translate it into comprehensible language, which is extremely rare to find in a modern Western teacher because it’s so difficult to do.
Ken is able to do this because he was taught by one of the last great Tibetan masters of the 21st Century (Kalu Rinpoche), he’s practised the methods in their original forms and language (including two 3-year retreats), for close to fifty years, and he’s devoted his live since the early 90s to translating and transposing what he’s learned into a distinct Western idiom.
Ken’s teaching style is direct, clear and has helped me see how my reactive patterns of mind (thoughts, words and actions) keep me spinning my wheels–stuck. Since I started training with one of Ken’s students two years ago, I’ve overcome ADHD, found a career, and grown my ability to navigate difficult life-events (family deaths, family addiction, physical health issues, chronic debt, etc) without running away or ignoring.
Ken’s podcasts are also extremely accessible and packed with helpful insights, methods, and instructions that you can use and test in your life. He has a few hundred episodes here.
“Buddhism is fundamentally a set of methods through which we wake up to what we are and stop the cycle that generates and reinforces suffering. The forms Buddhism has taken in many cultures, including our own, may suggest that it is a religion. It is not.
Buddhism is a collection of methods for waking up from confusion. Over centuries, the original methods were developed, refined, and expanded. Buddhism is fraught with schools of philosophy, cosmological descriptions of the world, and moral and ethical systems, including the various lay and monastic traditions, esoteric initiation systems, energy transformation methods, devotional practices, mindfulness practices, ways to cultivate compassion, pointing-out instructions for insight, elaborate visualization practices based on deities, and meditations on the ultimate nature of being.
We can easily lose our way in all these elaborations. If we forget that the purpose of practice is to move out of the reactive patterns that create suffering, we miss the whole point. All the philosophies, worldviews, ethical systems, practices, and rituals have only one intention: to wake us up from the sleep in which we dream that we are separate from what we experience.”
— Ken McLeod, from Wake Up to Your Life
