Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

I wouldn’t normally go for a book with a so-obviously self-helpy title like Real Happiness, but I’ve been practicing meditation for several years now, and I’ve tried to read books on this from a number of perspectives: Buddhism, where the long-term knowledge is; Christian contemplation, which is my background; and secular contemplation, which doesn’t try to align itself with any particular religious trandition. I’ve also read some of Sharon Salzberg’s posts on the On Being blog, so I went ahead and got this short book.

And it turned out to be excellent. It’s a great introduction/refresher on different kinds of meditation. It takes four weeks, and each week it focuses on different things (breath and starting over, the body, though and emotions, and lovingkindness). It gives you and overview of what meditation does for those areas and how to meditate in a way that pays attention to those areas.