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Contemplative Practice Meditation and its relatives, taught plainly and with the evidence at its real strength: how to sit, what the trials do and do not show, adverse effects, metta, RAIN, the Stoic exercises, the examen, gratitude, breath techniques, silence, and how to choose a teacher.
45 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Mindfulness in Plain English · Bhante Henepola Gunaratana The best first book on how to actually sit: posture, the breath, what to do with thoughts, and a chapter on each hindrance. Traditional Theravada, written without jargon. Start here. 02 Book Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body · Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson The evidence review by two researchers who also practise. They sort thousands of studies down to the few that meet a high bar, separate states from traits, and say plainly where the hype outran the data. 03 Paper Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis · Madhav Goyal et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014 The reference point for what mindfulness programmes do for anxiety, depression, and pain, and what they do not. The abstract and the summary table are enough. 04 Book Wherever You Go, There You Are · Jon Kabat-Zinn Short chapters on bringing attention into ordinary life, from the person who built the secular mindfulness course. Secular, gentle, and the source of the standard definition. 05 Book Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation · Sharon Salzberg A 28-day programme that covers breath, body, loving-kindness, and daily life in the order a beginner needs them. The clearest instructions for metta practice in print. Traditional roots, secular presentation. 06 Book Why Buddhism Is True · Robert Wright Insight practice explained through evolutionary psychology: why feelings mislead, what impermanence and non-self look like from the cushion, and why the claims hold up without the cosmology. Secular, and honest about what it leaves out. 07 Book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy · William Irvine The Stoic exercises as a practice manual rather than a history: negative visualisation, the dichotomy of control, and the evening review, with the sources. The philosophy deck has the arguments; this is the gym. 08 Book Radical Acceptance · Tara Brach Where RAIN and the practice of sitting with difficult emotion are set out for a general reader, by a psychologist and meditation teacher. Secular in tone, Buddhist in lineage; her later book Radical Compassion is entirely about RAIN. 