Concentration book recommendations

I am teaching meditation at work and people have asked me for recommendations of clear books on concentration meditation. I have never been much to it myself, so I don't have any in my own bookshelf.

Thanks in advance!

Antero, have you checked out Culadasa's meditation manual for tranquility and insight? Extremely practical breakdown of the development of shamatha, and a free download to boot:

dharmatreasure.com/writings/

--Jake

I agree. I've have "Practicing the Jhanas" and "Focused and Fearless". They are both nice, but never got far with them. Culadasa's manual is superb and has a very nice mapping of the progression of concentration abilities with tips for what to do in each of them.

I've read both of these but not recently:

www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Bliss-Beyond-...id=1328301239&sr=1-5

www.amazon.com/Path-Serenity-Insight-Exp...id=1328301306&sr=1-7

Have a look at "beyond mindfulness in plain English"

I've read several of these. Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English (by Gunaratana) is great, as mumuwu said. It's written clearly and its instructions are very useful to anyone from a jhana virgin to an intermediate meditator looking to deepen the experience or access higher-numbered jhanas.

Also, your students could check out Who Is My Self by Ayya Khema, which is also clear and effective. However, it does not teach what we'd call "pure shamatha" -- Ayya Khema teaches only the unified shamatha-vipassana meditation, instead of teaching the two types separately. This book would be nice for students who are interested in that type of path, or for students with very shaky concentration who benefit from using pleasure as the doorway into jhana. Again, this one is for beginners and intermediate level meditators.

Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond is for the development of really hard jhana, or "superglue jhana" as I call it. Ajahn Brahm's method is very difficult to learn off-retreat, and I would not recommend it to a beginner. But if you had a student with access to medium-level jhana who wants to stabilize and deepen it, and they don't mind digging past the theravadan dogma, MBaB could be a wonderful "Intro to Advanced Jhana" text.

My 2 cents:

www.amazon.com/Stilling-Mind-Shamatha-Te...id=1328320945&sr=8-1

Thanks for all great suggestions, guys!

@Jake
I had not come across Culadasa's writings. After checking them out I think his clear and methodical style is really good for the beginners.

@Mumuwu
I had already recommeded my students Gunarata's Mindfulness in Plain English, but did not know this one. It seems like a perfect book for beginners.

Antero, given the pretty hard-core nature of the final stage of Shamatha in Culadasa's model, what would constitute an advanced concentration practice in your estimation?

(Or did you just mean that the manual presents the material in such a way as to be easily implemented by someone who's never sat before, for instance? I think that's the great thing about a meditation manual as opposed to a theoretical or descriptive work; it's oriented to practitioners and not particularly relevant to "coffee table buddhists" )

I guess from the point of view of Mahamudra or Dzogchen, even accomplishing the final stage of Shamatha is just a "beginning", or more precisely, just a *preparation* for beginning the actual practice-- so I guess your comment makes sense either way!

-Jake

Heh!

I meant the former, but I agree with you on the latter as well.