Beginner's Guide to Buddhist Meditation: Practices for Mindful Living

Despite its visually interesting layout and 100 color photographs, this book, by a veteran meditator and author, adds nothing distinctive to the crowded meditation bookshelf. Aimed at beginners, it's long on the promises of meditation. Meditators will become calm, clear, compassionate, sensitive, patient and aware. What's not to want about these admirable qualities? Yet Feldman is not very specific about how to get there from here. In posture instruction, for example, which is square one for beginners, the direction "Let your hands rest on your legs or together" is neither specific nor elaborate enough. Feldman's vague language doesn't translate well to paper; such statements as "Awareness is the cultivation of intimacy in each moment" exemplify meditation buzzwords. This gift book relies heavily on evocative generic pictures, showing thin, attractive people between the ages of 20 and 30, a majority of them females sporting funky jewelry and yoga wear and looking tranquil by idyllic rocks and water. Meditation is antithetical to instant results, but it also requires more depth than this to motivate a beginner. (Oct. 28)