Beginner's Guide To Meditation by Goswami Kriyananda

This is a gem of a book that I found randomly while at a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire. It's not a fancy-looking book but the narrative is both multi-disciplinary and transparent and it cleared up many of the confusions I had about the nature of meditation. I will share with you one of the stories that helped me the most.

Back in the days where biofeedback studies first started, they tested a group of students as well as Albert Einstein to measure the alpha wave activity of their brains during thought. Alpha wave activity is thought to be an indication of thoughtful concentration, whereas when not thinking about something the mind gives off a rest-state pattern. Well, they would ask the students simple math questions and the alpha wave patterns would go off as they thought about the question. But with Albert Einstein, they would ask him a very difficult question and no alpha wave state would go off. He would sit in silence for a few minutes, the biofeedback machine still showing a rest-state, and then the alpha waves would go off right before he spoke to give the answer.

The critical difference between Einstein and a normal student is that Einstein approached problems from a meditative state. He didn't intensely concentrate like the students, hence no alpha wave activity. He just calmly reflected on the problem and found a solution, and only when it came time to convert the answer into words was alpha wave activity necessary. The author of this book argues that this is the approach Buddhism urges one to take with all problems in life. The purpose of meditation is not to sit and chant mantras then go back to living like one has always done. You should over time be able to live and solve your problems in the meditative state -- to be able to tackle life's challenges with a calm and peaceful eye, to be aware without concentrating, and to let answers naturally come to you.

This has obvious similarities with Taoism, which urges a natural and easy approach to thinking about life's problems and "going with the flow" of one's mind instead of forcing things too much.