October 2023 MBR The Buddhist Studies Shelf

The Buddhist Studies Shelf

Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha's Company
Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer
Precocity Press
9798987776674, $15.95

https://www.amazon.com/Reflective-Meditation-Cultivating-Kindness-Curiosity/dp/B0C6BWWCCZ

Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha's Company encourages and provokes the concepts of conversation and reflective meditation. This offers a different perspective and approach to not just enlightened thinking and feeling, but dialogue.

A fine prologue synthesizes the practice's results by narrating the experience of Kim Henderson, who observed her good friend Linda Modaro's immersion in a practice she called 'recollective awareness'.

As Kim observed the impact and life-altering results of this meditative process, she was encouraged by her friend to pursue the practice through mentor Nelly Kaufer, a fellow recollective awareness meditation teacher and the founder of Pine Street Sangha in Portland, Oregon.

The candid story of how this initial observation and interest turned into participation in an easy, yet life-changing experience, opens with an introduction that informs spiritual seekers about the opportunities and processes of a different form of meditation.

The first unusual aspect to this approach is the authors' collaborative focus on the meditative experience. They gather the voices and insights of others around them, sharing collective wisdom in an accessible and lively manner. The dialogue portion of the practice is just as essential for understanding and success as the meditative process itself. Conversations about experience, intention, mindfulness, and more permeate insights about the bigger-picture thinking meditation can unfold in a dance of mental origami.

From considerations of Buddhist concepts of vulnerability and suffering to how meditators grapple with challenging characteristics of existence and experience, Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer craft a dialogue of possibilities that ultimately transcends much of the average reader's concepts of what meditative practices can reveal.

The result is a powerful dialogue that, in turn, deserves not just library acquisition and individual thought, but hopefully results in conversations and interactions among different types of communities as thinkers, spiritual seekers, teachers, and ordinary people come together to explore elements of growth and kindness in their lives, and its incarnation in the world.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. We accept no funds from authors or publishers. Full permission is given to post any of these reviews on thematically appropriate websites, newsgroups, listserves, internet discussion groups, organizational newsletters, or to interested individuals. Please give the Midwest Book Review a credit line when doing so.

The Midwest Book Review publishes the monthly book review magazines "California Bookwatch", "Internet Bookwatch", "Children's Bookwatch", "MBR Bookwatch", "Reviewer's Bookwatch", and "Small Press Bookwatch". All are available for free on the Midwest Book Review website at www (dot) midwestbookreview (dot) com

Anyone wanting to submit books for review consideration can send them to:

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129

To submit reviews of any fiction or non-fiction books, email them to Frugalmuse (at) aol (dot) com (Be sure to include the book title, author, publisher, publisher address, publisher website/phone number, 13-digit ISBN number, and list price).

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review