Table Of ContentTHE MEDITATOR'S HANDBOOK
Dr David Fontana is a psychologist with many years experience of studying and teaching meditation
in a wide range of Eastern and Western traditions. He is the author of more than 20 books on many
aspects of psychology, dreams and meditation, which together have been translated into 25
languages. Currently he holds a professorship in transpersonal psychology at Liverpool John Moores
University and is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Cardiff Wales.
Titles by the same author
The Elements of Meditation
Growing Together
Space in Mind (edited with John Crook)
Know Who You Are, Be What You Want
Teach Yourself to Dream
Teaching Meditation to Children (with Ingrid Slack)
The Lotus in the City
The Secret Language of Symbols
New Perspectives: Meditation
THE MEDITATOR'S HANDBOOK
A COMPLETE GUIDE TO EASTERN AND WESTERN TECHNIQUES
DR DAVID FONTANA
Foreword by Professor Michael West
Thorsons
To the memory of Carl Jung, psychologist, meditator,
mystic and explorer extraordinary of the human spirit
Thorsons
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The Thorsons website address is: www.thorsons.com
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and Thorsons
are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
First published by Element Books 1992
Reprinted 1993 (twice), 1994 (twice), 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999
This edition published by Thorsons 2002
13579108642
© Dr David Fontana 1992
Dr David Fontana asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 00 713309 X
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Martins the Printers Limited, Berwick upon Tweed
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Contents
Foreword by Professor Michael West vi
Introduction xi
1 Who am I? The Exploration of the Inner World 1
2 Why Meditation? 17
3 Concentration, Tranquillity, Insight 36
4 Stillness Meditation: Stopping the Mind 56
5 Flowing Meditation I: Inner Voice and 85
6 Flowing Meditation II: The World of the Shaman 108
7 Visualization: A Key to the Inner World 126
8 Subjective Meditation: Knowing Your Own Mind 146
9 Objective Meditation I: The Mysteries of Life and Death 178
10 Objective Meditation II: Form and Formlessness 210
11 Conclusion 233
References and Further Reading 237
Index 242
Foreword
There is enormous turbulence on the surface of the earth. Yet at the same
time most of us experience in our day-to-day relationships the closeness,
warmth, trust, honesty and generosity which is characteristic of individuals
in their behaviour towards each other. It often seems as though collectively
we are unable to manage the way we live, but at an individual level it is
clear that there are good intentions and that there is great morality in human
behaviour. One solution that people have adopted over the ages, in trying to
manage the demands and challenges of living, is to turn to the world
religions. But even here cynicism has grown about the extent to which they
too have been responsible for increasing destruction, terror and war, rather
than solving the problems which face us.
Meditation is a practice which, across traditions, is intended to still the
turbulence of our outer and inner lives, and to create harmony between the
individual and his or her social, spiritual and even metaphysical world. It is
a practice, not necessarily based on belief, which ultimately may produce
still completeness within us and on the surface of our lives. It is a practice
which spans religions and secular traditions. It offers stillness,
understanding, freedom and tranquillity.
viii The Meditator's Handbook
David Fontana's book, simply titled The Meditator's Handbook, is no
small undertaking and its title perhaps belies its important aims. The book aims
to provide an introductory guide to the place of meditation in all of the great
and many of the lesser traditions of human society, through history, across
nations and across philosophical traditions. It is, in that sense, a guide to the
many alternative meditation practices which exist for attempting to cope with
the turbulence which we have created in our individual lives and in our world.
But what is meditation? This simple question is very difficult to answer,
simply because meditation spans so many traditions. Over the years I have read
accounts of the meditative traditions in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism,
Christianity and in Shamanism. My experience has been that, after a little time
of reading or study, my eyes glaze over as I find myself slipping beneath the
waves of obfuscation that advanced scholars, either advertently or
inadvertently, create for the swimmer in their rarely charted waters. Much of
the writing about meditation in different traditions is so obscure for the naive
reader that it becomes almost impossible to understand the nature of the
practice, the purpose of meditation and how it relates to the broader spiritual
context within which it is taught. Consequently, confusion rather than
understanding, and turmoil rather than stillness, are created. One has a sense,
sometimes of scholars so enamoured of their own understanding of a particular
tradition that they mystify this understanding to maintain their ascendency over
the naive reader or aspiring scholar. None of these accusations can be levelled
against David Fontana in this enlightening book.
The book is a guide which takes the reader gently by the hand and
walks him or her through vast traditions of complex knowledge. It provides
clear and simple directions for routes ahead, and is written in a language
which is immediately accessible without being either condescending or
simplistic. It is a tribute to David Fontana's writing that I, who have practised
and studied meditation from a psychological orientation for more than 20
years, felt that I had learned far more by reading this one book about
meditation than I had from most of the others put together.
Foreword ix
The complexities of different spiritual traditions are clearly outlined, and the
place of meditation simply explained. Repeatedly throughout the book,
straightforward instructions for the practice of different kinds of meditation
techniques within those different traditions are presented.
But the book is not merely an academic and dispassionate guide to
meditation. It is written with sensitivity and, at the end of the book, there
emerges a sense of what is common to meditation practice across the
traditions, and coupled with this, a sense of David Fontana's own rich
experience of meditation. He communicates the products of meditation as
being stillness, beauty, fullness, understanding, engagement with, rather than
separation from, truth, honesty and sincerity. At the end of the book I tried to
summarize for myself what meditation is. I began by thinking that meditation
is the experience of oneself. Then it becomes the experience of one's being.
And then, more spiritually, a celebration of one's being. As a consequence of
this there is a celebration of others' being, and then a celebration of all beings.
Finally, there is a celebration simply of Being. Indeed, I concluded that
Meditation is Being. This is what, for me, is the conclusion of this vast, yet
easy, journey across traditions - an understanding based on my own
experience and David Fontana's guidebook. Meditation is a way of learning to
be, without attachment, greeds, desires, antipathies, aggressions or guilts.
Consequently it is truly a practice to still the turbulence of the inner and outer
world. It does seem to me that, along with a collective intent to heal ourselves
and our planet, meditation represents a straightforward path to stillness and
understanding which can help us learn to be in our world and live with each
other, rather than live off our world and be separate from one another.
Dr Fontana's sincerity, enormous depth of both scholarship and practice
of meditation all combine to make this book a beautiful companion for
meditators at any stage of their own spiritual journeys.
Michael West
Author of The Psychology of Meditation
Introduction
In writing about meditation, one is also writing about religion, since it is
within the context of religion - or, more properly, of spirituality - that all the
great meditative traditions have grown and flourished. But I hope that the
reader who takes no particular interest in religion won't be put off by this.
The book isn't an attempt to convert anyone to a spiritual way of thinking,
for it is up to each of us to find our own way through life, and our own
sense of its meaning or lack of it. Nor is the book written from the
standpoint of any one particular religion. If there are more references to
some religions than to others, this is simply because they are the ones that
have placed most emphasis upon the meditative tradition.
For my own part, my interest has always been to look for the one truth
that lies behind all religions. The teachings, both practical and theoretical, I
have been privileged to receive in many of the major Eastern and Western
traditions, together with the sense of the sacred I have experienced in
temples, churches, mosques, chapels and meditation halls, have shown me
that it is human fallibility and not truth itself that is responsible for setting
people against each other.
At the same time, as a psychologist, my interest has also been to study
the mysteries of the human mind, the richness of which we can live and die
