Description

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A clear and comprehensive handbook to a revered path of meditation.

This step-by-step meditator’s guide walks the reader through practices that can hold the key to unlocking new levels of concentration and insight. A student of the famed Pa-Auk Monastery and a practicing psychiatrist, Jeon Hyun-soo, MD, PhD, uses these two paths to guide the reader to a new understanding of themselves and the world around them. Drawing both from Jeon’s own experience with Pa-Auk Sayadaw and from the words of the Buddha, this is an authentic and practical guide to samatha, materiality, mentality, dependent origination, and vipassana.

About the Author

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Born 1956 in Pusan, Jeon Hyun-soo became a psychiatrist and a psychotherapy specialist after graduating from Kyung-nam High School and Pusan National University School of Medicine, and receiving neuropsychiatry training at the Soon Chun-hyang University Hospital. He attended Hanyang University Medical School where he obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees. He was introduced to Buddhist teachings two years after becoming a neuropsychiatry resident. After that, he met with patients and studied Buddhism concurrently, using Buddhist wisdom to aid him in treating his patients. The use of Buddhist wisdom was so effective that he detailed his experiences in his other books.

In 1990, he opened Jeon Hyeon-soo Neuropsychiatry Clinic. In 2003, he took a month off from his clinic to go to Burma to partake in vipassana training. Later that year, he gathered specialists in Buddhism, psychology, and psychiatry to study together and hold discussions. This gathering developed into the South Korean Buddhist Psychotherapy Society in 2007. In March 2009, he took a year off from therapy to practice Buddhism, travel, and write books. In March 2010, he reopened his clinic and returned to helping patients.

Dr. Jeon has authored the following books in Korean: Cry When You Want to Cry and A Psychiatrist’s Wisdom from the Buddha: Stories of Healing the Mind, A Psychiatrist’s “Guidebook for the Mind”, and collaborated in writing Value of Labor: A Buddhist Perspective, as well as translating Mark Epstein’s book Thoughts without a Thinker into Korean. 

Born in the United States, HaNul Jun graduated from the University of Michigan in 2013 with a bachelor of arts in Asian Languages and Cultures focusing on Burmese Buddhist meditation. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Michigan with research interests in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist ascetic practice and their relationship to texts and doctrine, particularly the Abhidhamma. He hopes to engage in professional scholarship on Buddhism and religious asceticism upon completing his degree.

During a period of over ten years Jun has had various experiences with Buddhism and meditative practice. Having first ordained temporarily as a novice monk in Myanmar in 2002, he also underwent temporary ordination as a Korean novice at Woljeong temple in Kangwon Province in 2006, and became a fully-ordained bhikkhu for three months in Myanmar in 2013. He also travelled to Dharamsala, India, in 2007 and 2011 to study Tibetan Buddhism. He has studied vipassana meditation in the Mahasi tradition under Sayadaw U Pandita, in the Goenka tradition, in the Shwe Oo Min tradition under Sayadaw U Tejaniya, and in the Pa-Auk tradition under Sayadaw U Revata. He also practiced Korean Ganhwa Seon at a retreat at Baekdamsa Temple. 

Praise For…

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"This is a book that conveys a profound message to those who would like to know and see the truths as they really are."
— from the foreword by Sayadaw Revata

"This book is nothing short of extraordinary. With humility, clarity, and absolute fidelity to the original teachings, Dr. Jeon shares his direct experience of advanced states of absorption, along with technical details of practice, in a manner that makes the ancient texts come alive. This book will surely inspire meditators to practice more deeply and more sincerely for years to come."
— Christopher Germer, Harvard Medical School, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion