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Introduction
which here means being faithful to the practice of meditation---we are advised to choose carefully among the many paths of meditation available. But then, having done so, in most cases we do well to stay and grow and deepen within the one we do choose. It is also better to approach meditation without expectations of instant results or grand visions.
For some of us, the term “masters" may give us pause. The word is used here to indicate a high degree of spiritual mastery, wisdom, and teaching expertise on the part of the meditation teachers. The actual practice and teachings—and not the personality of the teacher, as is seen in some guru-centered schools of meditation--remain the primary focus of these eight master meditation teachers. Their own exemplary mastery is only meant to guide, and serve as an example to their students, who must by their own steady efforts continue to walk along these meditation wisdom roads.
The meditation masters found in this book all seem to concur that the path of meditation continues to be a dynamic learning experience for each of them as well. A master can be seen on one level as the student who has learned his lessons well. The meditation wisdom teachers point us in the right direction. But they always emphasize that there is no substitute for direct experience on the part of the individual meditator.
This book is the fruit of talks, meetings, and encounters—in a word, conversations—with truly remarkable spiritual masters, or master meditators, over a number of years. It now seems inevitable to this writer and meditator that it should be so. Yet as always in things really important to one's life and intrinsic well being, there was also a fair amount of struggle, hard knocks, and false starts—in the process of making it a reality.
The book also represents then a gradual awakening of sorts for its author. It naturally grew out of my work for a number of years as a religion journalist at a daily newspaper in Virginia. Three stories from this period stand out in my mind in this regard. The first is an interview with a young California woman who was ordained as a Theravada Buddhist nun at the Bhavana Society Forest Monastery and Retreat Center in West Virginia. Another is the visit of Tibetan monks and nuns from India to Holy Cross Abbey, a Catholic monastery in Virginia. And the third is my own pilgrimage to a thousandyear-old Camaldolese Benedictine hermitage in Italy. I also ended up writing about that experience as a religion feature story.
Those earlier journalistic encounters had something of what the monk and writer Thomas Merton calls the “seeds of contemplation” about them.
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