Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits
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Product Description
Synopsis
Counsels readers on how to break negative habits and addictions through an application of Buddhist principles, introducing the author's philosophies about "creative engagement" in order to promote productive changes while ending cycles of abuse and negativity. Original.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book encourages gentle transformation.
It sows the seeds for a journey of creative engagement with those habits of which we are so often unaware, and that influence and predispose us to react rather than to act in our lives.
Martine suggests that through habit people tend to aquire patterns of behaviour, some positive and some negative. By initiating meditation as a positive habit she skilfully encourages the concentration and enquiry that develop through it towards recovering a fresh sense of seeing. She shows how an awareness of our own grasping habits with their negative impact can, with patience, gradually dissolve, creating spaciousness and allowing opening of fresh possibilities.
This is a practical handbook. By exploring and putting into practise her simple step-by-step suggestions, the reader is empowered through Martine to change and grow.
Personally I have found this book invaluable and recommend it highly.
It sows the seeds for a journey of creative engagement with those habits of which we are so often unaware, and that influence and predispose us to react rather than to act in our lives.
Martine suggests that through habit people tend to aquire patterns of behaviour, some positive and some negative. By initiating meditation as a positive habit she skilfully encourages the concentration and enquiry that develop through it towards recovering a fresh sense of seeing. She shows how an awareness of our own grasping habits with their negative impact can, with patience, gradually dissolve, creating spaciousness and allowing opening of fresh possibilities.
This is a practical handbook. By exploring and putting into practise her simple step-by-step suggestions, the reader is empowered through Martine to change and grow.
Personally I have found this book invaluable and recommend it highly.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Let Go is the only book (and I'm a book junkie) that remains on or near my bedside table, as I cycle every few weeks through another of the eleven short chapters, each with its neatly boxed meditation exercise. And as each chapter comes round again, I find I bring something new to it, and take something new from it.
Let Go explains how to use mindfulness (anapanasati) and insight (vipassan') meditation to let go of unwanted patterns of habit and response which can poison our relationships and sabotage our dreams. The book is firmly rooted in Buddhist practice, but doesn't require any metaphysical beliefs at any stage, and has very positive explanations of how meditation relates to and supports other techniques such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), 12 step addiction and even an obsessive-compulsive therapy.
Martine Batchelor spent a decade in a Korean Zen monastery, and since then has practised in environments as varied as rural meditation centres and a South African jail. She brings her experiences as an individual, family member, author and practitioner to the book with a light and self-deprecating voice, but her explanation of how unwanted mental habits are acquired, grow upon us and eventually constrict us is detailed and convincing, as are the explanations of how to become aware of them, of their triggers, and how to discard them. The whole analysis is as clearly built on her experience as on her command of Buddhism's many centuries of practice and refinement.
I recommend this book in the hope that it will help others, as it I believe it has helped me, to become someone that they and those they love will find easier and more rewarding to be with.
Let Go explains how to use mindfulness (anapanasati) and insight (vipassan') meditation to let go of unwanted patterns of habit and response which can poison our relationships and sabotage our dreams. The book is firmly rooted in Buddhist practice, but doesn't require any metaphysical beliefs at any stage, and has very positive explanations of how meditation relates to and supports other techniques such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), 12 step addiction and even an obsessive-compulsive therapy.
Martine Batchelor spent a decade in a Korean Zen monastery, and since then has practised in environments as varied as rural meditation centres and a South African jail. She brings her experiences as an individual, family member, author and practitioner to the book with a light and self-deprecating voice, but her explanation of how unwanted mental habits are acquired, grow upon us and eventually constrict us is detailed and convincing, as are the explanations of how to become aware of them, of their triggers, and how to discard them. The whole analysis is as clearly built on her experience as on her command of Buddhism's many centuries of practice and refinement.
I recommend this book in the hope that it will help others, as it I believe it has helped me, to become someone that they and those they love will find easier and more rewarding to be with.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Breaking Free of Habits
9 Oct 2008
Format:Paperback
In Letting Go Martine Batchelor gives us a Buddhist handbook for liberating ourselves from compulsive habits. She clearly describes the process of habituation, from experiencing an emotion, "there is fear in my mind", through identification with the emotion, "I am afraid", to solidification of this into fixed identity, "I am a fearful person", which then colors and restricts all our subsequent experience. The rest of the book presents antidotes and practices to unlink these steps. Wearing lightly her years of experience as a Buddhist nun and meditation teacher, she presents practices and stories with simplicity, humor, clarity and compassion. I cannot imagine anyone who would not benefit from reading this seemingly simple but deeply wise book.
24 of 30 people found the following review helpful
A fresh look at meditation
29 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
I recently heard Martine speak at my meditation center. She is delightfully humorous, warm and insightful. The crowd really enjoyed her talk and she was very available afterwards for questions.
The book does not transmit as much humor and freshness as she shows in person. Nevertheless, she has a core of very unique and practical thoughts about what Vispassana meditation is all about that can be found here. She is trying to put a focus on mediatation as a way to observe the habits we seldom see and evaluate ones that don't really work for us so we can change.
Something she said in her talk that I didn't see made explicit in the book was her comment that Vispassana is not best translated as "Insight" (the outcome) but Experiential Inquiry (the process). I think this idea informs what the book is all about.
The book does not transmit as much humor and freshness as she shows in person. Nevertheless, she has a core of very unique and practical thoughts about what Vispassana meditation is all about that can be found here. She is trying to put a focus on mediatation as a way to observe the habits we seldom see and evaluate ones that don't really work for us so we can change.
Something she said in her talk that I didn't see made explicit in the book was her comment that Vispassana is not best translated as "Insight" (the outcome) but Experiential Inquiry (the process). I think this idea informs what the book is all about.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Changing yourself, one habit at a time
22 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback
Let Go is the only book (and I'm a book junkie) that remains on or near my bedside table, as I cycle every few weeks through another of the eleven short chapters, each with its neatly boxed meditation exercise. And as each chapter comes round again, I find I bring something new to it, and take something new from it.
Let Go explains how to use mindfulness (anapanasati) and insight (vipassana) meditation to let go of the unwanted patterns of habit and response which can poison our relationships and sabotage our dreams. The book is firmly rooted in Buddhist practice, but doesn't require any metaphysical beliefs at any stage, and has very positive explanations of how meditation relates to and supports other techniques such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), 12 step addiction and even an obsessive-compulsive therapy.
Martine Batchelor spent a decade in a Korean Zen monastery, and since then has practised in environments as varied as rural meditation centres and a South African jail. She brings her experiences as an individual, family member, author and practitioner to the book with a light and self-deprecating voice, but her explanation of how unwanted mental habits are acquired, grow upon us and eventually constrict us is detailed and convincing, as are the explanations of how to become aware of them, of their triggers, and how to discard them. The whole analysis is as clearly built on her experience as on her command of Buddhism's many centuries of practice and refinement.
I recommend this book in the hope that it will help others, as it I believe it has helped me, to become someone that they and those they love will find easier and more rewarding to be with.
Let Go explains how to use mindfulness (anapanasati) and insight (vipassana) meditation to let go of the unwanted patterns of habit and response which can poison our relationships and sabotage our dreams. The book is firmly rooted in Buddhist practice, but doesn't require any metaphysical beliefs at any stage, and has very positive explanations of how meditation relates to and supports other techniques such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), 12 step addiction and even an obsessive-compulsive therapy.
Martine Batchelor spent a decade in a Korean Zen monastery, and since then has practised in environments as varied as rural meditation centres and a South African jail. She brings her experiences as an individual, family member, author and practitioner to the book with a light and self-deprecating voice, but her explanation of how unwanted mental habits are acquired, grow upon us and eventually constrict us is detailed and convincing, as are the explanations of how to become aware of them, of their triggers, and how to discard them. The whole analysis is as clearly built on her experience as on her command of Buddhism's many centuries of practice and refinement.
I recommend this book in the hope that it will help others, as it I believe it has helped me, to become someone that they and those they love will find easier and more rewarding to be with.
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