Michael Maniscalco

Home Grown Buddha: Getting at the Roots of Addiction Michael Maniscalco

While there are numerous books providing instructions on how to meditate, few explore the lived experience of meditation like it is a phenomenological experiment. Home Grown Buddha is the outcome of the author's thirteen-year-long adventure in meditation. Like many adventures, the path of discovery required letting go of numerous big T truths and replacing them with an intentionally open mind. The author's insights, which are the result of the direct experience of non-doing, e.g., sitting purposely with an open mind, are not meant to be a set of directions, but rather, a signal to the reader to put aside the rule book and open to the uncooked feast of the commonplace. While the author intends no sectarian agenda, there is still grounding in the no-brand traditions of Buddhism, yoga, mysticism, and modern psychology without the obfuscation of Sanskrit or Pali terminology. For a novice meditator, Home Grown Buddha contains a treasure trove of line-by-line details of particular techniques actually used by the author in his experiments, as well as a few useful markers discovered in the mysterious silence of unknowing that is sitting meditation. These markers are not intended to be hard and fast, but more like gentle hints to trust the process. The author considers himself a humble student and only wishes to share his insights with the reader as a co-meditator and fellow seeker.