Purpose

[Michael]

Home Grown Buddha differs from other books of this type by attempting to present the experience of meditation as a series of experiments. The outcomes of the experiments are the direct experiences of the author and are not an attempt to further any particular religion, teacher, lineage, sect, denomination, school or creed. Since I do not represent any specific path, I feel free to express my insights in the language of my own experience, which does not include long lists of Sanskrit or Pali terms and does include the metaphors, symbols, and everyday language of largely monotheistic American culture.

[Michael]

Chapters One and Two provide a basic definition of meditation and consider meditation from a psycho-behavioral perspective, a traditional religious perspective, a mystical perspective and from a non-conceptual perspective. The point of these chapters is to free meditation from being seen from a one dimensional point of view.

Chapter Three is a general outline of the outcomes of the experiments performed by the author, basically describing how a meditation practice changed the way the author experienced a wide variety of different aspects of his world. These changes are compared and contrasted to things as they were.

Chapter Four further details the changes discussed in Chapter Three, particularly in the area of how the mind is created and how the mind creates or projects what it sees.

Chapter Five increases the specificity of the previous chapters by exploring the role of ego or self as it begins to be identified as a creation of mind with no independent reality of its own.

Chapter Six explores automaticity and looks at how the experimenter begins to see desire as a function of the illusion of self. The roots of addiction begin to show when the illusion of self is revealed.

Chapter Seven looks at how we create ourselves through our stories and how are stories are containers for what we believe about our worlds.

Chapter Eight encourages alternative narratives designed to free us from our mental constructs, from our bondage to ego, from automaticity, and the stories that lock us into the illusion of fundamentalist thinking.

Chapter Nine explores insights into letting go of attachments to view points such as Christians can't be Buddhists and Buddhists can't be Christians.

Chapter Ten uses all the previous chapters to develop the felt-sense of what it means to let go. Addiction is generalized to being our primary existential challenge.

Chapter Eleven through Twenty-five presents the specific techniques used in the experiments discussed above.