The Warrior's Meditation

The Book in 1 Sentence

An old man weeb's possible method of reducing the effect the world has on you...

Brief Review

This book is a good read on a meditation method that stems from Japanese martial arts. For new meditators, it does a great job of laying out the steps and reasons why those steps are important for you to train with. For more common practitioners of meditation, I feel like it does a great job of teaching you how to move beyond the basics to take full advantage of this offering.

Why I Read this book

I am not one for meditation typically, but during COVID lockdowns, my wife, who is a typically more anxious person, asked me to meditate with her before bed a couple times. Generally, it isn't my scene, but in the last year I have found myself being more interested in different spiritual ideologies and this was one that, if it works as advertised, then it would be a good way to take decisive and smart choices in high stress environments.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

There really isn't much to say I feel like. I did have to split this book in to and what I mean is that I started this book sometime in 2021 and had to put it down out of boredom and a feeling of new age spiritualism. However, I don't like leaving things unfinished so I finished and it once you get into the process of the meditation session, it was a solid informative read.

The book claims to be "The way of the samurai" and while it does constantly mention Japanese Martial Arts, I am reluctant to believe this statement wholeheartedly as it feel boisterous rather than informative or additive to the book. If you look at the other reviews, there is a similar sentiment and I 100% agree. Do I think there is some kernel of truth in the information provided? Yes I do, but not as much as I'd told.

That doesn't take away from the possible benefits of the information the book provides. There are some solid chapters in there that provide some interesting insights into what meditation can/should do for you and what it can/should do to your brain if done correctly. Specifically there are some great chapters about the brains desire to be lazy, hiding information/items from you, and lacking a backbone to learn something new. That type was probably more informative while reading than the meditation stuff was, but that is because I typically read at night and trying to meditate at night = Sleeping.

Some of the information provided, while interesting and informative are at best tangentially related, but feel mostly like they are there to meet the minimum requirements for publishing, looking at you chapter about biases in the human brain. Also, the book feels like it has a Lord of the Rings movie ending. There are 3 chapters to finish it up, that could have easily been combined as one final chapter.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

As I said above, I find myself being more spiritually curious these days so I think the best way to check that as well as test the books content is to practice meditation on a daily basis as designed by this book. Look for and edit in the future about if I was able to keep doing it as well if it works.

Rating

I should give this 3 stars. It was hokey in the beginning, informative in the middle, and dancing at the end, but the middle was solid. I think a 4 is worthwhile. It is a short book, but full of information worth having in the brain pan.