"The Essentials of Buddhist Meditation" is a classic Buddhist meditation instruction manual deeply rooted in the Indian Buddhist "calming-and-insight" meditation tradition. Within its tradition, it is the universally-acknowledged standard beginning-to-intermediate meditation manual, one which offers perhaps the most reliable, comprehensive, and practically-useful Buddhist meditation instruction currently available in English. The author of "The Essentials" is the sixth-century monk and meditation master, Shramana Zhiyi (Chih-i), one of the most illustrious figures in the history of Chinese...

"The Six Gates to the Sublime" is a classic Buddhist meditation instruction manual explaining the six practices crucial to success in traditional Indian Buddhist breath-focused (anapana) meditation and calming-and-insight (samatha-vipasyana) meditation. Correctly implemented, these six "gates" lead the meditator to realization of the fourth of the four truths (cessation), of which the "sublimity" referenced in the title is one of the four canonically-described practice aspects. This classic was written by the sixth-century monk and meditation master, Shramana Zhiyi (Chih-i), one of the most...