Pure and Simple: The Extraordinary Teachings of a Thai Buddhist Laywoman Paperback – May 15, 2005

If you bristle at repetition and laser focus, this book might not be for you. If you still feel strongly attached to your image and worldly appetites, it might not be the book for you just yet. If you're looking for something to build you up rather than strip you bare, this isn't that teaching. And if you are not ready to face the ways you divert and distract from what is unpleasant and uncomfortable, you probably won't find resonance here.Now, on the other hand, if you're at the point of readiness for simple, direct, relentless pointing, this is as good as it gets. If you are beginning to sense a direction that leads away from contracted egoic identity and the habits that maintain it, you may recognize that here is someone who walked that path before you, and she marked the way for you to follow. You will recognize this guide calling to you from across the barrens of what you previously took yourself to be. Admittedly, it may put off some readers who are not actually looking for serious pointing. But. if you had had enough of entertainment posing as teaching, and you feel a readiness to recognize that you are not the mind, the body, the thoughts, the feelings, actions, events or changing experiences, buy this book, read it, listen to it again and again. It's a bare bones practice manual and arrow-straight guidance."Those who still latch onto the body, feeling, perceptions, thought-fabrications and consciousness as self, need to contemplate until they see that the body is stressful, feelings are stressful, perceptions are stressful, consciousness is stressful - in short, name is stressful and so is form, or in even plainer terms, the body is stressful and so is the mind. You have to focus on stress. Once you see it thoroughly, from the blatant levels to the subtle, you'll be able to rise above pleasure and pain because you've let them go. But if you've yet to fully understand stress, you'll still yearn for pleasure - and the more you yearn, the more you suffer.Ultimately, you'll see that there's nothing at all — just the arising and disbanding occurring every moment in emptiness. If there's no attachment, there are no issues. There's simply the natural phenomenon of arising and disbanding. But because we don't see things simply as natural phenomena, we see them as being true and latch onto them as our self, good, bad, and all sorts of other complicated things. This keeps us spinning around without knowing how to find a way out, what to let go of — we don't know. When we don't know, we're like a person who wanders into a jungle and doesn't know the way out, doesn't know what to do..."

This is authentic, no-nonsense unWesternized instruction in Buddhist meditation. The translation is excellent. Ive read it over and over as my own practice progressed. I highly recommend this for serious practitioners.

Clear and simply written. Very good! It is a book that one can return to over and over again - like a good text.

Words of wisdom from an experienced practitioner that all practitioners would do well to learn, practice and consider and heed.

This is such a good book that goes right to the heart of wisdom. No nonsense, excellent.

I am making my way through this book because there are some valuable teachings here, but it could have used tighter editing. The repetitive nature of talks given within a community does not lend itself well to the written word.

Definitely one of the best books I've ever read. Not for the faint of heart. the tone is very strict and harsh. But I would highly recommend it to anyone who desires a very deep understanding of the meditative process

I am consuming this book in bits and bites, meditating on the teachings, so I can comment on the whole book yet, but this is the first book I've read in an age that I'm not tearing through or tossing aside, because I can't. These talks are deep, rigorous, lovely, difficult, and life changing.