When coming up with a list of the 5 best books on meditation for beginners I really had to think long and hard about all the books on the subject I had read over the years. At least for me, it always seemed that I was a beginner with way more to learn than I had learned. I guess that is the way it always will be.
This has caused me to buy more books on the subject than I care to admit. Fortunately for you, it gave me an excellent source of experience to pull from to get you a fantastic list of the best books on meditation for beginners. Let’s get started!
The vast majority of people I know of who want to get started in meditation do so because they are not happy with some part of their lives. More often than not this is due to stress of some form. In Practical Meditation for Beginners by Benjamin W. Decker 1the author goes right after the biggest barrier most people have to meditating, that no one meditation method works well for everyone. But that isn’t the only thing that makes this one of the best books on meditation.
In ten days, Decker walks you through ten different methods of meditation. Each time, the method is presented in a thoughtful and logical way, with easy steps that anyone can follow. The variety of methods ensures that you find one, or more, that works for you.
Of all the best books on meditation for beginners I have ever recommended, this one gets the most praise, hands down.
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris, Carlye Adler, and Jeffrey Warren 2is quite possibly my favorite book on meditation at any skill level, and most definitely one of my personal best books on meditation for beginners. This book just could not exist if it were not for the complete turnaround of Dan Harris, who once thought meditating was for “those people”. He was a successful ABC TV news anchor, he didn’t believe in such nonsense. That is until a personal, physical emergency, changed his views forever.
That may sound like a commercial for an after school special, but it isn’t. It’s the truth and that makes it even more fantastic. This is what drives the author to present such an amazing viewpoint and to get that view into the heads of his readers. This viewpoint alone makes this one of the best books on meditation. This is not one of those books about the universe and spirituality, one of those yoga spiritual books, or a spiritual awakening books. It is one of the most down to earth best books on meditation I have ever read.
What really sets this apart is that the author presents clear, easy to do meditations that remove all of the confusion and excuses and leave you better than before you read the book. He also does it in such a way that you are never bored, and never see reading the next page as a chore you have to get through to learn.
This is my personal best books on meditation for beginners.
When reading Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg I was impressed with the way she described the benefits of meditation, and explains the science behind it in a way everyone can easily understand. In my eyes, this is one of the best books on meditation for those who know right up front they want to seriously take up meditating.
In my first best books on meditation for beginners recommendation, Practical Meditation for Beginners, the author takes you through a ten-day course on ten different meditation methods, and I love that idea. In Real Happiness, Sharon uses that same idea with four different methods of meditation, each spanning a week.
While Practical Meditation exposes you to more types of meditation, this book gives you are a real chance to see each of the four methods in detail by spending much more time with each method. This is something many of the other best books on meditation do not do.
Both ways of presenting multiple methods work well, this method just hones in a little better on these four specific methods instead of leaving you to explore on your own. I would recommend this more for someone who had a real desire to learn meditation more thoroughly than with other books.
For a detailed book, this is probably one of the best books on meditation for beginners.
If you are looking for one of the most absolutely gorgeous printed best books on meditation, Practical Meditation: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide by Giovanni Dienstmann is probably the best book on meditation for you. I specified printed because while the kindle version presents the same information with some of the same graphics, the layout is sub-par. I recommend the hard or softcover editions of this book because, without the amazing layout, the book might not make it onto this list.
Certainly, I would not include a book just because it is pretty, but the graphics in this book contribute substantially to the way the information is delivered, making it clear and easy to understand at a glance. A great example of this is the timeline showing how ancient meditation techniques evolved and made their way to today’s society. So many of the best books on meditation are bland to look at, this one is not.
I am not sure what they mean by a step-by-step method as I didn’t really get that out of it. While the information was great, presentation was outstanding, I just didn’t find it quite as hand-holding and immediate as some of the other texts on the list.
Personally, I would pair this book with one of the previously mentioned books on this best books on meditation for beginners list for a complete and well-rounded introduction to the discipline.
When I want one of the classic best books on meditation I think of Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield Ph.D.. Jack has probably taught tens of thousands of people how to meditate and done it with his signature humor and approachability that few other authors can master. At some point, virtually everyone I know who is into meditation and mindfulness has read this book.
While I personally prefer books that have a more direct call to action with less behind the scenes discussion, that still leaves plenty of room to appreciate this book. The author takes you through a fantastic tour of what meditation is, and is not, and how it relates to you every day. His insights help you appreciate how it can all be used to benefit you mentally, physically and spiritually. This probably makes this the most well rounded of any of the books on the best books on meditation.
Walk into any new-age store and I bet you will find a copy of this book, and probably another copy behind the counter with well worn and dogeared pages. That should tell you a lot right there.
You simply can not leave this book off any best books on meditation for beginners list, it is truly one of the classic spirituality meditation books.
I hope you enjoyed my article on the best books on meditation for beginners!
