Editorial Reviews 
Amazon.com  
If you are looking for a book about the fundamentals of Buddhism, without complicated theories or explanations of involved techniques, you have found it in Rob Nairn's What is Meditation?. In the sparest terms, Nairn outlines the major divisions of Buddhism, the Buddha's core teaching, and what it means to be a Buddhist at the most basic level. He goes on to provide three simple exercises in meditation that will suffice for anyone who wants to get his or her feet wet without being sucked into whirlpools of terminology. Like swimming, meditation requires just a brief amount of instruction in technique, and the rest is up to the practitioner. If you find the water welcoming, from Nairn's springboard you can jump off to slightly more involved books by Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, or Surya Das. Wherever you end up going, if you know nothing about Buddhism now, What is Meditation? is a good place to start. --Brian Bruya