Een inleidend woord.
'As an intensely practical religion, Buddhism has throughout its long history concentrated on devising a great number of mediations which serve to promote the spiritual development of its followers, and aim at opening their eyes to the true facts of existence. Meditational practices constitute the very core of the Buddhist appro-
ach to life, which by contrast is inclined to treat doctrinal definitions and historical facts with some degree of unconcern.
In recent years psychologists have shown great interest in the therapeutical value of these meditations, but accurate information about them has been hard to come by. The most outstanding original document have now been made accessible by Dr. Conze,who has translated them direct from the Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan.
The bulk of his selections has been taken from Buddhaghosa's "Path of Purity", a large work of unquestioned authority, but other sources have also been considered. Anintroductory essay deals with the meaning of Buddhist meditation, its range and principal divisions, the chief literary documents, and the relation of its methods and presuppositions to modern psychology.
Dr. Conze is well known as a Buddhist scholar, and, in addition, he has been teaching Psychology for the last twenty years, so that he is equally familiar with the ancient and the modern approach to the problems of mental health'.