Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Philip Laughlin at MIT Press for appreciating the need to bring this slender volume to the attention of the wider meditating and neuroscience communities. Again, my sincere thanks go to Katherine Arnoldi Almeida for her skilled editorial assistance and to Yasuyo Iguchi for her artistic skill in designing the cover and icons.

I am especially grateful to Barbara Klund for her ongoing patience in deciphering my handwriting throughout multiple drafts of her excellent typing, and for helping to keep this manuscript organized as it expands. Many thanks go also to James W. Austin for converting the color plates’ initial colors into a soft-edged digital version and for his valued assistance, together with Scott W. Austin and Seido Ray Ronci, in reviewing and commenting on the manuscript.

I am also grateful to John Hegarty for the functional MRI data, and to Scott W. Austin for the Latin conjugation of meditatorum.

In recent years, I have been privileged to share in the inestimable bounties of regular Zen practice with our sangha at Hokoku-an, led by Seido Ray Ronci; with the Dancing Crane Zen Center, led by Meredith Garmon; with the Vipassana/Theravada activities of the local Show-Me Dharma sangha; and in the stimulus afforded by the annual Mind and Life Summer Research Institute. Gassho to all!

While this book was underway for MIT Press, articles were also submitted to academic journals. Accordingly, grateful credit is acknowledged for permission to include portions of: the book review, “The Heart of William James,” in Perspectives on Psychological Science 2013; 8: 314–315, and the article, “Avian Zen,” The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 44, no. 1, in press 2014.