Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana: A Complete Review

About the Author: Bhante Gunaratana

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana was born in 1927 in a small village in Sri Lanka and ordained as a Buddhist monk at the age of 12. He completed his training within the Theravada tradition, the oldest surviving school of Buddhism most closely preserved from the original teachings of the historical Buddha. In 1947 he received higher ordination, becoming a fully ordained bhikkhu (monk).

Gunaratana academic credentials are impressive. He studied and taught at several universities in India and Sri Lanka before moving to the United States in 1968, where he served as the Buddhist chaplain at American University in Washington, DC. He earned his PhD in philosophy from American University in 1980, and in 1985 he founded the Bhavana Society, a Theravada Buddhist monastery and meditation retreat center in the mountains of West Virginia. The Bhavana Society remains one of the most respected traditional monasteries in North America.

This combination of traditional monastic training spanning more than 75 years and Western academic education gives Gunaratana a rare ability to communicate the depth of the Buddhist meditation tradition in language that Western readers can immediately understand and apply. He knows precisely which concepts need explanation and which assumptions need challenging because he has spent decades guiding Western students through exactly these questions in person.

Book Overview and Structure

Mindfulness in Plain English was first published in 1991 by the Buddhist Publication Society and later by Wisdom Publications. Revised and expanded editions appeared in 2002 and 2011, with the current edition containing 22 chapters across approximately 200 pages. The book is organized into three broad phases: the first establishes what meditation is and why to practice it; the second provides detailed step-by-step instruction in the technique; and the third addresses the challenges that arise in practice and the deeper dimensions of the path.

Chapter 1 begins disarmingly: "Meditation is not easy. It takes time and it takes energy. It also takes grit, determination and discipline." This is not the opening of a self-help book selling a simple fix. Gunaratana is honest about what meditation requires and equally honest about what it can offer. He describes the mind in its ordinary state as a "wild elephant" - powerful but untrained, causing harm through its undirected energy - and meditation as the process of gradually bringing that elephant under friendly control.

The prose style throughout is conversational, warm, and precise. Gunaratana uses analogies skillfully, comparing the early stages of meditation to trying to hold a puppy still, describing the way thoughts arise as "bubbles rising in water," and explaining the quality of mindful awareness through the difference between someone who takes a photograph of a beautiful sunset and someone who actually stops and sees it fully.

Core Teachings: What the Book Covers

The central technique taught in the book is anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing. This is the meditation on breath described in the Anapanasati Sutta, one of the most important discourses attributed to the historical Buddha. The practice involves sitting in a stable, comfortable posture, directing attention to the physical sensations of breathing (typically at the nostrils or upper lip), and returning attention to the breath each time the mind wanders. This sounds simple. As every meditator quickly discovers, it is not.

Gunaratana spends considerable space on what happens when you actually try to do this. Chapter 7 (What to Do with Your Mind) and Chapter 8 (Structuring Your Meditation) are probably the most practically useful chapters in the book. Chapter 7 explains that the goal in the beginning is not to stop thoughts but to notice, without judgment, that the mind has wandered, and then gently return attention to the breath. Each act of noticing and returning is a moment of mindfulness, not a failure.

Gunaratana is meticulous about posture, covered in Chapter 6. He explains that the traditional cross-legged sitting position is not arbitrary tradition but has genuine functional benefits: it creates a stable triangular base, allows the spine to naturally straighten, and signals to the body and mind that this time is different from ordinary sitting. However, he is pragmatic about Western bodies that may not be accustomed to floor sitting, offering guidance on using chairs, cushions, and benches to find a workable alternative posture.

What Is Vipassana Meditation?

The word vipassana comes from Pali (the language of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures) and means "clear seeing" or "insight." It is distinguished from samatha (concentration or calm-abiding) meditation, which aims at developing mental stillness by focusing the mind on a single object. Vipassana uses concentration as a foundation but then applies that concentrated attention to the direct investigation of experience itself, observing how phenomena arise, persist for a moment, and pass away.

Gunaratana explains this distinction clearly in Chapter 3: "Samatha is concentration on an object; Vipassana is a penetrating look at whatever is occurring right now." He describes how mindfulness of breathing begins as samatha practice (concentrating the mind on the breath as a stable object) but gradually becomes vipassana as you notice not just the breath but the nature of the mind that is observing the breath - its tendency to grasp, to avert, to fabricate stories and judgments about experience.

The insight that gives Vipassana its name is direct experiential understanding of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. These are not concepts you memorize but truths you encounter in practice. You notice that every breath is slightly different from the last. You notice that the pleasant sensation of settling into the body cannot be held. You notice that there is no stable, unchanging observer behind the thoughts - just more thoughts arising and passing away in sequence.

The Three Characteristics of Existence

A significant portion of the book is devoted to explaining the three tilakkhana, the three characteristics that Vipassana practice aims to illuminate through direct experience. These are foundational concepts in Theravada Buddhism and the theoretical framework behind the practice Gunaratana is teaching throughout the book.

The first is anicca (impermanence). Everything that arises passes away. Every thought, every sensation, every emotion, every experience - nothing is permanent. In meditation, you observe this directly: the breath comes and goes, sounds arise and fade, thoughts appear and dissolve. This is not a philosophy you accept intellectually but something you watch happening moment by moment in real time. As this understanding deepens, the habit of clinging to pleasant experiences and pushing away unpleasant ones begins to relax. You stop fighting reality and start working with it as it is.

The second is dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, suffering, or dissatisfaction). This is often mistranslated as simply "suffering," which gives Buddhism an unnecessarily gloomy reputation. Gunaratana is careful to explain that dukkha refers to the inherent unsatisfactoriness of trying to find permanent happiness in impermanent things. When you stop demanding that life be different from what it is, the suffering created by that demand dissolves. The underlying difficulty of existence may remain, but the added suffering of resistance to that difficulty is no longer compulsory.

The third is anatta (non-self). This is the most conceptually challenging and practically significant of the three characteristics. Through careful observation in meditation, you begin to notice that what you call "I" or "myself" is not a fixed, unchanging entity but a constantly shifting process: a flow of sensations, perceptions, intentions, and moments of consciousness that arises and passes away moment by moment in dependence on conditions.

Practical Guidance: How to Meditate Using This Book

One of the book greatest strengths is the specificity of its practical guidance. Gunaratana does not leave the reader with vague exhortations to "be present" or "notice your thoughts." He addresses specific, common experiences in detail: what to do when the mind becomes very dull and sleepy (Chapter 10), what to do when the mind becomes agitated and hyperactive (Chapter 11), how to handle physical pain during sitting (Chapter 9), and what to do with strong emotions when they arise throughout Chapters 9 to 12.

Chapter 12, "Dealing with Distractions," is particularly valuable. Gunaratana proposes a systematic approach to working with distractions. When a distraction pulls attention away from the breath, you notice it, mentally label it (thinking, feeling, pain, sound, planning) without elaboration, and return to the breath. The labeling serves two purposes: it creates a moment of mindful recognition rather than unconscious absorption in the thought, and it builds the habit of observing mental events from a slight distance rather than being swept away by them entirely.

Working with Distractions and the Wandering Mind

Chapter 9 addresses physical pain, which many new meditators encounter and mishandle. Gunaratana makes an important distinction: there is physical pain (an unavoidable part of sitting still for extended periods) and there is suffering, which is the mental reaction to pain. When you encounter discomfort in meditation, the instruction is not to ignore it but to observe it with the same quality of non-judgmental attention you bring to the breath.

Often, when a physical sensation is observed directly rather than resisted or dramatized, it changes. It may decrease in intensity, shift location, or become simply a neutral sensation rather than something terrible. This is not denial or suppression but a direct demonstration of the relationship between attention and experience. Gunaratana is careful to note that genuine medical pain requiring action is different from the ordinary discomfort of unfamiliar postures, and practitioners should use good judgment about when to shift position versus when to investigate with mindfulness.

The material on the wandering mind is equally careful and useful. Gunaratana explains that the nature of the mind is to wander - this is not a defect in you or a sign that meditation is not working. The practice is specifically designed for a mind that wanders. Each time you notice the wandering and return to the breath, you are exercising the very faculty that meditation is cultivating: the ability to direct attention intentionally rather than being carried wherever the current of habit takes it.

Handling Emotions During Meditation

Emotions arise in meditation, often more intensely than in ordinary life because the usual distractions that muffle them are removed. Grief, anxiety, anger, longing, and joy can all surface during sitting practice. Gunaratana guidance is consistent throughout: observe the emotion as a mental-physical event, notice its quality and intensity without identifying with it completely, and watch how it changes over time. Most emotions, when witnessed without feeding them with thought, follow a natural arc of arising, peaking, and subsiding.

He is specific about what not to do with emotions in meditation. Do not suppress them by forcing the breath observation while pretending the emotion is not there. Do not indulge them by spinning into the narrative (why you feel this way, who is to blame, what you should have done). Both of these responses are forms of unconscious reaction. The middle path is to acknowledge the emotion directly, notice where it lives in the body (tight chest, hollow stomach, heat in the face), and observe its characteristics without editing them.

Gunaratana also addresses the phenomenon of unexpectedly strong emotional releases during practice. Some practitioners, after weeks or months of regular meditation, experience sudden waves of grief, fear, or joy that seem to come from nowhere. He frames these as a natural clearing process: as the habitual mental defenses relax, material that has been stored beneath conscious awareness comes to the surface to be processed. This is generally healthy and should be met with the same observational quality as any other experience in meditation.

Mindfulness Beyond the Cushion

Chapter 14, "Mindfulness in Daily Life," is the part of the book that many practitioners return to most often after completing the initial read. Gunaratana argues that formal sitting practice is only one half of the meditation path; the other half is the application of mindful awareness to the activities of everyday life.

He describes applying mindfulness to simple physical activities: walking, eating, washing dishes, brushing teeth. The instruction is the same as in sitting practice - direct clear, non-judgmental attention to what is actually happening (the sensation of feet on floor, the taste of food, the temperature of water) rather than being lost in commentary, planning, or judgment. This is considerably more difficult than sitting practice because the stimuli of daily life are far more numerous and the habitual autopilot is strongly established through years of conditioning.

Walking meditation receives its own detailed treatment. The basic instruction is to walk very slowly (much slower than ordinary walking) and direct full attention to the physical sensations of each component of each step: the lifting of the foot, the moving forward, the placing, the shifting of weight. Done with full attention, this apparently simple activity reveals a remarkable complexity of sensation that ordinary automatic movement completely conceals. Many practitioners find that regular walking meditation develops a quality of present-moment awareness that eventually begins to infuse non-meditation walking as well.

Strengths and Honest Limitations

The book greatest strengths are its clarity, its depth, and its availability. Gunaratana writes with the confidence of someone who has practiced this path for over 75 years and taught it for decades. He does not oversimplify, does not promise quick results, and does not avoid the challenging aspects of practice. The honesty of passages like his description of the "monkey mind" and his frank account of the difficulties of establishing a regular practice is more useful to practitioners than the reassuring tone of many popular mindfulness books.

A genuine limitation worth noting is the book near-exclusive focus on sitting practice. It does not substantially address the broader context of Theravada Buddhist practice that supports and deepens formal meditation, including the role of sila (ethical conduct), dana (generosity), and the study of Dhamma (teachings). Practitioners who find the sitting practice is opening up experiences they do not know how to work with may need a teacher, which the book acknowledges but does not fully address in practical terms.

The book also predates the significant body of neuroscientific research on meditation that has accumulated since the 1990s. Readers who want to understand the physiological and neurological basis of what the practice does to the brain will need to supplement Gunaratana with sources like Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson Altered Traits (2017), which documents the research on meditation effects on brain structure and function.

How It Compares to Other Meditation Books

The landscape of meditation books is vast and uneven in quality. Here is how Mindfulness in Plain English compares to several frequently recommended alternatives for readers deciding where to start.

Mindfulness in Plain English holds a unique position in this landscape: it is the most complete, most traditional, most practically detailed, and most accessible introduction to Vipassana meditation available in English. For a reader who wants to actually learn to meditate in the Theravada tradition, it remains the first book to read and the one to return to as questions arise in practice.